Before we start, please understand that getting accurate tallies of an individual's net worth can be a bit challenging in crypto. That's because market volatility can lead to broad price swings, drastically altering one's net worth. Furthermore, people heavily vested in crypto don't typically like to announce to the world how much they're holding.
Because of these factors, an individual's net worth can be challenging to confirm. However, estimates are possible. With the disclaimers out of the way, let's look at some of the top crypto success stories.
Crypto Millionaire Stories - Everyday People
Javed Khan - Trader
Khan's success with Bitcoin began in 2018, with the price hovering in the $3,000 range. He primarily used Bitcoin because it was easier than going to the bank. But he noticed something. The price increased whenever he kept Bitcoin in his wallet. So, rather than spending it, he decided to buy more of it.
Each time Bitcoin's price dropped, he would pile more money into it. However, he never overextended himself. In 2020, Khan cashed in his Bitcoin and bought a Bentley with the profits.
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Kane Ellis - Entrepreneur
Before discovering Bitcoin, Mr. Ellis had some successful investments, but nothing like afterward. He was most profitable once when he began Bitcoin mining in 2010.
Ellis is also famous for being the guy who bought a hamburger with Bitcoin. That hamburger cost him somewhere in the six figures with today's prices. The next time he spent some of his Bitcoin holdings, it was on a $200,000 Maserati.
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Daniel Crocker - Business Owner
When Daniel Crocker was working at an IT company in 2012, he liked to spend his lunch hour chatting up colleagues about side hustles and different ways to make money.
When he learned about Bitcoin, he decided to buy small amounts. He opted for the "buy and hold" strategy for eight years. Last year he finally sold some Bitcoin. It was enough to cover half the deposit on his new house.
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Erik Finman and Glauber Contessoto
Erik Finman made a million dollars with a mere $1,000 investment in Bitcoin when he was 12 years old. Glauber Contessoto took all his savings and put it in Dogecoin just before it spiked 400% in one week. That trade made him an instant millionaire.
Jeremy Gardner - Entrepreneur
Mr. Gardner got into Bitcoin in 2013 when he realized how easy it was to send money around the world. That compelled him to buy more Bitcoin and dig deeper into the technology.
He later founded The BlockChain Education network, which educates newbies about blockchain technology. He also launched Augur, a decentralized prediction market. His other claim to fame is that he shared space inside the infamous "Crypto Castle," home to various other multimillionaires in San Francisco. Once he succeeded in crypto, Gardner said he felt vindicated after many people called his investments stupid.
More Crypto Millionaire Stories - Cooper Turley
Our crypto millionaires stories continue with Cooper Turley. He started investing in Bitcoin when it was trading for $2,000, and Ethereum was going for a few hundred dollars. Turley invested in both while still in college, working side hustles. He never disclosed the exact amount but said he threw a few hundred dollars in whenever he had extra.
After graduating college in 2018, Turley got more serious about crypto. Even though his net worth had recently come crashing down in 2017, he hung in there.
2018 was a turning point. That's when Turley shifted from merely being a speculator to digging deeper into Ethereum's capabilities. Turley taught himself about DeFi dApps and NFTs.
He knew that playing with DeFi was risky with the hacks, rug pulls, and impermanent loss woes. But he also learned that by employing yield farming strategies, he could pull down exorbitant profits. During DeFi summer in 2020, Turley had the most profitable months of his crypto investing career.
At only 25 years old, Turley has contributed to 50+ crypto projects. Last year, he made Fortune Magazine's "NFTy 50" list of the top influencers in the NFT space. His early investments are reportedly worth somewhere in the seven-figure range earning him a coveted spot on the list of crypto millionaire stories.
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Top Billionaire Crypto Founders, Developers, and Investors (1-5)
Now that we've looked at some everyday people who've made millions let's look at the high-ranking founders and developers who've surpassed the list of crypto millionaire stories.
1. Satoshi Nakamoto - $42 billion
Satoshi Nakamoto's identity remains unknown. But he (or they) gets the credit for creating Bitcoin. Nakamoto still controls one million Bitcoin. So, even with today's depressed prices, that translates to $42 billion, putting the Bitcoin founder at the top of the list of crypto success stories.
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2. Sam Bankman-Fried - $26.5 billion
Bankman-Fried launched FTX in 2019, and it became a top exchange for buying and selling crypto derivatives. Furthermore, in July 2021, FTX raised $900 million from SoftBank and Coinbase Ventures at an $18 billion valuation. Consequently, the extra capital helped make Bankman-Fried one of the wealthiest people under 30 years old in history.
3. Brian Armstrong - $14 billion
Mr. Armstrong is the CEO and founder of Coinbase, the largest crypto exchange in the United States. Coinbase went public in April 2021, briefly hitting a market cap of $100 billion. Armstrong's stake is approximately 20%. So, that makes his estimated net worth around $14 billion.
4. Chris Larsen - $6 billion
Chris Larsen is the co-founder and chairman of Ripple (XRP), with an estimated net worth of $6 billion.
5. Joseph Lubin - $5 billion
Joseph Lubin is a Canadian entrepreneur who co-founded Ethereum and is the founder of Consensys. As of 2021, his net worth hit $5 billion.
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Top Billionaire Crypto Founders, Developers, and Investors (6-10)
6. Changpeng Zhao (CZ) - $5 billion
CZ is the founder of Binance, one of the world's largest crypto exchanges with over six million users. His fortune is reportedly $5 billion.
7. Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss - $4 billion
Identical twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss co-founded Gemini in 2014. Notably, it processes approximately $200 million a day in crypto trades.
