What is our life? A game!
Good and evil - no more than dreams!
Work and honor - old wives' tales!
Which of you here, my friends, is right or happy?
Today it's you, tomorrow I!
So leave your struggles, and seize upon
The moment of success!
A.Pushkin ‘The Queen of Spades’
Do you believe in leprechauns? Have you ever caught one? Maybe they are the reason why some people become filthy reach?
On the 17th of March, Patrick, a patron of Ireland and a missionary who brought Christianity to emerald-green Ireland, died. People all around the world celebrate the day to mark that date and have fun by eating special foods, dancing, drinking, marching on the parade, and singing songs.
Besides, there are two essential St.Patrick’s Day symbols — a leprechaun and a shamrock.
The leprechaun is a tiny Irish fairy who’s dressed like a shoemaker. Leprechauns are little men who live all alone in the forest, spending time making shoes and protecting their gold treasures. If you catch a leprechaun, he will have to tell you where he hides his pots of gold.
St. Patrick used the shamrock to explain the holy trinity, so each leaf embodies the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The three shamrock leaves also stand for faith, hope, and love. If your shamrock has the fourth leaf, you’ll get lucky!
What do you think of the wealthiest people in the crypto world? Maybe they saw a leprechaun and quickly caught him, so he was forced to tell them the secret of success? Let’s remember some influential people who were extremely lucky with their crypto deals. Who knows, maybe that will inspire you to become the next person on the list?
1. Sam Bankman-Fried NET WORTH: $24B
Sam Bankman-Fried is the wealthiest person in the crypto world, thanks to his FTX exchange and Alameda Research trading firm.
Bankman-Fried launched his own exchange, FTX, in 2019. It was built as they called it "by traders, for traders." Now it's one of the leading exchanges for buying and selling crypto derivatives.
FTX raised $900 million from the likes of Coinbase Ventures and SoftBank in July 2021 at an $18 billion valuation.
Most of his money he donates to charity based, as he thinks that the "earning to give" philosophy is quite right.
2. Brian Armstrong NET WORTH: $7.1B
Brian Armstrong is the chief executive of the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the US Coinbase Global.
Armstrong cofounded Coinbase in San Francisco in 2012 with Fred Ehrsam, a former currency trader.
Coinbase went public in a direct offering in 2021, briefly reaching a market capitalization of $100 billion.
Above all, Armstrong owns a 19% stake in Coinbase, which earned $322 million in profits on nearly $1.3 billion in 2020.
3. Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss NET WORTH: $4B
Identical twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss cofounded Gemini, a cryptocurrency exchange in 2014; They are American Olympians, entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists. Today Gemini transacts about $200 million a day in trades.
Cameron is Gemini's president; Tyler is its CEO.
They used some of their $65 million legal settlement with the Facebook CEO to start stocking Bitcoin.
4. Chris Larsen NET WORTH: $4.4B
Chris Larsen cofounded Ripple in 2012 to utilize international payments for banks using blockchain. Now he’s an executive chairman of Ripple.
He also co-founded an online mortgage lender called e-Loan in 1996 and Prosper, a peer-to-peer (P2P) lender, in 2005.
5. Michael Saylor NET WORTH: $1.7B
Michael Saylor is the CEO of MicroStrategy, a business analytics software firm. He’s a former rocket scientist, who studied aeronautics and astronautics at MIT.
Saylor was a multibillionaire in the late 90s as a result of his stake in MicroStrategy.
He's a billionaire thanks to his bitcoin investments. In October 2020, he disclosed he personally bought 17,732 bitcoins for $175 million.
Throughout 2020 he transferred Microstrategy's corporate coffers into bitcoin, using company cash and borrowings to buy 70,784 bitcoins for $1.1 billion.
Closing thoughts
As you can see, our world has some billionaires, so if you were always dreaming of becoming one, you need to pay attention to those people above, as they didn't catch a leprechaun but definitely had a stroke of luck while they were working hard to make their dreams come true. But life is a blend of this and that, and luck is an important ingredient for sure.
Have a happy St. Patrick's Day, and let luck will guide your life! 🍀