These are the 11 richest crypto millionaires in the world

The list includes several founders of some of the most common crypto coins nowadays and some of the CEOs of the companies involved in the different businesses that are emerging around the new invention that everybody is talking about.

Today it is estimated that there are around 1,500 different cryptocurrencies available over the internet, which, globally, have over $550 billion dollars of market cap.

That figure, however, is highly volatile. During the recent weeks, for example, bitcoin has lost more than 40% of its value.

Despite the growing concerns about a potential bubble around most of the digital currencies, it seems clear that blockchain, the technology behind cryptocurrencies, has come to stay and transform all kinds of industries.

Find below the list of the 11 richest crypto millionaires in the world, each of them with his estimated net-worth thanks to bitcoin, ethereum, ripple, litecoin and so on.

Chris Larsen, co-founder of Ripple: $7.5- $8 billion

Larsen is, according to Forbes, the richest man in the world of cryptocurrencies. The magazine estimates that it has had a fortune close to 20 billion dollar in crypto coins in early 2018, a figure that, however, has dropped at least by 65% due to the collapse of the market.

Larsen is a well-known Silicon Valley entrepreneur. In 2012, he co-founds Ripple Labs, the company that has developed the ripple (XRP), a cryptocurrency that rose about 36,000% last year. Moreover, Ripple is usually signalled as an alternative to bitcoin because of its connections with some of the major banks in the world as UBS and Banco Santander.

Joseph Lubin, co-founder of Ethereum: $1- $5 billion

Lubin is the co-founder of Ethereum, a decentralized or distributed open software platform that enables the creation of smart peer-to-peer contracts based on the blockchain. Its crypto coin, the ether, has become another of the main alternatives to bitcoin and one of the most interesting for those who seek to earn money mining cryptocurrencies.

This Canadian entrepreneur is also the founder ofConsenSys, a company focused on the development of decentralized software and apps based on blockchain – the company has already more than 470 employees.

Changing' CZ' Zhao, CEO of Binance: $1.1 - $2 billion

Seven months ago, Binance didn't even exist. Today, and according to Zhao in an interview made by Forbes, this currency exchange platform handles more than 1.4 billion transactions per second with more than six million users registered.

Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, co-founders of Winklevoss Capital: $900 million - $1.1 billion (each)

The Winklevoss twins became in mid-December the first bitcoin’s billionaires thanks to a large series of investments around the cryptocurrency, including the creation of a ticker for the bitcoin’s price and the Gemini exchange platform.

Their story inspired the plot of David Fincher’s film The Social Network. These two youngsters, who became finalists at the Summer Olympics of Beijing 2008, accused Zuckerberg of stealing their idea of Facebook from a company called ConnectU.

Matthew Mellon, private investor: $900 million - $1 billion

Mellon's story has taken up dozens of pages in the US media as the ex-Finance Director of the New York Republican State Committee and, also, because of his drug addiction issues.

Now, however, he lives a second golden age as a crypto investor. "We need to live in a more transparent, free democracy", said Mellon a few years ago. For him, bitcoin could be that solution.

His vision seems to have changed during the last years as he has withdrawn from some of his first investments in crypto and everything he had in bitcoins just to change and invest in Ripple.

Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase: $900 - $1 billion

Armstrong is the co-founder and current CEO of Coinbase, one of the largest companies in the virtual coins ecosystem. Coinbase is a US digital currency exchange that operates since 2012. The platform allows everybody to buy and sell bitcoin, ether and litecoin by credit card, debit card and bank transfer.

According to specialized media, Coinbase would have earned $1 billion in revenue during the last year thanks to the boom of operations related to cryptocurrencies.

Matthew Roszak, co-founder of BloQ: $900 - $1 billion

Roszak was one of the first investors in initial coin offerings (ICOs) whit crypto. Some examples are Mastercoin, Factor and Maidsaif.

Moreover, he is the co-founder and president of BloQ, a software company that offers business solutions based on blockchain; and founding partner of Tally Capital, a private equity firm also focused on the technology behind cryptocurrencies.

Anthony Di Iorio, co-founder of Ethereum: $750 million - $1 billion

With 43 years old, many people consider Di Iorio a visionary. He was another of Ethereum's founding fathers and he currently holds the position of CEO in two companies: Jaxx, a digital wallet that allows storing of several cryptos in the same place; and KryptoKit, which has developed a web extension which makes possible to pay through bitcoin on any web page in a simple way.

"We are moving from the information age to the era of value”, has said Di Iorio with a speech focused on blockchain as the main driver of transformation for all kinds of industries.

Brock Pierce, President of Bitcoin Foundation: $700 million - $1 billion

The personal history of Pierce could be almost the perfect Hollywood’s plot. Actually, his face may be familiar to more than one reader because, when he was just a kid, he appeared in several Hollywood movies such as First Kid and The Mighty Ducks and various TV ads.

As a teenager, he became a pioneer entrepreneur. He helped to create the Digital Entertainment Network in 1998, a system designed to produce and distribute original videos through the internet to a very specific niche of the population – an idea quite close to what was later Youtube. Pierce did it well and obtained the financial support from giants like Microsoft and Dell during the dot-com bubble.

In the 2000s, he created a giant of the gaming universe: Internet Gaming Entertainment (IGE), a sort of black market where gamers could buy resources for video games like World of Warcraft generated by the company's own employees.

During the last years, Pierce has become one of the most authoritative voices in the crypto money universe. In 2014 he was appointed Bitcoin Foundation's president and is also a founding partner of one of the most active venture capital firms in the industry, Blockchain Capital.

Michael Novogratz, CEO of Galaxy Digital: $700 million - $1 billion

Novogratz is a well-known American investor and hedge fund manager. He was a Goldman Sachs partner and CIO of Fortress Investment Group. According to Forbes, he began investing in crypto coins in 2013 and he has amassed most of his fortune with Ethereum.

Throughout all these years Novogratz has had no qualms in describing the situation of bitcoin as a bubble while showing his determination to squeeze as much as possible the profits earned with the cryptos.