Quote 500: Crypto billionaire passes Heineken heiress for richest person in Netherlands

Crypto entrepreneur Jean-Louis van der Velde has surpassed Heineken heiress Charlene de Carvalho-Heineken as the richest Dutch person in the world, according to the 30th edition of the Quote 500 - the annual list of the 500 wealthiest Dutch by the business magazine Quote.

With a fortune of some €26 billion, Van der Velde, the founder of crypto companies Tether and Bitfinex, is about twice as rich as De Carvalho-Heineken (€13 billion), who topped the list for years. Quote said it had been tracking Van der Velde for quite some time. The man has lived in Asia since the 1980s and, until this year, it was unclear whether he still held Dutch citizenship.

The Quote 500 shows that the rich keep getting richer. The combined wealth of the 500 richest Dutch rose by over 10 percent over the past year, reaching a record of over €300 billion. The Netherlands now counts 56 billionaires, up from 52 last year.

One is a newcomer on the list, Pim de Witte (€1.1 billion). The 31-year-old founder of the AI company General Intuition is also the youngest Dutch billionaire yet.

To make it onto a list, you need at least €140 million. The entry threshold is the same as last year, partly due to the decision to consolidate the individual entries for the Fentener van Vlissingen family into a single family entry after the passing of John Fentener van Vlissingen.

Siblings Albert and Angela Peters saw the biggest jump in wealth, with their combined net worth growing more than 155 percent to €485 million. Charly Zemstra of Main Capital also saw a big increase in wealth. The Hague-based software investor’s fortune nearly doubled to €600 million.