Many experts have warned that the meteoric rise of cryptocurrencies could land the investors in trouble. Nouriel Roubini, who's known as Dr. Doom after predicting the US housing bubble crash of 2007, called bitcoin the 'mother of all bubbles'.
But these red signals did not deter risk-takers and when the value of the cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, ripple, Ethereum etc boomed in 2017, they made a real fortune.
While many countries around the world are struggling to regulate virtual currencies, the Forbes Magazine on February 6 has made its first attempt to list out the richest in cryptocurrency industry.
Here is the list of 10 virtual-currency billionaires and their estimated crypto net worth, as estimated by Forbes Magazine.
1. Chris Larsen
Chris Larsen, who co-founded Ripple, is presently the executive chairman of Ripple's board of directors. Forbes says he has an estimated cryptocurrency net worth $ 7.5-$8 billion. Chris also co-founded and served as CEO of Prosper, a peer-to-peer lending marketplace, and E-LOAN.
2. Joseph Lubin
Joseph Lubin, the co-founder of Ethereum and founder of Consensys, has an estimated cryptocurrency treasure worth $1-$5 billion, the magazine said.
3. Changpeng Zhao
Changpeng Zhao is the CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance. The estimated cryptocurrency net worth of Changpeng Zhao is $1- $1.2 billion. In less than seven months, he established world's largest cryptocurrency exchange.
4. Cameron & Tyler Winklevoss
Winklevoss twins, who co-founded Winklevoss Capital, has an estimated cryptocurrency investment worth $ 900 million - $1.1 billion. The identical twins also built a cryptocurrency exchange based in Newyork.
5. Matthew Mellon
Matthew Mellon holds crypto money worth $900 million-$1.billion. Investments made in XRP did the trick for him and made him even richer.
6. Brian Armstrong
Brian Armstrong, CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, holds $900 million- $1 billion net worth of cryptocurrency. Coinbase is a popular digital currency exchange in the US.
7. Matthew Roszak
Matthew Roszak, the co-founder of Bloq and founder of Tally Capital, has cryptocurrency worth $900 million - $1 billion.
8. Anthony Di Iorio
Anthony Di Iorio, the co-founder of Ethereum and founder of Jax and Decentral, holds $750 million-$1 billion net worth of cryptocurrency.
9. Brock Pierce
Brock Pierce is the chairman of Bitcoin Foundation and his cryptocurrency fortune is estimated to worth $700 million-$1 billion.
10. Michael Novogratz
Popular hedge fund manager and CEO of Galaxy Digital Michael Novogratz owns digital currency worth $700 million-$1 billion.
