The Lost Kings of Cryptocurrencies'.

Index. In 2017, he founded Binance in Shanghai and led the company to become the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world.

Zhao has become a popular figure in the crypto world, he has 8.7 million fans on X. In 2022, his fortune peaked at over $65 billion, according to Forbes. Along with prestige and wealth has come increased scrutiny of Binance's operations, as prominent crypto companies around the world have begun to face a wave of criminal investigations.

The United States has accused Zhao and Binance of multiple violations, including knowingly authorizing transactions to support extremist groups such as the Islamic State in banned jurisdictions such as North Korea and Iran. They pleaded guilty on Tuesday. The company''has pledged to pay nearly $4.4 billion in fines, and Zhao himself will pay $50 million, according to court documents.

Zhao has stepped down as CEO of Binance, although he will reportedly retain his shares in the company, he will be banned from its business operations. He is expected to be sentenced at a later date. According to Forbes, his fortune is $10.2 billion as of today.

If Zhao was the richest and most influential person in the cryptocurrency world, Sam Bankman-Fried was by far the most famous. Born into a family of Stanford University professors, Bankman-Fried graduated from MIT with a degree in physics. In 2019, he founded FTX, which has grown into the second largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world. Along the way Bankman-Fried''has created an image as the unofficial ambassador of the cryptocurrency industry and has made notable appearances in the media and even in the US Congress. At one point in 2022, his fortune was $24 billion, according to Forbes.

It turned out, however, that he was on a dangerous path: his team was using clients' money for everything from buying luxury real estate to covering the risky activities of an affiliated agency, Alameda Research. All of this was discovered by the media in November 2022.

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Within hours, Zhao's competitor CZ announced that Binance would sell all the FTX tokens it owned. This sent FTX and the Bankman-Fried empire into turmoil, his fame turning to infamy. He was arrested in January in the Bahamas and this month was found guilty of U.S.''Prosecutors called it "one of the largest financial frauds in the history of the United States". He faces up to 110 years in prison. During the trial, the 31-year-old entrepreneur admitted his 'mistakes' but denied trying to defraud anyone.

South Korean entrepreneur Do Kwon co-founded Terraform Labs in 2018, developing the cryptocurrencies TerraUSD and Luna. This Stanford graduate successfully marketed them as the next grand cryptocurrency project, attracting billions in investment and international excitement. South Korean media described him as a "genius".

In May last year, however, the value of these currencies, advertised as 'stable coins,' collapsed, wiping out some $40 billion in investment and causing a shock to the entire industry. According to the data''industry statistics, this collapse led to additional losses in the global cryptocurrency markets of more than $500 billion. Experts believe that Do Kwon was promoting a large-scale pyramid scheme. He was a bully and outspoken on social media. Do Kwon left South Korea before the collapse and spent months on the run. This year, he was arrested in Montenegro when he tried to fly out using fake Costa Rican documents. He faces charges in the United States and South Korea.