This list was updated in April 2024. Celebs such as Donald Trump, Justin Bieber and Steve Aoki were added to this list.
Over the past several years, Ethereum has seen changes in its use cases, driven largely by the adoption of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that presented a new investment opportunity on the blockchain. This innovation brought new celebrities into the crypto sector. While the NFT hype has died down, celebrities still hold ETH. Thanks to Arkham Intelligence, some of their portfolios have been made public. Some of the celebrity ETH holders are surprising. Let’s take a look.
Donald Trump
Donald Trump is one of the best-known people in the world. Surprisingly, he is also involved with crypto.
Trump began to receive ETH in the form of royalties in 2022 when he allowed another company to distribute Trump Digital Trading Cards. Trump has received over 1,700 ETH from the project. He sold 1,075 of the tokens in late 2023 for proceeds of $2.4 million. Currently, Trump holds around 700 ETH.
The largest position in Trump’s portfolio is MAGA Coin (TRUMP). The founders of this meme coin sent 580,000 tokens to the president when they launched the project in August 2023. The tokens, which were initially worth just a few thousand dollars, went as high as $6.7 million in March 2024.
Trump also owns over 50 other meme coins, most of which were sent to him by creators of projects or supporters. However, none of these positions are as notable as the ETH and TRUMP holdings.
Justin Bieber
One of the most successful music artists of all time, Justin Bieber made a fortune with hit songs in the 2010s. He has continued to make chart-topping music over the past decade, as well as signing deals with Adidas, Tim Hortons, Balenciaga and his fragrance collection.
With the fortune he amassed through music and partnerships, Bieber bought a handful of NFTs in 2021 and 2022. His largest purchase occurred in January 2022 when he bought Bored Ape #3001 for 500 ETH. At the time, the price of ETH was around $2,600, so the total cost was around $1.3 million. However, the price of the Bored Ape has fallen considerably since then. The best offer is currently around 12.3 ETH, and the floor price for the entire collection is around 13.4 ETH.
Bieber currently holds around 146 ETH, making up nearly all of his $450,000 portfolio. The only other notable position in the portfolio is ApeCoin (APE), which amounts to over 12,000 tokens.
Steve Aoki
Steve Aoki is one of the most iconic and influential music producers of the past decade. He has worked with some of the most successful music artists of all time, ranging from Blink-182 to Kid Cudi. While his music has allowed him to earn a fortune, he has also created a considerable amount of wealth from investing in crypto.
Aoki began buying NFTs in 2021, getting involved in some of the largest and most popular projects. For example, during the summer of 2021, Aoki bought a CryptoPunk for 65 ETH and sold it three weeks later for 300 ETH. Aoki also released his own NFT collections in collaboration with graphic designer Antoni Tudisco.
The involvement of Aoki in the NFT space allowed him to amass a crypto portfolio in excess of $1 million. Aoki currently holds over 200 ETH, 270,000 USDC, 95,000 USDT and nearly 2 billion SHIB.
Snoop Dogg
Calvin Broadus Jr. (AKA Snoop Dogg) is an iconic rapper famous for his near-constant cannabis smoking and gangster rap classics such as “Drop It Like It’s Hot” and his feature on Dr. Dre’s hit, “The Next Episode.” He is also a prolific entrepreneur, investor and businessman with a venture capital fund focused on cannabis called Casa Verde.
Snoop was one of the first celebrities and first rappers in the NFT sector. He released a couple of small NFT collections on the Crypto.com NFT platform last summer. He still seems dedicated to NFTs and has dropped multiple smaller NFT collections since then. These lead up to the launch of his 10k collection of generative Snoop Dogg NFTs ready for the metaverse, The Doggies. The public doesn’t know much about his portfolio composition other than he has Ethereum and a bunch of NFTs.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA), SpaceX, Neuralink and the Boring Company and the richest man in the world, is one of crypto’s biggest celebrity advocates. Musk first started talking about his favorite cryptocurrency, Dogecoin, in 2019. His obsession with memes and dumb humor fit perfectly with the Doge community. He ran with it and helped it reach roughly a $75 billion market capitalization with countless dog memes.
He is currently embroiled in a massive lawsuit that alleges he essentially ran a pyramid scheme around Dogecoin. The suit asks for $258 billion in damages. Despite the suit, Musk said on Twitter that he will “keep supporting” DOGE and is even “buying the dip.”
Musk also signaled his support for Bitcoin and Ethereum over the past year and seems to own at least some of each. He had Tesla buy $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin, most of which he sold shortly after. Musk is well known for his dislike of abusive centralized power and censorship. It would be surprising if he didn’t invest in and actively support cryptocurrencies. Hopefully for crypto investors, he won’t stop anytime soon.
Mark Cuban
Mark Cuban is a billionaire investor, entrepreneur and TV personality with more than $5.4 billion net worth. Most of his fame and many of his investments came from starring on the hit investing and entrepreneurial show, Shark Tank. He also owns the Dallas Mavericks NBA team.
Next time you see a crypto or NFT-related company secure a round of funding, check the list of investors. Chances are that Mark Cuban will be near the top. Some of his best blockchain-related investments are in OpenSea, Polygon and Arbitrum. He also has a diverse portfolio of cryptocurrencies including BTC, ETH and APE. Cuban is perhaps the most actively involved celebrity on this list because of his many investments in smaller crypto companies.
Jay-Z
Shawn Carter (AKA Jay-Z) is a legendary 21-Grammy-winning rapper, record executive, investor and media proprietor. His long and storied career has influenced hip-hop and rap more than almost anyone. Jay-Z has amassed a massive fortune, second only to Kanye West. One of the common themes he raps about is teaching financial literacy to battle inequality. While he has talked about multiple different paths to financial freedom in the past, his recent focus has been on cryptocurrencies and NFTs. It hasn’t been published how much money he has in crypto or which ones he owns, except for Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Jay-Z, like Snoop Dogg and Paris Hilton, was one of the first celebrities to dive into NFTs. He bought a CryptoPunk NFT in April 2021 and made it his profile picture on Twitter two months later. This move was an important catalyst for the NFT market as a whole. It brought a deluge of publicity and set a precedent for other celebrities to follow, bringing even more news coverage.
Cryptocurrency Price Movements
Crypto has performed well in 2024. Bitcoin reached new highs in March, and many other tokens have outperformed expectations. However, there has been a slight pullback as of late. While some see this as a small correction, others see it as an end to the optimistic sentiment that started the year. Either way, it will be interesting to see how prices move going forward.
Will Ethereum Adoption Shrink Now?
Ethereum likely isn’t going anywhere. The crypto hype cycle looks to be on an upward trend. The market has crashed many times before, and it has come back stronger every time. The number of wallets holding Ethereum is still growing despite the correction, and it probably won’t stop anytime soon.
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About Caden Pok
Caden has been involved with crypto since 2018, when he began investing, trading, and mining tokens. He took part in undergraduate research studying cryptoeconomics at the University of Michigan, where he will graduate Phi Beta Kappa with a bachelor’s in economics in 2025. He is experienced with DeFi technology and multiple blockchains, currently investing in Ethereum and Bitcoin.