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Sam Bankman-Fried

3X as many crypto figures make it onto Forbes 2021 billionaires list as last year

Forbes released their annual billionaires list on April 6, with Amazon overlord Jeff Bezos and his $177 billion topping the list for a fourth consecutive year.

The “digital gold rush” has seen nine new crypto billionaires join the Forbes list, pushing the total up to 12 (depending on whether you count the Winklevoss twins as one or two entries.) That’s up from just four in last year’s Forbes World’s Billionaires list

Sam Bankman-Fried – Newcomer

Sam Bankman-Fried is the wealthiest crypto-billionaire, with a net worth of $8.7 billion. Bankman-Fried founded trading firm Alameda Research and popular derivatives exchange FTX. The 29-year old has made waves in the crypto space, with FTX recently winning the naming rights to Miami Heat’s home stadium for 19 years. Cointelegraph recently ranked Bankman-Fried as the third most influential figure in crypto for 2020.

The Winklevoss Twins – Newcomers

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss have a net worth of $3 billion each and started investing in Bitcoin in 2012. The brothers famously sued Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg for IP theft in 2004 and won a $65 million settlement which they used to invest in Bitcoin. They started the crypto exchange Gemini in 2014, and they purchased Nifty Gateway in November 2019.

Chris Larsen – Returnee

Larsen, the co-founder of Ripple Labs saw his net worth grow from $2.6 billion to $3.4 billion over the past year.

Larson and Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse have been fighting an ongoing dispute with the SEC in relation to XRP and unregistered securities offerings. However, the SEC’s lawsuit against Ripple hasn’t appeared to affect its token too badly, with XRP increasing by 387% in the last 12 months.

Jed McCaleb – Newcomer

McCaleb is another co-founder of Ripple, and reportedly holds 3.4 billion XRP and 1 billion Stellar Lumens — the cryptocurrency he founded after leaving Ripple — with his holdings adding up to a net worth of $2 billion. Cointelegraph reported that McCaleb sold off $400 million worth of his XRP holdings in 2020 alone.

Michael Saylor – Newcomer

Saylor is the CEO of listed company MicroStrategy and co-founded the software giant in 1989, and now has a net worth of $2.3 billion. Saylor has become the leading advocate for corporations holding Bitcoin on balance sheets. Since its first purchase of Bitcoin in August 2020, Microstrategy has invested $2.226 billion, taking its tally up to 91,579 Bitcoins at an average cost of $24,311 per Bitcoin.

Brain Armstrong – Returnee

Armstrong is the CEO and co-founder of Coinbase and his net worth has gone from $1 billion to $6.5 billion within 12 months. Coinbase also had a successful year, generating $1 billion in revenue, and it’s set for a direct listing in a week. That will value Armstrong’s shares somewhere north of $14B, meaning he may well top the crypto billionaires’ list next year.

Fred Ersham – Newcomer

Ersham co-founded Coinbase with Brian Armstrong in 2012 and left the firm in 2017. He is now a board member of the company, and his 6% stake has an estimated worth of $1.9 billion.

Changpeng Zhao

Zhao is the founder of the largest crypto exchange Binance and owns an estimated 30% stake in the company. Zhao’s net worth is $1.9 billion, and the digital gold rush has been good to the Binance founder, with Binance Coin becoming the second-largest altcoin by market cap. Zhao revealed earlier this week that he holds close to 100% of his portfolio in crypto.

Matthew Roszak – Newcomer

Roszak is the Chairman and co-founder of blockchain technology firm Bloq and is a leading crypto and blockchain investor. Roszak is also a founding member of Tally Capital a crypto-focused private investment firm and has a net worth of $1.5 billion.

Tim Draper – Newcomer

Draper is a crypto evangelist with a net worth of $1.5 billion. He bought $18.7 million worth of Bitcoin in 2014 after it was confiscated from the Silk Road black market. Draper was also one of the primary investors in the Tezos project and co-founded Draper Fisher Jurvetson, a leading investment firm in early-stage tech startups.

Barry Silbert – Newcomer

Silbert founded the crypto conglomerate Digital Currency Group in 2015 and has a net worth of $1.6 billion. The DCG owns asset management firm Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, which currently has $46 billion worth of assets under management.

3X as many crypto figures make it onto Forbes 2021 billionaires list as last year

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Coinbase’s first quarter revenue hits record $1.8B ahead of its Nasdaq listing

Coinbase has announced impressive first quarter results one week before the exchange’s direct listing on the Nasdaq, estimating that trading volume is up 276% and quarterly revenue has hit $1.8 billion.

The bountiful revenue, revealed in the company’s Q1 earnings call, dwarf its $190 million revenue from the same time last year with the company attributing a portion of this explosive growth to Bitcoin’s bull market.

The U.S exchange estimated net income between $730 million and $800 million and an EBIDTA of approximately $1.1 billion.

The bull market has also seen monthly active users grow to more than six million users, up from 1.3 million in the first quarter, with crypto assets on the platform rising 1200% year-on-year from $17 billion to $223 billion.

The U.S.-based exchange’s CEO Alesia Haas said:

“We have seen all time high crypto prices drive elevated levels of user activity and trading volume on our platform.”

Boasting 56 million verified users, Haas suggested that active monthly users could rise to seven million at most this year, although he warned this could drop to four million if a bear market hits this year.

