- Changpeng Zhao has been named as the man who has lost the most money in history after this year’s crypto market crash erased his wealth by $87 billion.
- CZ has overtaken Masayoshi Son, the SoftBank founder who once lost $77 billion when the companies he had invested in during the dot com bubble crashed.
Changpeng Zhao has many titles. He is the richest man in crypto, he’s the founder of the world’s largest crypto exchange, and he’s one of the industry’s biggest voices. But how about the world’s biggest loser? This is one that not many people associate with the billionaire, but as one report reveals, this is his latest (and probably most unwanted) title.
CZ, as he’s popularly known, has been the richest man in crypto for quite some time. The vast majority of his wealth is tied to his stake in Binance, the largest crypto exchange by trading volume. He also owns an unconfirmed amount of Binance Coin tokens as well as other cryptos, being an early entrant into the industry.
As CNF reported, CZ was earlier this year the richest man in finance, both crypto and traditional, overtaking legacy banking gurus who have been in the industry for over four decades.
Read More: CZ tops Forbes crypto billionaires list as OpenSea and Alchemy founders make first appearance
But as the crypto market has collapsed, so has CZ’s wealth. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, he’s now worth $14.9 billion. He has lost $325 million in the past few days and a staggering $80.9 billion year-to-date. His wealth a few days ago had sunk to $11 billion.
This makes CZ the world’s biggest loser ever.
Poor again.https://t.co/88v2U2vjfM
— CZ 🔶 Binance (@cz_binance) May 17, 2022
The unwanted record was previously held by Masayoshi Son, the founder of investment giant SoftBank. Son is an aggressive investor in tech startups and some have turned out absolutely great, such as a $20 million investment in Alibaba which turned to $60 billion when the Chinese firm IPO’d. But others such as WeWork have been multi-billion dollar disasters.
During the dot come era, Son invested hundreds of millions in tech startups and as they all went up, his wealth shot up to $78 billion. And then the bubble burst and his wealth came all the way down to $1.1 billion. This was a $76.9 billion loss, giving him the title of the world’s biggest loser. He has held that title for about two decades, up until CZ dethroned him.
CZ will most likely be able to bounce back to former glory once crypto markets pick back up. But maybe this time he will have diversified his portfolio to avoid such a staggering crash, something he revealed yesterday he doesn’t do.