Bunkman-Fried was ranked by Forbes as one of the seventeen richest selebrities in the crypto industry who, according to journalists, have lost a combined fortune of around $116 billion since March. Fifteen of them have lost more than half of their capital in the past nine months, while some market participants have lost everything.

How do people lose money on cryptocurrencies?

The table below shows current and former crypto-rich individuals, the projects they are working on, and the cumulative amount lost compared to the beginning of the year. Topping the ranking is Changpen Zhao – he has lost the most in absolute terms. His fortune fell from 65 billion to 4.5 billion, the amount of losses exceeded the 61 billion mark.

Forbes ranking

Zhao’s actions in early November were in a sense the catalyst for FTX’s fall. Recall, due to the leaked financial report of trading company Alameda Research, Chanpen announced the sale of its FTT tokens from Binance reserves. This further aggravated the financial situation of the token, which was used by FTX and Alameda representatives as collateral for their own trades.

Bankman-Fried even wanted to make a deal with the Binance executive, but it ended up with a bankruptcy filing. Zhao himself has already repeatedly stated that the blame for FTX’s collapse should only be placed on the platform’s management. And it sounds logical, since the hole in the company’s budget of several billion dollars appeared just because of the activity of Sam Bankman-Frieda along with other representatives of the FTX and Alameda management.

Coinbase CEO Changpen Zhao

In addition to Sam Bankman-Frieda and Gary Wang, who are co-founders of FTX, Forbes also noted the total loss of fortune by Barry Silbert, the head of the Digital Currency Group conglomerate. One of DCG’s key organisations, represented by its cryptocurrency lending arm Genesis Global Capital, owed lenders more than $1.8 billion. In addition, DCG is full of other debts.

It's worth noting that it's Genesis that most of the major lending platforms are borrowing money from investors. Accordingly, the giant's current problems could also lead to the collapse of other platforms that interact with the company.

Genesis also had a $1.1 billion loan to bankrupt hedge fund Three Arrows Capital. Separately, DCG owes Genesis another $575 million, with that debt due in May. DCG also owes $350 million to investment firm Elridge if Genesis officially goes bankrupt.

Barry Silbert, head of Digital Currency Group

To stay afloat, Silbert will likely have to raise outside capital or liquidate his DCG crypto empire, which has about 200 investments in various cryptocurrencies and tokens associated with it. DCG’s total debt exceeds the fair market value of its assets at the current value of Bitcoin, according to journalists. That’s why Barry Silbert’s stake in DGC is valued at $0 by Forbes. This, of course, does not mean that Barry is out of money – he may have personal assets and investments, information about which is unknown to journalists.

Brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, who played no small part in the creation of Facebook in their time, are also closely associated with Silbert’s organisations. Gemini, the crypto-exchange they founded, worked extensively with Genesis to lend to its customers through the Gemini Earn programme. Genesis now owes about $900 million to the crypto-exchange’s customers.

Winklevoss Brothers

On 16 November, Genesis suspended withdrawals, sparking a wave of outrage among Gemini users. A record amount of funds were withdrawn from the trading platform via the Gemini Dollar exchange’s Stablecoin, which is a key part of Gemini Earn, suggesting that users do not trust the platform. So far, the Winklevoss brothers have mostly remained silent and only occasionally mentioned on Twitter that a creditor committee had begun to be formed.

Brian Armstrong, the head of the largest US cryptocurrency exchange called Coinbase, is another top-ranking figure. His exchange has not yet been seen to be in major debt or fatally linked to any of the previously bankrupt platforms. But investors don’t seem to care. Coinbase shares have fallen 64 per cent since August and more than 95 per cent since its $100 billion IPO in April 2021, wiping out much of Armstrong’s fortune.

Coinbase share price over time

Coinbase co-founder Fred Ersam, on the other hand, did go bust on the FTX collapse. His venture capital firm Paradigm invested $278 million in shares in the exchange, although Ersam himself has not yet made any public statements about the investment. Overall, Forbes reporters have estimated that Ersam’s fortune has fallen from $2.1 billion to $800 million.

Of all the crypto-rich, Ripple co-founder Jed McCaleb was the luckiest. According to Forbes, he only lost $100 million – in absolute terms, less than any other billionaire on the list. He retained most of his fortune during the bearish trend thanks to active sales of around $2.5 billion worth of XRP tokens between December 2020 and July 2022.

Ripple co-founder Jed McCaleb

Recall, the tokens went to McCaleb under the terms of a split ownership agreement he signed with the other Ripple founders back in 2013. XRP is trading about 50 percent lower today than it did earlier this year, when Jed was actively disposing of his token portion of the market.


We believe that this statistic from Forbes clearly shows the incredible level of volatility in the cryptocurrency industry, that is, the dramatic changes in their value. Accordingly, investors should take this into account before getting involved in the niche. In addition, an intermediate conclusion can be drawn that it is better to sell crypto-assets earlier in the growth phase than to procrastinate and wait out a bearish trend with them. Still, in that case, the investor's return will clearly be higher.