Jean-Louis van der Velde, the chief executive of the crypto exchange Bitfinex, is ranked No. 53 on the Forbes 2026 World’s Billionaires list, tied with Paolo Ardoino, with a net worth of $38 billion. He is a Dutch citizen based in Hong Kong.
Jean-Louis van der Velde is a Dutch technology executive. According to a profile summarised in reports, he left the Netherlands in 1985 to attend university in Taiwan and has lived in Asia ever since.
Net Worth and Rank
- Forbes 2026 list: No. 53 (tied with Paolo Ardoino), with $38 billion
- Source of wealth: his stakes in Tether and Bitfinex
Bitfinex and Tether
- Bitfinex: he joined in early 2013 as co-founder and chief executive of the exchange, which was founded in 2012, and set up the holding company behind it
- Tether: he headed Tether Holdings until October 2023; a July 2023 Forbes report credited him with a 13% interest in Tether Holdings
- Bitfinex stake: he is reported to hold 15% of Bitfinex
A Private Figure
Van der Velde is described as notoriously reclusive, rarely if ever making public appearances or speaking to the media. Very little about his early life is in the public record, and there is no detailed biography of him in Wikipedia. Most of what is known about his wealth comes from Forbes and Bloomberg estimates.
Related Profiles
Two other figures linked to Tether and Bitfinex are on this list: Giancarlo Devasini and Paolo Ardoino.
Why It Matters
Tether’s stablecoin is the most widely used dollar-linked token in crypto, and van der Velde is one of the few people with a significant stake in the company behind it. His fortune is an estimate, because Tether and Bitfinex are private.
Net worth figures change daily with share prices. Rankings here follow the Forbes 2026 World’s Billionaires list, with wealth measured on March 1, 2026.
Image: The Hong Kong skyline and Victoria Harbour (file photo, 2013); Bitfinex is based in Hong Kong and Jean-Louis van der Velde is not pictured. Photo: Diego Delso / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
