Who has most cryptocurrencies?

Who are the biggest Bitcoin owners?

Several early buyers of Bitcoin are probably the richest people on the cryptocurrency markets. Many have promoted a strategy of holding for future profits - "Hodling" in the vocabulary of the supporters of cryptocurrencies.

An anonymous Bitcoin account that started buying the token in March 2011-and has never sold it-according to the cryptocurrency analysis website Bitinfocharts, has a fortune of $ 4.8 billion.

A recently published paper from the US National Bureau of Economic Research estimates that the 1,000 largest Bitcoin investors control around 3 million Bitcoin, or a seventh of the entire potential offer of cryptocurrency. Only a small handful of this owner has revealed their identity.

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the twin brothers who are best known to have lost a legal dispute with Mark Zuckerberg about the idea of ​​the social network behind Facebook, supposedly bought 120,000 Bitcoin in 2012 that would be worth $ 7.2 billion in mid -November.

In an auction in 2014, the risk capital provider Tim Draper (picture above left) beat other bidders to buy 29,655 Bitcoin who confiscated the US marshals from the Dark-Web-Imperium Silk Road. These tokens would be worth $ 1.8 billion at today's prices. At the time, Draper rejected how much he had paid at the auction, but the Marshals estimated the value of the loose at around $ 18 million.

Michael Saylor, CEO of Microstrategy, a software company, said last year that he bought Bitcoin at an average price of less than $ 10,000 over the course of the period; This participation would be worth $ 1.1 billion at current prices.

What about other cryptocurrencies?

Founders of newer Blockchains like Ethereum also harvested large fortune. Vitalik Buterin (picture above, bottom right), his creator, received 553,000 ether from an initial foundation, which was set up by the co-founders, a participation that would be worth $ 2.3 billion at today's prices.

The teams behind several cryptocurrency projects that want to compete with Ethereum followed a similar approach and rewarded themselves with considerable parts of their own token stocks.

Binance Coin, the token associated with Binance Smart, has reached a market capitalization of almost $ 100 billion in four years. The founding team, which also includes the pronounced founder of the Binance exchange Changpeng Zhao (top right in the picture), gave itself 40 percent of the total offer of the tokens.

Solana, a blockchain that has gained popularity as an alternative to Ethereum for decentralized finance apps, sold almost 13 percent of the overall offer of the tokens for 20 cents per token to the founding team. At current prices, these tokens would be worth $ 13.5 billion.

Some analysts have questioned the fairness of these initial token distributions and argues that they contradict the supposedly decentralized nature of cryptocurrency networks.

"These allocations would be okay if these were companies-it is not crazy to see that much property," says Ryan Watkins, a senior research analyst at Messari, an analysis service for cryptocurrencies. "But if you build systems that are supposed to be more democratic, it's just not democratic."

Who has earned most of the money with cryptocurrency companies?

Brian Armstrong, co -founder of the Coinbase cryptocurrency exchange, is considered the richest founder of a public cryptodic service company.

Armstrong has more than 36 million shares of the company worth more than $ 12 billion. On the day of the direct list of Coinbase, he also sold shares worth more than $ 290 million, an alternative to the traditional IPO, which has no restrictions on stock sales. Armstrong's co-founder Fred Ehrsam has shares worth $ 3.8 billion.

Other founders of cryptocurrency start-ups keep large shares in their companies that could be worth billions of dollars on paper. Forbes estimates that Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange, was worth $ 22.5 billion this year, a large part of it from his approximately half participation in the $ 25 billion.

Barry Silbert, founder and CEO of the Digital Currency Group, a company for digital assets, the Financial Times said that he has almost 40 percent of the company that investors recently rated $ 10 billion in private secondary stock sales. Silbert says he had not sold any business shares.

Why is it so difficult to determine the greatest owners of cryptocurrencies?

Great owners of cryptocurrencies usually hesitate to discuss their purchase and sales decisions because they are afraid of hacking, tax authorities and other risks.

"I think everyone who has to do with cryptocurrency is certainly reserved and in my case is not willing to share something," says Silbert. "I joke that I lost my entire Bitcoin in a boat accident," he adds, referring to a meme under Bitcoin investor about a suspected excuse that was given to the tax authorities for the loss of a crypto wallet.

While blockchains can make it easier to publicly pursue the flow of cryptocurrencies, they also disguise the identity of their owners. Some applications such as Nansen try to compensate for blockchain addresses with investment funds and other large owners, but they can be unreliable.

How easy can these inserts be converted into cash?

The volatility and concentration of cryptocurrencies means that large purchases and sales can have a major impact on the market. Some start-ups have tried to solve the problem by acting as an intermediary, forwarding the orders to several sales outlets that offer the best prices.

Large crypto transactions can also result in a counter -reaction from other dealers. At the beginning of this year, cryptocurrency observers began talking about an anonymous investor who in August last year from early purchases from Shiba-Inu-token a little more than a year later a stock of 5.7 billion

The dealer soon attracted attention after he was 2.3 billion