With the sharp decline of cryptocurrency led by bitcoin, the wealth of global cryptocurrency tycoons is shrinking sharply When bitcoin hit an all-time high last November, Brian Armstrong, founder of coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States, had a personal wealth of $13.7 billion.
However, according to the Bloomberg billionaires index, the market value of coinbase has fallen sharply due to the sale of digital currencies such as bitcoin and Ethereum, which has now fallen to $2.3 billion.
As of Wednesday, the company's share price had fallen 78% from its IPO peak in April last year. The stock fell 26.4% on Wednesday to close at $53.72. Previously, the company reported a loss of $430 million in the first quarter and warned that the trading volume and monthly trading users in the second quarter were expected to be lower than those in the first quarter.
This raised questions about coinbase's ability to resist the sharp decline in the price of cryptocurrency, forcing Armstrong to defend the company on twitter, saying that even if the "black swan" incident occurred, the company "had no risk of bankruptcy" and users' funds were safe.
After a sell-off that began with technology stocks spread to digital currencies, the wealth of the rapidly expanding cryptocurrency tycoons over the past two years is disappearing. The prices of the two most popular cryptocurrencies, bitcoin and Ethereum, are more than 50% lower than last year's record high. Terrausd, the stable currency of the algorithm, faces the risk of complete collapse.
This is very different from the situation a few weeks ago, when the cryptocurrency community was still reveling in Miami.
Although the wealth of almost all cryptocurrency holders has declined, some of the biggest and most obvious losses are concentrated on the founders of the cryptocurrency exchange.
At least on the book, Zhao CHANGPENG, CEO of Qian'an, lost more wealth than Armstrong. In January, he first appeared on the Bloomberg billionaires index with a net worth of $96 billion. As of Wednesday, that figure had shrunk to $16 billion.
Taylor and Cameron winklevos, CO founders of Gemini, the cryptocurrency exchange, lost about $2.1 billion each this year, accounting for about 40% of their wealth. The wealth of Michael Novogratz, CEO of Galaxy digital, a cryptocurrency commercial bank, plummeted to $2.9 billion from $8.5 billion in early November.
Armstrong is not the only loss making billionaire in coinbase. The company's co-founder Fred ehrsam, a former trader at Goldman Sachs, is now worth $1.3 billion, down more than 60% this year.
According to coinbase's 2022 rights statement, Armstrong holds 16% of the company and controls 59.5% of the voting shares, while elsam holds 4.5% and controls 26% of the voting shares.