Jeff Bezos Net Worth, Crypto, and NFT Investments

According to Forbes, the net worth of Jeff Bezos is around $149.3 billion. He acquired most of his wealth through the successes of his e-commerce firm, Amazon in recent years. According to our findings, Jeff became a millionaire in 1998 after his e-commerce firm went public. Meanwhile, Amazon almost went bankrupt in 2002 as a result of his heavy commitment to expanding its services. But, the firm managed to survive and has, since, grown from strength to strength.

At the height of his wealth, Jeff Bezos had a net worth of about $177 billion. Meanwhile, the Amazon founder has been the subject of heavy criticism over his philanthropic ideology. He’s the only one among the top five (5) billionaires who refused to sign “the Giving Pledge.” The criticism gained momentum after his former partner and one of the early contributors to Amazon, MacKenzie Scott signed the Giving Pledge following her divorce from Jeff Bezos in 2019. She has reportedly donated more than $14 billion to charity since that period.

Away from Amazon, Jeff Bezos is also the founder of Blue Origin; a spaceship firm that came into existence in 2000. With Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos focused on his childhood dream of building hotels, amusement parks, and colonies for human beings residing in orbit.

Jeff Bezos’ Net Worth Since 2019

Early Life

Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on January 12, 1964. He had a tough beginning owing to the marriage and financial crisis of his parents, Jacklyn and Ted Jorgensen. The couples were young when they gave birth to Jeff. His father, Ted is a Danish-American unicyclist from a Baptist family. He was 19 years old when Jeff was born. Jacklyn on the other hand was a 17-year-old high school student when she gave birth to Jeff. It was very difficult for Jacklyn to complete her high school education due to the responsibility of looking after young Jeff. Nevertheless, she managed to see herself through. After completing her high school education, Jacklyn attended a night school, attending classes with her baby.

Jeff was just seventeen months old when Jacklyn filed for a divorce in 1955. She left Ted and moved in with her parents. This was due to Ted’s financial struggles and his heavy consumption of  alcohol. At age two, Jeff enrolled in a Montessori school in Albuquerque. Three years after Jacklyn left Ted, she married a Cuban immigrant, Miguel “Mike” Bezos. Thereafter, Mike adopted Jeff who was four years old then. Consequently,  Mike legally changed little Jeff’s surname from Jorgensen to Bezos. Also, the new family relocated to avoid contact with Jorgensen. However, during this period, Mike was running a program at the University of New Mexico. The new family relocated to Houston, Texas, upon the completion of Mike’s program at this institution. In Houston, Mike worked with Exxon as an engineer. While growing up in Texas, Jeff Bezos often used his parents’ garage as a laboratory for his science projects.

After a while, the family relocated again to Miami, Florida. Due to that, Jeff Bezos was enrolled at the Miami Palmetto High School. While he was in high school, he worked briefly at McDonald’s as a short-order line cook, particularly during the breakfast shift. Also, he showed interest in tech and engineering at a very young age. At one point, he was in attendance for the Student Science Training Program at the University of Florida. He graduated from high school as a bright gem, winning numerous accolades for his brilliance. By the time he graduated, Jeff Bezos already won a National Merit Scholar award. Also, in 1982, he won a Silver Knight Award. For the first time, the young Jeff became the subject of media attention when he told the audience in his graduation speech that he dreamed of the day man would colonize the outer space.

In 1986, he received a Bachelor of Science in Engineering from Princeton University. As an outstanding student, Jeff Bezos graduated summa cum laude from the University with a 4.2 GPA. He heavily engaged in some notable extracurricular activities while at this University. He was a member of the Phi Beta and Kappa and the Quadrangle Club. More so, he served as the president of the Princeton chapter of the Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS). Similarly, Jeff Bezos was also elected into Tau Beta Pi.

Upon his graduation, Jeff Bezos received a lot of offers from top tech organizations like Intel, Bell Labs, and Andersen Consulting. However, he opted for Fitel, a fintech start-up. At this firm, Bezos was first saddled with the responsibility of building an international trade network. Later on, he became the head of development and director of customer service. He left Fitel and worked briefly with Bankers Trust as the product manager between 1988 to 1990. At the end of his two-year stint with Bankers Trust, Jeff Bezos joined D. E. Shaw & Co.

Amazon

Jeff Bezos conceived the idea of establishing Amazon in 1994. He gained inspiration after reading how usage of the Internet grew at an alarming rate of 2300% yearly. Due to that, he decided to establish his online bookstore. To focus on Amazon, Jeff Bezos alongside his then-wife, MacKenzie Scott resigned from their respective positions at D. E. Shaw & Co. The couple rented a garage in Bellevue, Washington in July I995 to serve as an office space for the firm. Likewise, he designed a business plan for Amazon during a cross-country drive from New York to Seattle.

