Crypto’s biggest losers: 5 billionaires who lost the most in 2022 – Sam Bankman-Fried’s net worth took a US$23 billion hit, but Brian Armstrong and Binance’s Changpeng Zhao also have big money woes

Dec 1 , 2022

Changpeng Zhao, Sam Bankman-Fried and Brian Armstrong have all lost billions in the so-called Crypto Winter. Photos: @changpengzhao/Instagram, Bloomberg, Reuters

The collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried and Gary Wang’s FTX triggered a crash in the crypto market that has wiped billions from the net worths of the industry’s richest individuals

From Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, better known as CZ, to Ripple’s Chris Larsen and Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong – almost none of crypto’s biggest names escaped unscathed

It’s been a tough year financially for crypto billionaires after the market suffered a trillion-dollar crypto crash. The wipeout has resulted in thousands of lawsuits as investors attempt to recoup their lost billions. The top crypto leaders in the space have lost a combined US$112.7 billion this year alone.

But which of cryptocurrency’s biggest names has lost the most?

1. Changpeng Zhao – US$82 billion

Highly successful China-born Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao has lost the most in the recent cryptocurrency market crash. Photo: Reuters

He is known as the Chinese crypto king, but 2022 was not Changpeng Zhao’s year. According to Crypto Presales, he lost an estimated US$82 billion. The Binance CEO lost the money as crypto prices cooled. But Zhao is still the richest figure in the crypto world, with a current net worth of US$14.6 billion. It’s a massive decline from his estimated net worth of US$96.5 billion just last year.

Known as CZ to his friends, Zhao was born in Jiangsu in China but moved to Canada with his parents when he was 12. He started Binance in Singapore and had to relocate the company’s headquarters several times due to regulators. Eventually Binance became a headquarter-less company.

2. Sam Bankman-Fried – US$23 billion

FTX’s former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried: the company has now filed for bankruptcy and is under investigation. Photo: @sam_bankman_fried_5/Instagram

The collapse of crypto exchange FTX saw its founder and frontman Sam Bankman-Fried booted from the Forbes billionaires club. Before the crash, the FTX CEO was worth an estimated US$26 billion. His stakes in FTX and crypto trading house Alameda were his most valuable assets. He lost a staggering US$23 billion in just three weeks as the exchange struggled with liquidity, and the philanthropist is now under investigation in the US and other countries for possible securities violations, Forbes Advisor reports.

3. Gary Wang – US$1.7 billion

Gary Wang, co-founder of FTX, has been much more private than his flamboyant co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried. Photo: Handout

As the other co-founder of FTX, Gary Wang lost around US$1.7 billion after the collapse of the crypto exchange. He was the youngest person to appear on the Forbes top 400 rich list in 2022. His net worth now stands at around US$4.2 billion, per the publication.