Top 10 richest individual crypto holders
From Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto to unfortunate crypto losers Rain Lohmus and James Howells, these are the 10 richest on-chain individuals:
From Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto to unfortunate crypto losers Rain Lohmus and James Howells, these are the 10 richest on-chain individuals:
1. Satoshi Nakamoto — $69,000,000,000.
Satoshi Nakamoto is the richest holder of crypto in the world. The entirety of this is from the Bitcoin he mined from 2009 and 2010 and is stored across 22,000 addresses.
2. Justin Sun — $2,700,000,000.
Justin Sun is a Chinese entrepreneur and cryptocurrency pioneer best known as the founder of TRON. He is also the CEO of BitTorrent and the owner of two crypto exchanges.
3. James Howells — $500,000,000.
An IT worker from Wales, he was an early pioneer of Bitcoin mining in 2010, using his personal laptop to mine approximately 8,000 BTC.
4. Stefan Thomas — $440,000,000.
Stefan Thomas, a German-born programmer and early Bitcoin developer, is another individual whose vast on-chain wealth is locked away. In 2011, he was paid 7,002 BTC for creating an animated video explaining how Bitcoin worked.
5. Rain Lohmus — $425,000,000.
Rain Lohmus represents one of crypto's most famous cautionary tales. The Estonian banker and co-founder of LHV Bank was an early believer in Ethereum, participating in its 2014 ICO. He invested approximately $75,000 and received a staggering 250,000 ETH.
6. Vitalik Buterin — $384,000,000.
Vitalik Buterin is the visionary programmer who co-created Ethereum. As one of the project's co-founders, he received an allocation of ETH at its genesis.
7. Clifton Collins — $316,000,000.
Clifton Collins is an Irish drug dealer who became a significant Bitcoin holder after acquiring 6,000 BTC in 2011-2012 with proceeds from selling cannabis. Bitcoin was valued at around $5 then.
8. Shixing Mao — $166,000,000.
Shixing Mao, also known as DiscusFish, is the co-founder and CEO of Cobo dot com, a prominent crypto wallet and custody solutions provider. Mao is also the founder of China's first Bitcoin mining pool — F2Pool.
9. Patricio Worthalter — $107,000,000.
Patricio Worthalter is an Argentinian entrepreneur and the founder of POAP (Proof of Attendance Protocol). POAP is a widely used protocol in the Ethereum ecosystem that allows event organisers to distribute crypto-badges (NFTs) to attendees, creating a verifiable record of life experiences.
10. James Fickel — $66,000,000.
James Fickel is a prominent cryptocurrency investor and trader. His journey to the crypto rich list started in 2016 when he invested $400,000 in Ethereum when the token was trading at around $0.80.