Initially, Jeff Bezos named the organization Cadabra. However, he had a rethink later on and settled for Amazon.  He resorted to the name Amazon for visibility purposes mainly. Then, web listings were alphabetized, and due to that, Jeff Bezos realized that Amazon would appear before Cadanra due to the letter A which is at the beginning of the alphabet. Also, Amazon as the World’s largest river was a source of inspiration for Jeff Bezos. He once described how he intended to make his company the largest bookshop the same way Amazon is the world’s largest river. The firm gained a significant financial boost at the start after Jeff Bezos’s parents invested $300,000 in it.

At the inception of the organization, Amazon only had Jeff Bezos and MacKenzie Scott as its employees. Jeff Bezos managed the administrative part and day-to-day running of the organization. MacKenzie Scott, on the other hand, focused on the firm’s finances. She was in charge of the firm’s first freight contract negotiation.

Meanwhile, Jeff Bezos once considered establishing Amazon at an Indian reservation close to San Francisco to avoid paying taxes. In 1998, Jeff Bezos organized an Initial Public Offering (ICO). The success of the ICO made the Amazon founder a millionaire. Although, he warned early investors that there is a huge likelihood that Amazon would go bankrupt. However, on the flip slip, he was confident that the growth of the internet will aid the development of the new company.

In 1998, Bezos in an attempt to grow the company, diversified into the online sale of music and video. Also, the firm extended its services to other consumer goods. The efforts to expand were aided by the funds Amazon acquired through its equity offering. Part of the funds also assisted Jeff Bezos and Amazon to execute their plan of dominating the market by buying smaller competitors.

Around 2000, the firm’s shortage of cash balances compelled Jeff Bezos to take a $2 billion loan from banks. The dip in cash balance seems to be a pointer to an impending financial crisis due to excessive spending of Amazon towards its expansion efforts. The firm was on the brink of bankruptcy in 2002 after it plunged into a financial crisis. Due to that, Amazon laid off about 14% of its workforce and shut down some distribution centers.

However, things quickly changed for good the following year as the firm recorded a profit of $400 million. Amazon enjoyed a progressive run that saw its emergence as the largest online retailer in the world in 2013. In 2017, Amazon increased its workforce, adding not less than 130,000 new employees. The financial growth of Amazon contributed massively to the growing net worth of Jeff Bezos.

The same year, the billionaire became the wealthiest man on earth after overtaking Bill Gates. During that period, the net worth of Jeff Bezos soared to $90 billion. Likewise, he recorded a personal outstanding feat that saw his wealth surpass $100 billion around November 2017. Jeff Bezos officially became the wealthiest person in the world on March 16, 2018, after his net worth attained $112 billion according to Forbes.

Jeff Bezos always had the intention of expanding into the Indian market owing to the success of Ali Baba in China. In 2018, the global senior Vice President of Amazon, Amit Agarwal was transferred to India to pursue this goal. According to our findings, Amazon invested $5.5 billion to localize its operations across numerous supply chain routes.  However, the value of Amazon and the net worth of Jeff Bezos began to dip massively after an accusation from President Joe Biden.

 In April 2018, the President accused Amazon of avoiding tax, misusing postal routes, and anti-competitive business practices. In a relative pattern, the value of Amazon shares dipped by 9% which caused Jeff Bezo to lose $10.7 million. Although, things improved slightly a few weeks later. In February 2021, Jeff Bezos revealed his intention to step down from his role as CEO of Amazon to become the Executive Chairman of the Amazon Board. He was succeeded as CEO by Andy Jassy.

Blue Origin

Jeff Bezos in the past has registered interest in exploring the space. This interest in September 2000, led to the establishment of Blue Origin. After founding Blue Origin, the firm was relatively quiet until it acquired a large tract of land in West Texas for a launch in 2006. During this period, Rob Meyerson served as its president. In 2012, the firm suffered a setback in its effort after its prototype vehicle crashed during a short-hop test flight.

Blue Origin, however, recorded a major headway in November 2013 as it successfully launched its New Shepard into space. In 2018, an effort on the New Shepard journeyed decoy passengers into space. Consequently, Blue Origin amended and pushed its human space travel start date into late 2018. In a bid to pursue this goal, the organization designed six (6) spaceships to carry out the phases of testing and operations. Jeff Besoz began selling his Amazon stock starting in 2016 to finance the pursuit of Blue Origin’s advancement.

