Mapped: The Top 10 Billionaire Cities

 

By

 Avery Koop

In 2020, the world gained 493 new billionaires—that’s one every 17 hours.

For the last seven years, New York City has been home to more billionaires than any other city in the world. However, last year marked a monumental shift in the status quo.

Beijing has unseated the Big Apple, and is now home to 100 billionaires. That’s one more billionaire than the 99 living in New York City.

Today’s map uses data from Forbes to display the top 10 cities that house the most billionaires.

Where do the Most Billionaires Live?

The richest of the rich are quite concentrated in cities, but some cities seem to best suit the billionaire lifestyle. Here’s a breakdown of the top 10 billionaire capitals and the collective net worth of all the ultra wealthy that live there.

Rank	City	Region	Number of Billionaires	Net Worth of the City's Billionaires
#1	Beijing	Asia	100	$484.3B
#2	New York City	North America	99	$560.5B
#3	Hong Kong	Asia	80	$448.4B
#4	Moscow	Europe	79	$420.6B
#5	Shenzhen	Asia	68	$415.3B
#6	Shanghai	Asia	64	$259.6B
#7	London	Europe	63	$316.1B
#8	Mumbai	Asia	48	$265.0B
#9	San Fransisco	North America	48	$190.0B
#10	Hangzhou	Asia	47	$269.2B

Some cities have some obvious billionaires that come to mind. New York’s richest person and former mayor, Michael Bloomberg, is worth $59 billion. Beijing’s richest billionaire is the founder of TikTok (among other things), Zhang Yiming with a net worth of $35.6 billion.

In terms of the locations themselves, London, New York, and San Francisco are the only Western cities to make the list. Though New York was ousted from the top position last year, altogether the city’s billionaires are still worth more than Beijing’s.

One new city to make the top 10 list of billionaire cities was Hangzhou, the home of Jack Ma. It booted out Singapore from the 10th spot.

East Meets West

More than half of the top 10 cities are located in Asia, providing evidence of the shift eastwards when it comes to seats of wealth. Five of the six Asian cities listed are all in China.

What’s helped lead to this?

The country has seen an e-commerce boom, not in the least thanks to the pandemic. Additionally, the efficient handling of COVID-19 has allowed the economy to get back on track much more quickly than other countries. According to the BBC, 50% of China’s new billionaires have made their wealth either through tech or manufacturing.

Four of the Chinese cities on the list also had the biggest billionaire growth in 2020. Each of them gained more than 10 net new billionaires:

•  Hangzhou: 21
•  Shanghai: 18
•  Shenzhen: 24
•  Beijing: 33

The only other city to gain more than 10 new billionaires in 2020 was San Francisco with 11.

Now sitting at 698 billionaires, China is coming up on the 724 held by the United States. Beijing overtaking NYC could be the beginning of a larger tipping point.

Shifting Tides

Asia-Pacific’s collective 1,149 billionaires are worth $4.7 trillion, while U.S. billionaires are worth $4.4 trillion in total wealth.

Overall, it looks like the wealth tides may be turning as China continues to progress economically and more billionaires become based in the East over the West.

https://bit.ly/3etASOl

What Is an NFT? Inside The Next Billion-Dollar Crypto Sensation

 

Image credit: imaginima | Getty Images

James Murphy

ENTREPRENEUR LEADERSHIP NETWORK CONTRIBUTOR

CEO of Future Fallout

NFTs are taking the internet by storm and marked as one of the best use case for blockchain technology.

If you haven’t heard of them now, it’s only a matter of time. Whether its digital sports cards or digital artworks, NFTs have been taking the internet by storm and have simply doubled their total volume in USD in the month of February alone. So what are these digital assets selling for fortunes, from niche marketplaces to world-famous auction house Christie’s?

What does NFT mean?

An NFT is a non-fungible token existing on a blockchain. A token is the sign of ownership of an asset. For example, a concert ticket is a sign of ownership of one space for a concert. A Bitcoin is the title of ownership to the underlying value of the Bitcoin. A token is a digital asset, stored on the blockchain. As the blockchain is transparent, it is easy for all to see who is the owner of what token.

Fungible refers to an asset that is easily exchangeable. A dollar is very fungible, you can give me a dollar in exchange for some good and I can then re-exchange it for another service. A neighbor could borrow a pound of sugar to bake a cake and buy me another one in a few days when he goes to the supermarket. It doesn’t matter that the sugar is different, it is easily replaceable and exchangeable.

