The value of cryptocurrency has soared in 2017 above 500 billion euros, raising with them their share of "crypto millionaires" in Bitcoin and recently in Ripple.
A few lucky ones have even managed to reach the select club of billionaires, and not only thanks to the cryptocurrency best evaluated, Bitcoin, whose total value is 197 billion euros.
They include two billionaires who are now among the richest Americans in the country: the former, and the current CEO of Ripple, a San Francisco-based company that uses blockchain technology for international financial transactions. It issues a token called the Ripple, or the XRP, which this first January had a total market value of 73.8 billion euros, each XRP being traded for 1.99 € according to Coinmarketcap. The week before, the Ripple had surpassed the Ethereum to become the second largest cryptocurrency asset on the market.
The company's co-founder and former CEO, Chris Larsen, who resigned in November 2016 and is now the executive chairman, owns 5.19 billion XRP in his personal portfolio, and 17 percent of the company's shares. , according to sources within Ripple. His total fortune, according to the ratings of 1 January, amounts to 31 billion euros.
That would give him 15th place in the Forbes 2017 ranking of the 400 largest US fortunes, tied with Steve Ballmer, the former CEO of Microsoft and current owner of the Los Angeles Clippers basketball club. It would be slightly above Abigail Johnson, the CEO of Fidelity, herself a cryptocurrency adept, also surpassing trader Ray Dalio and investor Carl Icahn, who both made the headlines by calling Bitcoin stock market bubble.
The current CEO of Ripple, Brad Garlinghouse, owns 6.3% of the shares of the company, according to an internal source, as well as XRP tokens. Its net worth is estimated at at least 7.9 billion euros. He would arrive at the 54th place in the ranking, if we include Mr. Larsen, only two places under Charles Swab.
The XRP jumped in 2017 from € 0.005 on 1 January 2017 to € 1.9 on 31 December, an increase of 38 000%.
Someone else got rich with the XRP: it's Jed McCaleb, co-founder of Ripple. He left the company in 2003 and then reached an agreement with her about the XRP in his possession. McCaleb said he donated XRP 2 billion to a fund he chose. The remaining $ 5.3 billion XRP (in February 2016) is placed in a custody account at Ripple and distributed monthly. Since this agreement was concluded, it can not sell more than 1% of the average daily volume per exchange, which is now equivalent to only 1% to 2% of the trading volume of all XRP. If Mr. McCaleb had access to all XRP at once, he would be a billionaire.
In addition, he founded Mt. Gox in 2010, and declares that he no longer has any Bitcoin because he sold them to found Ripple. Since he left, he founded Stellar, but his billion Lumens, valued at € 0.40 per unit, is not enough to make him a billionaire, and will not succeed for a few years.
Ripple says it already has more than one hundred customers, including American Express and Santander, who are collaborating to make payments between the United States and Britain with Ripple's technology.
As it is issued by a company, the XRP is less decentralized than many other cryptocurrencies. For example, Ripple owns 61.3 billion XRP, of which 55 billion is held in escrow. Only 38.7 billion XRP has been distributed so far.
Bitcoin, on the other hand, is much less focused, although more Bitcoin owners have more tokens. Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious person at the origin of Bitcoin, would own the most, about 980 000. This represents only 5.8% of Bitcoin in circulation.
One thing is certain: the large variations in the value of the Ripple, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies mean that we have no guarantee that all these billionaires will always be so when Forbes publishes its next ranking in March ...