Their crypto journey started after they won $65 million in a legal settlement with Mark Zuckerberg for stealing their idea for Facebook. Subsequently, they took some of their settlement money and began loading up on Bitcoin. Their stockpile is reportedly about 70,000 Bitcoin, and each has a personal net worth of around $4 billion.
8. Jed McCaleb - $3 billion
McCaleb was an early crypto pioneer. He created Mt. Gox in 2010, the first significant Bitcoin exchange. Moreover, in 2012 he co-founded Ripple, and in 2014 co-founded Stellar. McCaleb's wealth mainly comes from his XRP holdings, estimated at $3 billion.
9. Michael Saylor - $3 billion
Our list of crypto success stories continues with Michael Saylor. He is an entrepreneur and the CEO of MicroStrategy. Above all, in October 2020, he spent $175 million to buy approximately 18,000 Bitcoin and led MicroStrategy into massive Bitcoin purchases spending over $1 billion.
10. Tim Draper - $2 billion
Mr. Draper has made many venture capital (VC) investments in high-profile companies like Tesla and Theranos. He's also made a fortune investing in cryptos. Most importantly, he bought $19 million worth of Bitcoin that authorities confiscated from the Silk Road black market. With that and other assets, his net worth is close to $2 billion.
Top Billionaire Crypto Founders, Developers, and Investors (11-13)
11. Barry Silbert - $2 billion
Barry Silbert is the CEO of Digital Currency Group, a conglomerate of five crypto-based companies. Further, one of these is Grayscale which handles $28 billion worth of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other crypto-assets.
12. Vitalik Buterin - $1.5 billion
Ethereum's co-founder, Vitalik Buterin, reclaimed his "world's youngest crypto billionaire" title when ETH rocketed over $4,500 in November 2021. He got his start with crypto in 2011 by writing for Bitcoin Weekly, earning five Bitcoin per article. At the time, Bitcoin was only going for $3.50. Soon after, he co-founded Bitcoin Magazine and wrote the white paper for his invention, Ethereum, in 2013.
13. Brock Pierce - $1 billion
Brock Pierce is a former child actor turned entrepreneur in the crypto space. In 2013, he co-founded Blockchain Capital and now has a net worth of $1 billion.
Top Millionaire Crypto Founders and Developers (1-4)
1. Valery Vavilov - $750 million
Moving out of the billionaire range, we'll next look at our top crypto millionaire stories beginning with Valery Vavilov. Vavilov grew up in Latvia, becoming a computer whiz in the 1980s. His life changed in 1991 with the Soviet Union's collapse. After seeing the currency vaporize into near worthlessness, he wanted to create decentralized frameworks to help people protect their property from central authority's mismanagement of the economy.
So, he founded Bitfury (a startup that mines Bitcoin) in 2011. Bitfury has since mined 800,000 BTC, and Vavilov's net worth is $750 million.
2. Roger Ver - $500 million
Roger Ver was early in Bitcoin, and such an evangelist people nicknamed him "Bitcoin Jesus." Further, he supported early Bitcoin-related startups that included Bitpay, Ripple, Kraken, and he invested in other cryptocurrencies. "Bitcoin Maxi's" see Ver as an outspoken, controversial figure for his vociferous opinions about Bitcoin Cash. Estimates have Ver owning more than 100,000 Bitcoin with a net worth of over $500 million.
3. Dan Morehead - $500 million
Our list of crypto millionaire stories moves on to Dan Morehead. He is the founder of Pantera Capital, a top hedge fund for cryptos.
4. Mihai Alisie - $500 million
Mr. Alisie is a co-founder of Ethereum. Before crypto, he made a living playing and coaching poker in Romania. After learning about Bitcoin, he contacted Vitalik Buterin in 2011. They started Bitcoin Magazine and then worked together on other projects before Alisie helped set up Ethereum's Swiss base. His net worth is $500 million.
Top Millionaire Crypto Founders and Developers (5-7)
5. Jesse Powell - $500 million
Our list of crypto millionaires includes Jesse Powell. He is a crypto investor and entrepreneur best known for being the co-founder and CEO of the Kraken exchange. Powell is also an avid opponent of government over-regulation of cryptocurrencies. Estimates put his net worth at $500 million.
6. Amir Chetrit - $450 million
Another Ethereum co-founder, Chetrit, met Vitalik Buterin at a Bitcoin business conference in 2013. After abandoning his real estate career, his doubts about the traditional financial system grew. So he got into Bitcoin, and that's how he met future Ethereum co-founder Buterin. His net worth is $450 million.
7. Gavin Wood - $450 million
Gavin Wood rounds our list of crypto millionaire stories. He is another Ethereum co-founder. When Bitcoin evangelist Amir Taaki introduced him to Bitcoin and Vitalik's whitepaper, he was a computer programmer. Afterward, he contacted Vitalik to help write an implementation of Ethereum in C++. In April 2014, Wood published technical specs of Vitalik's white paper and later proposed the Solidity programming language.
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Summary
While it's nice to fantasize about all the millions and billions of dollars people can make trading cryptocurrencies, you can't overlook the risks. People love to hear about billionaire crypto success stories and crypto millionaire stories, and this list testifies to the fact that people can do it. However, there are plenty of other stories that stay under the radar about those who've lost their bankrolls making wild trades.
If you've noticed, the billionaire crypto success stories have something in common. Above all, they're primarily developers and founders of crypto companies, not just speculators. If you want to learn how to become a blockchain developer, you're just one click away. Check out the broad range of crypto courses at Moralis Academy and get started now!
