The crypto community was on the high for a few weeks until the crash came and turned the picture upside down.
Brian Armstrong, the creator of Coinbase Global Inc., had a personal worth of $13.7 billion in November and around $8 billion at the end of March. Following a selloff in digital currencies from Bitcoin to Ether, the market value of Coinbase, the largest US cryptocurrency exchange, has plummeted to barely $2.2 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
The business’s stock has dropped 84 percent since its first day of trading in April 2021, finishing Wednesday at $53.72 after the company warned that the second-quarter trading volume and monthly transacting users will be lower than the first of the same. It cast doubt on Coinbase’s ability to endure the dramatic drop in crypto values, prompting Armstrong to defend the company on Twitter. Even in the event of a “black swan,” there is “no risk of bankruptcy,” and consumers’ cash is protected, according to Armstrong, the company’s CEO.
Michael Novogratz is another example. From $8.5 billion in early November, the CEO of crypto merchant bank Galaxy Digital has seen his fortune drop to $2.5 billion. He’s been a supporter of TerraUSD, an algorithmic stablecoin that’s now in danger of collapsing due to the price of Luna, a cryptocurrency in the same ecosystem.
Billionaire crypto fortunes that grew over the last two years are dwindling as a selloff that started with tech stocks spread to digital money. Bitcoin, the most popular cryptocurrency, and Ether, the second most popular cryptocurrency, have both dropped more than 50% from their highs late last year.
While practically all crypto investors have lost a chunk of money, some of the biggest and most apparent losses have been concentrated among exchange founders, who purchase and sell digital currencies.
