Billionaires with largest net worth drop due to global crypto crash in 2022. Binance founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao (commonly known as CZ) was the crypto billionaire who lost the most money following the crypto crisis of 2022, with a net worth drop amounting to 82 billion U.S. dollars.
According to estimates from Glassnode data, about 10% of the currency Bitcoin supply or 1,857,721 Bitcoins might never be found. Other reports estimate it might be as high as 25%. That is billions worth of value which will remain inaccessible forever essentially reducing the circulating supply of the cryptocurrency.
Crypto's biggest losers: 5 billionaires who lost the most in 2022 – Sam Bankman-Fried's net worth took a US$23 billion hit, but Brian Armstrong and Binance's Changpeng Zhao also have big money woes.
Like the U.S. dollar, Bitcoin is not backed by a physical commodity, and instead derives its value in other ways. Since Bitcoin doesn't have a centralized entity that enforces its value, and it isn't backed by any commodity, many people mistakenly believe this means Bitcoin doesn't have any value.
Bitcoin is controlled by all Bitcoin users around the world. While developers are improving the software, they can't force a change in the Bitcoin protocol because all users are free to choose what software and version they use.
1. Changpeng Zhao (CZ) – Founder of Binance, Changpeng Zhao (CZ) is one of the richest crypto billionaires in the world.
The four crypto billionaire deaths within a month gave fuel to several conspiracy theories among the crypto community. One user associated the string of deaths with a mafia-style hit job and said that the “crypto world is taking a page from the mafia handbook.”
There is a limited supply of bitcoins that can ever exist, with a total cap of 21 million. Currently, around 19 million bitcoins have been mined and are in circulation, leaving approximately 2 million left to be mined.
Bitcoin is infinitely divisible, so lost bitcoin does not harm the network as a whole. Furthermore, because Bitcoin derives value from its absolutely finite supply, every lost bitcoin will slightly increase the value of remaining bitcoin in the network.
When all bitcoin have been mined, miner revenue will depend entirely on transaction fees. The price and purchasing power of bitcoin will adjust to the lack of new supply. The scarcity of Bitcoin will make it more attractive to investors and users.
Last year Forbes identified 19 crypto billionaires, the most ever, who were worth a collective $140 billion. Now, those same individuals are worth less than $30 billion, as of March 10, 2023, the date Forbes measured net worths for its list. Ten of them are no longer billionaires.
One-time billionaire Allen Stanford, a Texas-born businessman known for his lavish lifestyle, lost his entire fortune amid a fraud scandal that ultimately sent him to jail. He was sentenced to 110 years in prison for a monumental Ponzi scheme totaling at least $8 billion.
The three richest on the list–Changpeng Zhao, Sam Bankman-Fried and Brian Armstrong–all helm cryptocurrency exchanges.
The "mysterious" deaths of crypto investors Nikolai Mushegian, 29, Tiantian Kullander, 30 and Vyacheslav Taran, 53, have drawn a lot of internet attention.
The cryptocurrency market is extremely lucrative. There are numerous ways to make money in cryptocurrency, ranging from investing to active trading to staking.
Tiantian Kullander, who co-founded the multibillion crypto exchange Amber Group, died while sleeping on Nov. 23 at age 30.
Hypothetically speaking, at least, the value of a cryptocurrency can collapse to zero, as witnessed in the Terra Luna price crash. However, for a currency as popular and valuable as Bitcoin, the fundamental foundations are most likely strong enough to withstand most threats and extremely disastrous incidents.
How long does it take to mine one Bitcoin? It takes around 10 minutes to mine just one Bitcoin, though this is with ideal hardware and software, which isn't always affordable and only a few users can boast the luxury of. More commonly and reasonably, most users can mine a Bitcoin in 30 days.
How China Controls Bitcoin. China has two advantages as far as bitcoin is concerned. First, it is home to a majority of mining operations for bitcoin. This confers it the power to control the supply of coins in the market and to raise transaction fees based on mining difficulty.
However, some estimates can be made based on blockchain data and surveys of Bitcoin holders. According to data from Bitinfocharts, as of March 2023, there are approximately 827,000 addresses that hold 1 bitcoin or more, representing around 4.5% of all addresses on the Bitcoin network.
China's government said it was especially concerned about crypto mining's effect on the environment and people using digital currencies for fraud and money laundering. The country is now pushing their own digital yuan currency, and trying to make it more widely available to consumers.