Ethereum co-creator Vitalik Buterin has been associated with a recent scam involving Ethereum (ETH). The scam involved pre-mining of ETH tokens. According to the accusations, Vitalik and Joe Lubin stole 75 percent of Ether supply. These allegations were made by none other than the self-proclaimed expert of credit bubbles and their bust Prof. Nouriel Roubini.
Buterin was quick to respond to Roubini’s controversial tweet. However, Lubin is yet to respond. Buterin, one of the big names in the crypto industry, still claims he is far from being a billionaire. He posted a link to his crypto wallet, which holds approximately 360,000 ETH. When converted to USD, this amount is equal to about $72 million. Buterin said this amount also comprises charity donations and gifts. Though the Ethereum founder admitted to owning other cryptocurrency wallets, he said they’ve got nothing significant inside.
Crypto billionaires
While the tweet accusing Buterin and Lubin of stealing crypto coins to become billionaires is ridiculous, it made a lot of crypto enthusiasts to become interested in crypto billionaires. A new report claims the majority of crypto billionaires hail from China. Most of them are managing some of the world’s largest blockchain startups. Hurun, a China-based firm which tracks high net worth individuals, released a list of the country’s richest billionaires.
The list contains 13 individuals and 50 percent of them are involved with activities related to crypto mining. The report claims the net worth of Zhan Ketuan, co-creator and chairperson of Bitmain, stands at $4.25 billion. The other Bitmain co-founder Wu Jihan also made it to the list. Jihan’s net worth is estimated at $2.3 billion.
While there is no doubt all these crypto investors are extremely rich, Jack Ma of Alibaba tops the list with an estimated net worth of $39 billion. Other crypto billionaires include Binance founder Zhao Changpeng, OKCoin’s creator Star XU and Li Lin of Huobi.