A non-fungible token is a unique token that isn’t easily exchangeable with another. The foremost use case is artworks. Artworks have been selling on the blockchain for millions of dollars (or in this case a blockchain native currency, Ethereum). Examples abound but the most famous NFT artist so far is Beeple who first sold 21 pieces of artwork on digital marketplace Nifty Gateway for a total of $3.5 million. He then went on to sell his masterpiece “EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS” at Christie’s for $6.5 million. Beeple is Mike Winkelmann, previously a graphic designer from Charleston South Carolina.

Artworks are not the only things exchanged in these marketplaces. More and more volume in the NFT space is coming from digital sports trading cards. In fact, fans of basketball have already spent $230 million trading NBA Top Shot cards. These cards represent certain classic moments for the sport and there is only a limited amount of each. The ownership and the scarcity of these cards are insured by the Ethereum blockchain. Recently, a rare Lebron James highlight sold to the highest bidder for a crisp $200,000.

Why would anyone pay for this?

The crazy thing about these purchases is that anyone can download Beeple’s artwork or Lebron’s highlight. It is as simple as clicking ‘save image’ on your laptop. What buyers are after is not the artwork in itself but the proof of ownership for that artwork. The buyers are akin to art collectors putting their most prized possessions on display in museums. NFTs represent a way for art collectors to encourage financially their favorite artists online.

As humans evolve more and more, especially in lockdown, it seems only natural that we decide to buy art in the digital world as well. One step further, certain platforms such as Decentraland allow users to buy land or real estate in a digital world.

While this has been no more than a niche sector of the internet, in the last six months it has truly exploded onto mainstream media and seems to be here to stay. While the first experiments with NFTs date back to 2013-2014, the market seems to arrive to a certain maturity and mainstream appeal in 2021.

Several issues remain with the NFT market, however. As the main currency of exchange and the network on which marketplaces are built is Ethereum, transaction fees are very high and it is commonplace to have to pay $50 to transfer the property title of an NFT from its creator to the buyer. On platforms such as Rarible or OpenSea, the current market leaders, not only does each transaction (creation of the NFT, bids, transfer of ownership) costs users large sums, they also amount to the terrible carbon footprint of the Ethereum network.

There is hope, however, as Ethereum is planning to change its architecture by the beginning of 2022 to be much more eco-friendly. In the meantime, certain marketplaces have found technical solutions to these limitations. Drops.is, an upcoming NFT project that lets you do a lot more with NFTs than just buy and sell. It allows users to create NFTs, bid, stake, take loans by using your NFT as collateral. It’s also using a Layer 2 solution by building on Polygon network, reducing both the costs of these transactions to a few cents (which are paid for by the platform itself) and the important environmental costs.

The most exciting part of the NFT revolution is that artists specialized in digital arts will finally be compensated for their work. Until now, it was very hard for artists to monetize their creations because of the very nature of digital art and its infinite reproducibility. Now, true fans of the artists will be able to directly support them with any middle-men or platform.

Mainstream artists seem to have caught on to this trend with artists such as Grammy-winning Kings of Leon releasing their latest album as an NFT. It’s also the case of Grimes, Lindsay Lohan or even Soulja Boy who all released NFTs representing music, digital artworks or even the ownership of a limited-edition vinyl.

But it is not only artists who can make money from NFTs, the market for digital sports card for example has already exploded. Soccer trading card platform Sorare has seen the unique 2020-2021 Kylian Mbappé card sell for $65,000. Cashing in on sports fans stuck at home has turned out to be extremely profitable for these platforms, so much so that it has brought the attention of gaming giant Ubisoft who has now partnered up with Sorare for future projects.

NFTs are the hottest item in the recent crypto craze and as mainstream artists start to discover them they will only become more popular and coming soon to a digital market near you.

https://bit.ly/3vqB8Wi

Ranked: The World’s Richest Families in 2020

 

By

 Carmen Ang

The World’s Richest Families in 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic hasn’t stopped the world’s wealthiest families from growing their fortunes. Over the past year, the richest family—the Waltons—grew their wealth by $25 billion, or almost $3 million per hour.

This graphic, using data from Bloomberg, ranks the 25 most wealthy families in the world. The data excludes first-generation wealth and wealth controlled by a single heir, which is why you don’t see Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates on the list. Families whose source of wealth is too diffused or opaque to be valued are also excluded.

The Full Breakdown

Intergenerational wealth is a powerful thing. It often prevails through market crashes, social turmoil, and economic uncertainty, and this year has been no exception.

