The Crypto Wealth
Buterin, Novogratz, StarkWare, Fireblocks, eToro. The newest layer of Jewish capital — digital-native, multi-billion-dollar valuations, and less than a decade old.
Buterin, Novogratz, StarkWare, Fireblocks, eToro. The newest layer of Jewish capital — digital-native, multi-billion-dollar valuations, and less than a decade old.
The newest layer of Jewish capital is digital-native. The named principals and firms in this space represent multi-billion-dollar valuations created largely within the past decade. Most of the wealth is held by individuals whose names are not yet familiar to the institutional layers above. This piece works through the major figures and the Israeli infrastructure cluster that has emerged as one of the most significant national footprints in global crypto.
Foundational Figures
Vitalik Buterin — co-founder of Ethereum, born in Russia to a Russian-Jewish family, raised primarily in Canada. Ethereum, launched in 2015, is the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization and the primary settlement layer for most of the smart-contract, DeFi, and tokenization activity in the broader crypto economy. Buterin's personal wealth has fluctuated substantially with ETH price; he has been a major philanthropic donor across crypto, longevity research, and AI safety causes.
Mike Novogratz — founder and CEO of Galaxy Digital, the publicly listed crypto-focused financial services firm. Former Goldman Sachs partner and Fortress Investment Group principal. Galaxy operates across trading, asset management, investment banking, and mining for institutional crypto clients. The firm completed a US-domiciled listing in 2024 after operating primarily through a Canadian exchange listing prior. Novogratz remains the firm's public face and primary capital allocator.
The Israeli Infrastructure Cluster
Israel has produced one of the largest national clusters of crypto infrastructure and security firms. StarkWare (Eli Ben-Sasson, Uri Kolodny) — zero-knowledge proof technology, anchoring the StarkNet Layer 2 scaling solution. Valued at approximately $8 billion in a 2022 funding round. Fireblocks (Michael Shaulov, Pavel Berengoltz, Idan Ofrat) — institutional crypto custody and infrastructure. Valued at approximately $8 billion in a 2022 funding round; serves as primary custody and settlement infrastructure for many institutional crypto participants.
eToro (Yoni Assia, Ronen Assia, David Ring) — social trading platform with substantial crypto exposure. Completed a US public listing in 2025 at multi-billion-dollar valuation. Chain Reaction, CertiK (founded by US-based but with substantial Israeli operations), and a broader cohort of Israeli blockchain security, custody, and infrastructure firms round out the cluster.
Recent Valuations and the 2022-2024 Reset
The 2022 funding peak produced the multi-billion-dollar valuations cited above. The subsequent crypto market reset — driven by the FTX collapse in November 2022, the broader credit and counterparty failures across 2022-2023, and macro tightening — compressed crypto venture valuations substantially. The 2024-2026 recovery has reset valuations across the major Israeli firms; some have grown beyond 2022 peaks (eToro post-IPO), others have held flat or compressed (some infrastructure firms operating at reduced private-market marks).
Bitcoin reached a $100,000-plus price level across late 2024 and 2025; Ethereum followed proportionally. The associated wealth creation across the Israeli and broader Jewish crypto layer has been substantial across 2024-2026, though concentrated in fewer firms than the 2022 peak.
What's Distinctive About the Israeli Layer
The Israeli crypto cluster differs from the broader global crypto industry in two structural ways. First, technical depth in cryptography: a disproportionate share of the foundational zero-knowledge proof, multi-party computation, and cryptographic protocol work has been produced by Israeli researchers, often with backgrounds in IDF cyber units, Weizmann Institute, Technion, and Tel Aviv University cryptography programs. StarkWare, Aleo (with Israeli technical leadership), and several other major ZK projects trace their origins to this academic and military-research base.
Second, institutional positioning: Israeli crypto firms have built primarily for institutional infrastructure (custody, settlement, scaling, compliance) rather than consumer-facing exchanges or speculative tokens. This positions the cluster more durably than consumer-crypto cohorts in jurisdictions that have faced sharper regulatory disruption.
The Older-Generation Crypto Capital
A meaningful share of Jewish crypto wealth is held by US-based principals who entered the space from traditional finance. Beyond Novogratz: the Winklevoss twins (Tyler and Cameron, not Jewish but central to the early Bitcoin investor cohort) operate alongside a broader US Jewish presence in crypto venture (Pantera, Paradigm, Multicoin Capital, Variant Fund, and others have Jewish founders or senior principals). The crossover between the US Jewish hedge fund world and crypto venture is substantial; several of the major hedge fund houses examined in Spoke 2 have built crypto allocations or operating businesses.
What It Means
Crypto is the youngest meaningful layer of Jewish capital. The Israeli infrastructure cluster is one of the most significant national footprints in global crypto by technical depth and institutional positioning. The wealth is concentrated in fewer principals than the older layers but operates at substantial scale at the firm level. The next institutional layer of Jewish capital — the family offices, the hedge funds, the private equity firms — increasingly allocates into this category.
The capital is real. The institutions are named. The data is the receipt.
Part of the Olam Jewish Capital cluster. Hub: Mapping Jewish Capital 2026. Related: The Israeli Tech Founder Generation · The Israeli Billionaires · The Hedge Fund Generation.