For Jeff Bezos, the Blue Ocean is a dream come true for him. In May 2018, he disclosed that the New Shepard will start transporting humans into space by the fourth quarter of the year. Reports disclosed that the billionaire placed a price tag on the space flights which ranges between $200,000 to $300,000 per person.

In September 2022, Blue Origin endured an uncrewed launch failure which compelled the firm to commence an investigation regarding the issue. However, it has been the subject of damaging allegations regarding its culture and the safety of its suborbital launch system. As of December 2022, Blue Ocean has carried passengers to space on a suborbital spaceflight on six different occasions.

Philanthropy

Aside from being a successful tech entrepreneur, Jeff Bezos is also known as a cheerful giver. He has donated heavily to various charitable causes and organizations. Jeff Bezos, on various occasions, donated to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Also, in 2013, he donated $500,000 to Worldreader, a not-for-profit organization established by a former employee of Amazon. Furthermore, in May 2017, Jeff Bezos donated $1 million to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. The billionaire made the donation so as to provide journalists’ access to subsidized legal counsel. As of 2017, Jeff Bezos has donated about $100 million to charity.

In January 2018, Jeff Bezos committed $33 million to TheDream.US. The organization runs a college scholarship fund for undocumented immigrants that came to the United States as minors. Also in 2018, he donated to Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a private philanthropic fund established by Bill Gates. The Breakthrough Energy Ventures came into the limelight to promote emissions-free energy. Later that year, Jeff Bezos also contributed $10 million to With Honor, a nonpartisan body that aims to increase the number of veterans in political office.

Meanwhile, a report in September 2018 revealed that Jeff Bezos is the only one among the top five billionaires in the world who had chosen not to sign “the Giving Pledge.” The Giving Pledge is a charity movement that was established by Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. The charity setup encourages wealthy people to donate the majority of their wealth during their lifetime. Later that year, Jeff Bezos announced that he would earmark $2 billion to a fund to deal with American homelessness and establish a network of non-profit preschools for low-income communities.

Jeff Bezos, in another philanthropic act, committed $10 billion through the Bezos Earth Fund in February 2020. The fund, according to Jeff  Bezos, was aimed at combating climate change. In total, the Amazon boss has donated over $12.2 billion to various charitable courses. This includes a $100 million donation to food banks during the COVID-19 pandemic. Likewise, the billionaire established the Bezos Academy; a group of tuition-free preschools for students from low-income families. In November 2022, Jeff Bezos pledged a $100 million Courage and Civility Award to singer Dolly Parton in recognition of her charity work towards improving children’s literacy around the world.

Is Jeff Bezos Pro Crypto?

Over the years, Jeff Bezos has been rumored to be among the wealthy figures supporting cryptocurrency. Till today, the multi-billionaire is yet to publicly confirm his admiration and support for the assets. However, there are pointers that he believes in the potential of cryptocurrency and its underlying tech, blockchain. This is due to the numerous reports linking his firm; Amazon to the innovations.

While the crypto world still awaits Bezos’ confirmation of his support for crypto, many have described Amazon’s relationship with blockchain as an indicator. Recall that the firm had in 2018, entered into a strategic deal with Kaleido, a blockchain start-up. It is believed that Bezos is a nonvocal crypto and blockchain optimist who prefers to aid the innovations through the activities of his firm rather than talk about them. At a time, the influential CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao described Amazon as the significant catalyst for cryptocurrency.

Around 2021, there were reports that Bazos had issued a directive to ensure the acceptance of Bitcoin as a means of payment by Amazon. According to an inside source, the firm also aimed to create its own digital currency at that time. Although the firm is yet to accept Bitcoin nor create its native crypto, it is more likely to do that any time soon.

Credible sources affirm that the multinational technology company could be experimenting with crypto through its Web Services (AWS). It is worth mentioning that AWS is the firm’s cloud-based blockchain platform. Today; several crypto firms, including Crypto.com and many more leverage AWS to foster their security posture and privacy controls. These firms pay as high as billions of dollars annually to Amazon to access this solution. Amazon’s activities within the blockchain and crypto space signifies that its billionaire founder thins about the innovations quite well.

As one of the biggest names across the globe, Jeff Bezos’ public commentaries on any crypto asset will overwhelm its value. Just like Elon Musk, whatever Bezos write on social media about crypto can certainly drive the market up or down. Musk’s support for crypto has never been doubtful as he has, over the years, been vocal about it. Since 2019, he promoted Dogecoin as his favorite crypto, a development which suddenly spiked the value of the meme coin. More so, his Tesla firm now accepts Doge for payment.

