The price of BNB reached a new record high of $827 earlier today on the Binance exchange.
The native token of the trading behemoth is now up by roughly 20% over the past two weeks alone.
CZ's ballooning net worth
Following the rapid appreciation of the BNB token, former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao has likely become one of the richest people on Earth.
According to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index, the net worth of the most famous crypto entrepreneur currently stands at $60 billion. However, the figure, which already makes CZ the 27th richest person in the world, does not actually include his personal BNB holdings. The rather vague estimate is mainly based on CZ's 90% stake in the Binance exchange.
Forbes estimated that CZ's personal net worth stood at $61 billion. His stake in Binance was rather conservatively valued at $33 billion. At the same time, Forbes claimed that CZ's personal BNB holdings stood at a whopping 94 million tokens (more than 60% of the entire circulating supply of Binance's native token) last June.
Is CZ actually richer than Bill Gates?
If the aforementioned estimate is accurate, CZ's BNB holdings alone are currently worth roughly $78 billion at market value (without liquidity discounts).
Coupled with his stake in Binance, CZ's net worth could be around $110 billion, which puts him right below the Walton heirs on the list of the world's richest people.
If Bloomberg's estimate is correct, CZ's Binance stake might push him above Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Dell founder Michael Dell (who are worth $124 billion and $136 billion, respectively). CZ's speculative total net worth likely exceeds $136 billion.
However, it should be noted that this is just speculation since the exact value of CZ's Binance stake and his personal crypto holdings is unknown.
Moreover, BNB has relatively low liquidity, meaning that CZ cannot just sell tokens at current market prices.
Vladislav Sopov
U.Today Editorial Team