The creators of the famous Forbes rich list made their first attempt to identify the wealthiest people in the virtual currency industry, but then, virtual currency prices dropped, inadvertently serving as a reminder of the fleeting nature of that wealth. The list identifies about 10 virtual currency billionaires, but most of them were not billionaires by the time the feature went online on Wednesday morning. On Monday alone, the prices of many virtual currencies plunged over 20 percent, according to The New York Times. They did stabilize Tuesday. Chris Larsen, a founder of the Ripple virtual currency, is at the top of the list. He was briefly estimated to be wealthier than Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg last month when Ripple’s price peaked. He was worth nearly $60 billion. But since then, the price of Ripple’s digital token has fallen more than 80 percent and Forbes put Larsen’s wealth at around $8 billion. Up next is Joseph Lubin, an early investor in the Ethereum virtual currency network. Then Changpeng Zhao, founder of the virtual currency exchange Binance followed by brothers Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, who are longtime Bitcoin investors but mostly famous because of their legal battles with Zuckerberg over Facebook. Up next is Matthew Mellon, the banking heir who is now a major holder of XRP.
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