Possibly, Bezos might also do the same for the crypto asset he supports in the distant future. But, there are speculations that the billionaire Amazon founder also support Dogecoin. This is due to his decision to start following Dogecoin co-founder, Billy Markus on Twitter. Fans of the meme coin believes the development means a lot for the project. Certainly, any public affirmation by Bezos can send the token to the sky.

This explains why scammers have always chosen to compromise Bezos’ image to dupe unsuspecting investors of their funds. According to findings, the image of the Amazon founder, has over the years, been involved in numerous crypto frauds, with at least £158,000 equivalent to almost $196,000 lost in a single incident. Just recently, his image was manipulated to abruptly promote a crypto trading and investment platform on Google.

Around 2020, his Twitter handle alongside that of Joe Biden, Barrack Obama, Warren Buffett, and a few other prominent figures was hacked in an attempt to abruptly promote a Bitcoin scam. The hacker leveraged the accounts to convey dubious messages, including promising to double the money of anyone who sends their assets through Bitcoin to a particular address. However, a few hours later, Twitter was able to address the issue and proactively prevented what could have become one of the biggest exploitations on its platform.

Tough day for us at Twitter. We all feel terrible this happened.

We’re diagnosing and will share everything we can when we have a more complete understanding of exactly what happened.

💙 to our teammates working hard to make this right.

— jack (@jack) July 16, 2020

Jeff Bezos’ Crypto and NFT Holdings

If speculations about Jeff Bezos’ support for digital assets are true, then it means the billionaire certainly has a crypto portfolio. Over the years, Bezos unlike other notable celebrities, has chosen to be reticent about his crypto and NFT holdings and its possible overall value. This thus makes information about his crypto investment unavailable for public access. However, some sources claim Bezos holds Bitcoin, Ethereum, Doge, and a few other altcoins in his portfolio.

Bezos’ purported investment in Bitcoin must have yielded well. This is due to the aggressive rise in the price of the crypto in recent years. If Jeff Bezos had truly exposed himself to Bitcoin during its earliest stage as claimed by some publications, then the dividends from the investment must have contributed significantly to his net worth. However, we cannot regard him as one of the prominent Bitcoin investors yet until he publicly confirms his holdings.

Crypto and NFT Projects Featuring Jeff Bezos

Despite being close-mouthed about his perception about digital assets, there is an NFT collection featuring the billionaire Amazon founder. Known as “Jeff Bezos of Space Boy,” the collection features an illustration of Bezos in a blue astronaut suit while in space. Recall that the billionaire is the first civilian to travel to the space via his blue origin firm. At the moment, the collection sells for 0.0045 ETH equivalent to $7.83 on the Mintable app.

Apart from this, Jeff Bezos has also been featured on Wall Street Memes; a popular meme coin project. Over the years, Wall Street Memes has been able to venture into the NFT and crypto spheres. Its performance in the NFT market was quite remarkable as its collection, Wall St Bulls NFT collection sold within a few minutes of going live on OpenSea.

Today, the project is widely known on Twitter and Instagram for its stimulating memes about situations in the stock and crypto markets. Apart from Bezos, other influential personalities like Elon Musk, Warren Buffett, Jim Cramer, Donald Trump, and many more have been featured in its memes. By virtue of this, it has been able to win the attention of many in the industry, including Musk.

Around May 2023, Wall Street Memes expanded its presence in the crypto sphere by launching the presale of its token. Although the presale is still unfolding, it has been able to raise a huge amount of funds, thereby making our list as one of the most successful crypto presales ever. The token, $WSM is described as one of the next cryptocurrency to fly high by virtue of its current performances. For those willing to participate in the presale, visit wallstmemes.com.

Jeff Bezos’ Net Worth – Our Verdict

According to Forbes estimates, Jeff Bezos is currently the third-wealthiest man on earth; with a net worth of about $149.3 billion. He made most of his fortunes through the various successes attained by his firm, Amazon. Apart from this; Jeff Bezos also grew his net worth by engaging in numerous traditional investments including real estate, transportation, and many more.

Just like Warren Buffett and a few other wealthy personalities, Bezos is a cheerful giver. Over the years, he sponsored several charitable and educational projects through his foundation. Although he is yet to publicly affirm his support for crypto, credible sources describe him as a staunch admirer of the assets. It is not in doubt that whatever Bezos thinks of crypto, if made public, will certainly impacts its adoption and overall performance.

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