Blockchain analysis company Arkham Intelligence publishes the wealth of the world's richest cryptowhales. Cryptowhales are people or groups who own a large amount of a cryptocurrency. Because they own so much, they can influence the price of those coins.

Leading the list is Tron founder Justin Sun, who owns $1.1 billion in cryptocurrencies, according to Arkham. However, most of his wealth is not his own cryptocurrency Tron (TRX), but the stablecoin USDD. Sun has $275 million in the latter.

In second place is the relatively unknown Rain Lõhmus. According to Arkham, the founder of LHV Bank has crypto assets totaling USD 772 million. Lõhmus had already publicly admitted that he lost access to his wallet in late 2023. The founder of the Estonian bank had a wallet with 250,000 ether, whose private key he had lost. "It is no secret that I have a wallet with 250,000 Ethereum units," the cryptowhale said in an interview with Estonian radio station Vikerraadio in late October.

Vitalik Buterin comes in third place. The founder of Ethereum currently has a fortune of USD 760 million. Not surprisingly, Buterin holds most (USD 757 million) of his wealth in ETH.

The candidate in fourth place can also only smile about his wealth. Stefan Thomas, former CTO at Ripple, sits on USD 452 million to which he has no access. His entire digital wealth is stored in 7,002 BTC, which Thomas no longer has access to. The Bitcoin came from a payment the developer had received in 2011 for Bitcoin content. Thomas turned down an offer from crypto recovery service Unciphered to restore access to the hard drive on which the private key was stored.

Cryptography secures cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. But if users make mistakes - like losing their private key - the coins are lost forever. So many Bitcoin are lost forever.