Crypto CEO among richest billionaires

A cryptocurrency CEO has become one of the richest people on Earth, reports CNN.

Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, who runs the crypto exchange Binance, has joined the ranks of the world’s top billionaires, with an estimated net worth of at least $96 billion, according to new calculations from the Bloomberg Billionaires Index published Monday.

Zhao’s projected fortune now rivals that of Oracle (ORCL) founder Larry Ellison and surpasses that of Mukesh Ambani, the Indian tycoon whose fortune has also soared over the last two years.

The ascent of the Chinese-Canadian entrepreneur is emblematic of the rapid creation of wealth in the fast-moving world of digital currencies.

Last year, other crypto founders also enjoyed huge gains as the value of virtual coins rallied, with ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin and Coinbase founder Brian Armstrong both becoming billionaires.

Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of FTX, another cryptocurrency exchange that is backed by Binance, pointed Tuesday to an “unprecedented amount of wealth creation that has occurred in the industry over the last few years.”

“I think that there’s a lot of people who are trying to figure out what to do with [that],” Friedman, who himself is a young billionaire, said during a virtual onstage discussion at the Asian Financial Forum in Hong Kong.

In a post on Twitter Monday, Zhao also appeared to acknowledge the distinction. “Don’t worry about rankings. Focus on how many people you can help.”

Zhao followed up in another tweet Tuesday, saying: “Unpopular opinion: instead of wealth rankings, there should be a ranking of charity and philanthropy efforts.”