While China now has more billionaires than the U.s. and Republic of india combined, Binance CEO might have more than money than whatsoever crypto person, a new report says.

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao has overtaken a co-founder of cryptocurrency mining behemothic Bitmain in the latest Hurun Global Rich List, an almanac ranking of the globe's biggest billionaires published Chinese media Hurun Study.

Issued on February. 26, the new Hurun Report's list of 2,816 global billionaires includes half-dozen individuals who made their fortune from blockchain and crypto manufacture.

Bitmain's ousted co-founder lost over i billion dollars in a year

Similarly to previous compilations by the Hurun Enquiry Institute, the Hurun Global Rich List 2022 includes well-known names in the industry such as Binance's CZ, OKCoin's founder Xu Mingxing and Chris Larsen, a co-founder and old CEO of Ripple.

However, the latest Hurun blockchain billionaires list has at least one significant change — Bitmain's ousted co-founder Micree Ketuan Zhan, who is known as the long-term leader in the listing, has fallen backside Binance CEO.

In one of previous annual lists of the world's biggest billionaires, the Hurun Global Rich Listing 2022, Zhan was ranked the top billionaire amidst five crypto and blockchain billionaires, with an estimated wealth of $2.7 billion. In the latest Hurun list, Zhan has slipped to the 2d rank, with net worth continuing at $1.6 billion.

At the same time, Binance CEO'due south rank has notably surged from $one.3 billion in 2022 to $2.6 billion in 2022, according to the publicly available lists.

The six wealthiest blockchain and crypto people in the latest Hurun listing are:

  1. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao ($2.6 billion).
  2. Bitmain'due south ousted co-founder Micree Zhan Ketuan ($1.6 billion).
  3. OKCoin's founder Xu Mingxing ($1.4 billion).
  4. Ripple's Chris Larsen ($ane.3 billion).
  5. Huobi's founder Leon Li ($1.1 billion).
  6. Brian Armstrong, co-founder and CEO of major Usa crypto substitution Coinbase ($one billion).

Zhan was removed from Bitmain in late 2022

The Bitmain's co-founder dip in the Hurun billionaire rankings comes after Zhan was removed every bit a legal representative of the visitor in November 2022. Equally reported by Cointelegraph, Zhan was dismissed by Bitmain's current CEO Jihan Wu. In January 2022, Zhan publicly opposed alleged layoffs at Bitmain, which was reportedly planning to cut its workforce by 50% in relation to the upcoming Bitcoin (BTC) halving in May 2022. Zhan also reportedly initiated court proceedings against Bitmain shareholders to restore his voting control of the business firm.

Zhan's removal from Bitmain preceded reports on Bitmain seeing its hashrate market share drop from 75% to 66% in December 2022.

Meanwhile, Binance's CZ has been getting more than and more traction in the crypto community to become the top ranked crypto person in the Cointelegraph'south get-go-ever Tiptop 100 list. At the same fourth dimension, CZ might have been facing some reputational issues recently due to unscheduled maintenance of Binance on February. 19, which proved to be a major trouble on the platform.