Still think it’s not a bubble?
Earlier this week, an incredulous Forbes noted that Ripple Cofounder and former CEO Chris Larsen was, on paper anyway, worth as much as Steve Ballmer.
Clearly, that is absurd. This is a digital “currency” that might very well be completely worthless, and here we are collectively positing a scenario in which Larsen could conceivably be the richest person on the planet in relatively short order. Here’s what we said at the end of the post linked above:
As Forbes dryly notes, “the huge swings in the value of Ripple, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies mean that there is no guarantee that any of these folks will still be billionaires when Forbes publishes its next list in March.”
Right. Hell, they might not even be on the list tomorrow.
Then again, they might be twice as rich as Jeff Bezos by Friday. There’s no telling.
Fast forward two days and guess what? Ripple has rallied further – much further.
At one point, when it was up roughly 70% since our original post on Larsen, Chris became one of the world’s richest men.
He’s now worth some $60 billion on paper.
“That puts Larsen just ahead of Larry Ellison, who ranks fifth on Forbes 400 list with a worth of $58.4 billion, and ahead of Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who rank eighth and tenth on the list, respectively,” CNBC notes.
Here’s Mike to Novo-splain the situation:
total $XRP now worth $380 bn…. makes Ripple labs worth $225bn.. tenth largest company by market cap in the world… makes Chris Larsen worth $55bn tying Mark Zuckerburg as 5th richest man in the world…..
— Mike Novogratz (@novogratz) January 4, 2018
This is so laughable that the English language is not a sufficient tool when it comes to describing the insanity inherent in the very real possibility that Larsen will be richer than Jeff Bezos by the end of the month.
