The Bloomberg Billionaires Index has significantly reduced its estimate of the profits earned by the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, citing a 38% decrease in trading volumes this year.
This led to a staggering $11.9 billion drop in the net worth of Binance’s founder, Changpeng Zhao, also known as CZ, who is now worth $17.2 billion.
CZ was involved in the events that led to Sam Bankman-Fried’s legal case. In November, CZ announced that he was selling off the digital token FTT associated with the FTX exchange.
Some FTX customers rushed to withdraw their funds, causing the exchange to struggle to keep up with the increased demand. Less than a week later, FTX had to declare bankruptcy.
This chain of events caused Sam Bankman-Fried’s personal wealth to plummet to zero, despite it peaking at $26 billion in March of the previous year.
The Binance cryptocurrency exchange’s revenue is calculated using data from Coingecko and Coinpaprika, which track both spot and derivatives trading.