Alibaba’s Jack Ma and a number of crypto players have made it onto the annual Hurun China Rich List, which covers those with a net worth over 2 billion yuan ($209 million).

The listicle notes that Ma, 54, climbed back to the position of richest man in China, just weeks after announcing his retirement from Alibaba. “The US$10 billion growth in his wealth to US$39 billion was mainly due to a new round of investment in Alipay’s mothership, Ant Financial. Jack Ma founded two of China’s most valuable companies.”

“By the end of September 2018, Alibaba’s market value hit US$390 billion, making it the most valuable company from China and top 10 in the world, whilst the value of Ant Financial shot past US$100 billion. Ma’s successor, Daniel Zhang Yong, also made the list with US$580 million, ranking him at 1,007. Ma made 90% of his fortune after the age of 50, which should give people under the age of 50 a lot of hope.”

Blockchain leader

Alibaba nabbed the top spot, ahead of IBM, on a recent iPR Daily list that ranks global organisations by the number of blockchain-related patents they’ve filed.

The media outlet used data up until 10^th August from across China, the EU, America, Japan and South Korea, and also consulted the International Patent System from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

Alibaba filed 90 blockchain-related patent applications and IBM was close behind with 89. In third place was Mastercard (80) followed by Bank of America (53). Next up was People’s Bank of China (PBoC), which has filed a total of 44 patent applications around its central bank digital currency project

Crypto big shots

Also on the Hurun China Rich List are Binance founder Zhao Changpeng, OKCoin crypto exchange founder Star Xu and founder of Huobi Li Lin.

Zhang Nangeng, founder of computer hardware manufacturer Canaan Creative, and Hu Dong, founder of Bitcoin mining machine producer Ebang International Holdings are also in the mix, as is serial investor Li Xiaolai.