Here's a bold prediction: by the end of 2018, we will seriously be talking about the creation of the world's first blockchain trillionaire. We've already seen the creation of overnight Bitcoin millionaires, and now we're starting to see the creation of the world's first blockchain billionaires.
At the beginning of January, Laura Shin of Forbes magazine profiled several different blockchain billionaires - including the current and former CEOs of Ripple, who now rank among the wealthiest Americans in the entire country. Ripple co-founder and former CEO Chris Larsen has an estimated net worth of $37.3 billion, which would make him the 15th richest American (tied with former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer). And current Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has an estimated net worth of $9.5 billion, which is good enough to rank him among the Top 50 wealthiest Americans.
Blockchain wealth vs. Internet wealth
The Ballmer comparison is especially interesting because it suggests that wealth creation from blockchain technology will soon dwarf any wealth creation from the Internet. Microsoft is one of the most powerful and recognizable corporations on the planet, and yet the former CEO of this company has a net worth that just about rivals the level of CEO wealth made possible by the early days of blockchain technology.
Of course, there's a long way between becoming a billionaire and becoming a trillionaire. It is literally orders of magnitude harder. And the total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies at the beginning of 2018 was just $600 billion. That's a fancy way of saying that, even if some individual managed to control every single cryptocurrency asset available today, it still wouldn't add up to $1 trillion. Ripple, for example, only had a market capitalization of $90 billion at the beginning of 2018. Ripple would have to grow by 10x (a full order of magnitude) before we could start talking about trillionaires.
But just give the blockchain another 12 months, and we may be having a very different discussion heading into 2019.
Image: "Floating in Maldives" photo by Ishan @seefromthesky on Unsplash