Here’s a look at the 25 most wealthy families in 2020:

Rank	Name	Company	Wealth, $B	Sector	Location
1	Walton	Walmart	215	Consumer services	Bentonville, Arkansas
2	Mars	Mars	120	Consumer goods	McLean, Virginia
3	Koch	Koch Industries	109.7	Industrials	Wichita, Kansas
4	Al Saud	N/A	95	Industrials	Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
5	Ambani	Reliance Industries	81.3	Industrials	Mumbai, India
6	Hermès	Hermès	63.9	Consumer services	Paris, France
7	Wertheimer	Chanel	54.4	Consumer services	Paris, France
8	Johnson (Fidelity)	Fidelity Investments	46.3	Financials	Boston, New York
9	Boehringer, Von Baumbach	Boehringer Ingelheim	45.7	Health care	Inglheim, Germany
10	Albrecht	Aldi	41	Consumer services	Rhineland, Germany

Rank	Name	Company	Wealth, $B	Sector	Location
21	Chearavanont	Charoen Pokphand Group	30.7	Diversified	Bangkok, Thailand
22	Ferrero	Ferrero	30.5	Consumer goods	Alba, Italy
23	Kwok	Sun Hung Kai Properties	30.4	Real estate	Hong Kong
24	Pritzker	Hyatt Hotels	29.6	Consumer services	Chicago, Illinois
25	Lee	Samsung	29	Diversified	Seoul, South Korea

*Note: The Al Saud’s net worth is based on cumulative payouts royal family members were estimated to have received over the past 50 years.

The Waltons are the richest family on the list by far, with a net worth of $215 billion—that’s $95 billion more than the second wealthiest family. Sam Walton, the family’s patriarch, founded Walmart in 1962. Since then, it’s become the world’s largest retailer by revenue.

When Sam passed away in 1992, his three children—James, Alice, and Rob—inherited his fortune. Now, the trio co-owns about half of Walmart.

In second place is the Mars family, with a net worth of $120 billion. The family is well-known for their candy empire, but interestingly, about half of the company’s value comes from pet care holdings. Mars Inc. owns several popular pet food brands, including Pedigree, Cesar, and Royal Canin—and it expanded its pet presence further in 2017 when it acquired VCA, a company with almost 800 small animal vet hospitals across the U.S. and Canada.

The Koch family is the world’s third-richest family. Their fortune is rooted in an oil firm founded by Fred C. Koch. Following Fred’s death in 1967, the firm was inherited by his four sons—Frederick, Charles, David, and William. After a family feud, Frederick and William left the business, and Charles and David went on to build the mega industrial conglomerate known as Koch Industries.

Despite being affected by the oil crash this year, the Koch family’s wealth still sits at $109.7 billion. Before David’s passing in 2019, he and his brother Charles were heavily involved in politics—and their political efforts were the subject of much scrutiny.

Richest Families, by Sector

It’s important to note that many of these families have diversified their investments across a variety of industries. For instance, while the Koch family’s wealth is largely concentrated in the industrial sector and commodities, they also dabble in real-estate—in May 2020, they made a $200 million bet on U.S. rental homes.

That being said, it’s interesting to see where each of these families started, and which sectors have bred the highest number of ultra-wealthy families.

Here’s a breakdown of each sector and how many families on the list got started in them:

Sector	Number of Families	Total Wealth, $B
Consumer Services	8	514.3
Industrials	4	324.1
Consumer Goods	3	187.3
Communications	3	104.7
Health Care	2	84.5
Diversified	2	59.7
Financials	1	46.3
Basical Materials	1	32.9
Real Estate	1	30.4

The top sector is consumer services—8 of the 25 families are heavily involved in this sector. Walmart helped generate the most wealth out of families in this space, while luxury brands Hermès and Chanel were the source of fortune for the next two wealthiest families.

Industrial is the second largest sector, with 4 of the 25 families involved. It’s also one of the most lucrative sectors—out of the top five wealthiest families on the list, three are in industrials. The Koch family is the wealthiest family in this category, followed by the Al Saud family and the Ambani family, respectively.

Communications and consumer goods are tied for third, with 3 of the 25 families in each. The Thomsons, who founded Thomson Reuters, are the wealthiest family in communications, while the Mars family has the highest net worth in the consumer goods sector.

Resilient, but not Bulletproof

Despite a global recession, most of the world’s wealthiest families seem to be doing just fine—however, not everyone on the list has been thriving this year.

The Koch family’s fortune dropped by $15 billion from 2019 to 2020, and the current political climate in Hong Kong has had a negative impact on the Kwok family’s real estate empire.

While intergenerational wealth certainty has resilience, how much economic and social turmoil can it withstand? It’ll be interesting to see which families make the list in 2021.

https://bit.ly/3t6QnCm