The company is spending big to acquire new customers. Following next week’s listing, Coinbase intends to increase its sales and marketing expenditure to between 12% and 15% of this year’s net revenue in an effort to drive “meaningful growth in 2021.”

“Looking to full year 2021, in order to scale our operations and to continue to drive product innovation, we expect our technology and development expenses and our general and administrative expenses to be between $1.3 billion to $1.6 billion, excluding stock-based compensation, in 2021.”

The report results are preliminary and unaudited, however, the exchange wanted to release a detailed report prior to the Nasdaq listing set for April 14. The company will register nearly 115 million shares of Class A common stock, under the ticker symbol COIN. As a direct listing, the exchange won’t be selling new stock and can only register existing stock, allowing existing stakeholders to sell their shares to new investors.

Coinbase has received multiple valuations ranging from $68 billion based on private market transactions to more than $120 billion.

Investment research firm New Constructs CEO David Trainer had his doubts about the lofty expectations. “Coinbase’s expected valuation of roughly $100 billion is far too high,” he said in a note to clients Monday.

“It’s hard to make a straight-faced argument that the firm can justify the lofty expectations baked into its valuation given increasing competition in a mature cryptocurrency trading market and the lack of sustainability in its current market share and margins.”

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried took to Twitter to congratulate Coinbase on its impressive quarterly figures and upcoming IPO listing, and compared it to his own, much newer exchange’s figures.

Coinbase\’s first quarter revenue hits record $1.8B ahead of its Nasdaq listing

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FTX Token (FTT) rallies 105% as interest in derivatives trading grows

FTX is a cryptocurrency derivatives exchange backed by Alameda Research, a quantitative trading firm and crypto liquidity provider. 

The exchange launched in April 2019 and offered the usual spot trading, inverse swaps and futures contracts that can be found at other major platforms. By early 2020, the exchange launched its daily and weekly binary BTC options markets.

FTT/USDT daily chart. Source: TradingView

FTT is the exchange’s native token and it’s issued on the Ethereum blockchain. FTT stakers are granted a trading fee discount based on a tiered system and other benefits include bonus votes in their polls and increased airdrop rewards.

The first airdrop took place in August 2020 when 500 million Serum (SRM) tokens were distributed to FTT holders. To differentiate itself from competitors, the users’ collateral is shared in one universal stablecoin wallet.

This means traders can reduce their margin requirements drastically. Numerous leveraged tokens mimicking leveraged ETF stocks have also been listed, including 3x Long Bitcoin and 3x Short Litecoin.

Leveraged tokens are derived from the exchange’s perpetual swap contracts and operate as tradeable ERC-20 tokens that can be withdrawn and traded. These innovative products have made the FTX a popular exchange among investors, as reflected by its rising futures contracts open interest.

Global markets aggregate open interest. Source: coinalyze.net

As shown above, the figure grew by 340% over the past six months, surpassing the $2 billion mark to vastly outperform more established exchanges.

In November 2020, the exchange ventured into tokenized equity trading, albeit not available for its U.S. citizens. Its partner CM-Equity custody the tokens redeemable for the underlying stocks. Interestingly, it’s allowed its users to buy less than one share, which is particularly useful for high-priced stocks like Amazon ($AMZN) and Google ($GOOG).

In December, FTX continued to innovate by launching pre-IPO futures contracts for AirBNB and Coinbase. These contracts allow traders to speculate on what price those companies will list on a stock exchange. The exchange also offers trading for thematic products, including a basket of cannabis-related listed stocks.

By creating multiple markets with enough liquidity provided by its market-making structure, the exchange was able to gather attention from a new client base. More recently, a Wall Street Bets index was launched, including GameStop ($GME), Dogecoin (DOGE), and iShares Silver Trust ($SLV).

Backed by these popular offerings, FTX Token (FTT) price has doubled since the beginning of 2021.

FTX Token (FTT) token price at Binance. Source: TradingView

To further incentivize holding the token, FTX repurchases and burns 33% of all fees generated from the exchange and 10% of its insurance fund net additions. This process will continue until half of the initial 350 million supply are destroyed.

While this may appear like a deflationary schedule, there are 31.25 million tokens allocated to the team, representing at least 17.8% of the targeted 175 million circulating supply. Regardless, considering the current $11.70 token price, its market capitalization after the burn process is completed surpasses $2 billion.

This number represents a 45% discount to Binance Coin’s (BNB) projected 2031 market capitalization, according to data from Messari. This is also roughly in line with the exchanges’ aggregate open interest $4.26 billion to $2.0 billion difference .

Interestingly, Binance has an undisclosed investment in FTX, and this may be creating fewer incentives for direct competition.

Currently, it seems that the market is pricing both tokens at the same valuation. Binance appears to be expanding its ecosystem via its Binance Smart Chain decentralized exchange, their blockchain projects incubator and a successful token launchpad platform.

FTX, on the other hand, is focused on being the market-leader of derivatives products innovation.

Currently all of these projects are producing value for token holders and with the burn schedule and rising popularity among derivatives exchanges it’s possible that FTT will continue to see further price appreciation.

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision.

FTX Token (FTT) rallies 105% as interest in derivatives trading grows

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