How much money did crypto billionaires lose in 2022? CZ lost over 80 billion, while the founder of DCG was wiped out.

2022 has been a challenging year. The lifting of the pandemic restrictions did not bring the expected dividends, but instead, the war between Ukraine and Russia triggered an energy and supply chain crisis. Global central banks aggressively raised interest rates to combat inflation, and the cost of corporate borrowing has been soaring, leaving investors facing a dual stock and bond market downturn with hedging strategies failing. In this difficult situation, the cold winter of cryptocurrency has outperformed traditional finance. From the LUNA incident to FTX's bankruptcy, the total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies has plummeted from $2.2 trillion at the beginning of the year to $0.8 trillion today, affecting both ordinary people and billionaires alike.

Multiple Billionaires See Their Fortunes Wiped Out

Forbes has revealed the losses of crypto billionaires in 2022. Since March, the 17 wealthiest cryptocurrency investors and founders have collectively lost approximately $116 billion in personal wealth. In the past nine months, fifteen of them lost more than half of their fortunes, with ten falling out of the billionaire status. FTX co-founders SBF and Gary Wang saw their wealth wiped out due to FTX's bankruptcy.

Surprisingly, DCG founder Barry Silbert also saw his assets reduced to zero due to excessive external liabilities. Forbes believes that the value of his outstanding debts exceeds the fair market value of his assets in the current market environment, raising questions about whether the subsequent snowball effect has yet to cease.

Bloomberg's Billionaire Loss Rankings

According to the latest Bloomberg Billionaires Index, the most severely affected billionaires from the beginning of the year are Tesla's Elon Musk, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Binance's Changpeng Zhao, and Meta's Mark Zuckerberg. Musk's ongoing Twitter controversies have eroded investor confidence in Tesla, causing his net worth to shrink by $132 billion and losing his position as the world's richest person. However, in terms of the percentage of wealth lost, Zhao Changpeng's -86.8% is perhaps unmatched by the aforementioned individuals.