Chris Larsen, a co-founder of the Ripple virtual currency, at Ripple’s headquarters in San Francisco. He briefly became the world’s fifth richest person on Thursday as the value of Ripple has soared.
SAN FRANCISCO — The virtual currency boom has gotten so heated that it is throwing the list of the world’s richest people into disarray.
Consider what has happened to the founders of an upstart virtual currency known as Ripple, which has seen its value skyrocket in recent weeks.
At one point on Thursday, Chris Larsen, a Ripple co-founder who is also the largest holder of Ripple tokens, was worth more than $59 billion, according to figures from Forbes. That would have briefly vaulted Mr. Larsen ahead of Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg into fifth place on the Forbes list of the world’s richest people.
Other top Ripple holders would have also zoomed up that list as the value of their tokens soared more than 100 percent during the last week — and more than 30,000 percent in the last year. The boom has turned Ripple into the second largest virtual currency, within striking distance of the original behemoth, Bitcoin.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/04/technology/bitcoin-ripple.html