Search “Dan Bilzerian Net Worth” on Google, and the first figure that pops up is an eye-watering $150 million from celebrityanswers.com. A better-known wealth tracker, Celebrity Net Worth, claims the self-proclaimed “King of Instagram” is worth an even more astronomical $200 million. If true, the $5,000 he offered to fan-source the title of his upcoming autobiography would be a drop in Bilzerian’s figurative bucket. Given that his IG feed is dedicated almost entirely to cavalcades of bikini-clad women, lavish parties and guns, it’s easy to wonder what how Bilzerian accumulated his wealth.
Poker is purportedly a large factor, but he had a leg up from the beginning. MoneyINC reports that he and his brother, Adam Bilzerian, both inherited a sizable trust fund from their father. That’s almost certainly where he got the the money to launch his professional poker career in 2009, when he finished in the cash in 180th place at the World Series of Poker main event, taking home a relatively modest $36,262.
That was his last professional poker tournament, but Bilzerian continued to play high-stakes cash games. This is where the initial source of his fortune comes into dispute. He claimed to have won $10.8 million in a single night of hands in 2013, and a grand total of $50 million throughout 2014, according to Upswing Poker. These figures, which have never been confirmed, raised suspicions among many in the poker community, notably Doug Polk. The YouTuber and fellow poker pro called Bilzerian merely a “fish in the water” due to his overly aggressive play style and lack of solid fundamentals after analyzing an online session that Bilzerian live-streamed to Twitch. Polk’s analysis have lead many to believe that his millions largely come from his trust fund.
Regardless of his poker earnings and skills, Bilzerian now has other sources of revenue. With 32.5 million Instagram, Influencer Marketing Hub’s potential earnings calculator estimates that the Blitz can make between $64,000 and $107,848 per post of bevies of beauties in the Dan Bilzerian house. He’s also the CEO of Ignite, a CBD company that’s branded similarly to Bilzerian’s social media persona with sexy female Ignite models. Unfortunately, Ignite was $50 million in the red, which has forced him to relocate from the aforementioned LA mansion. And things aren’t going better now, with Ignite reporting $1.6 million in sales amounting to just $600,000 in actual profit per Forbes.
Reports on Ignite CBD’s performance as a business has been stagnant in recent months. But in addition to launching a vodka under the Ignite brand name, the company is attempting to tap into another massive substance delivery system: nicotine vaping.
The Puff Ignite webstore sells a variety of disposable vape pens: a prefilled Blu e-cigarette-style V3, another pre-charged device with a larger capacity, and a heavier-duty rig that’s also disposable—note that none of theses feature refillable pod systems, so buyers have to continue to re-purchase. I couldn’t find any independent reviews of these vapes, but across online vape retailers Huff and Puffers and Alternative Pods, all reviews 16 reviews are five-stars, save for one still-complimentary four-star.
I’m personally a big proponent of vaping, having smoked for a decade before making the switch to something that hasn’t yet been proven to be harmful to my health (I suspect vapes just aren’t as bad for you as cigs, but far from safe). I’m also skeptical about the fact that what few reviews are out there are all overwhelmingly positive. I wouldn’t be shocked in the slightest if Bilzerian paid customers to write glowing comments.
But without having tried Ignite vapes, I’ll say that their range of flavors—banana ice, lychee, watermelon, icy mint, peach, strawberry guava ice, blueberry ice, lemon ice, cherry ice, raspberry orange ice, blue razz ice, cucumber ice, peach cantaloupe papaya, green apple peach kiwi, orange ice, tobacco and menthol—is far superior to almost all disposable e-cig brands. Ignite’s vape store has that going for it.
In general though, it seems that Ignite is attempting to bring too many products to market before it’s successful. Instead of selling synthetic nicotine, a vodka, men’s and women’s apparel and accessories, a calorie-free “performance beverage” and eight different CBD products, focusing on one or a few quality products and building a loyal customer base would be the prudent move. I don’t have any business degree to back that advice up, but I can hear Mark Cuban saying just that if Bilzerian and co. were featured on an episode of Shark Tank.
So if Ignite fails as financial outlets predict, the Instagram playboy will either have to hit the poker tables again or dip deeper into the trust fund, depending on where his money actually comes from. And it looks like he’s taking the former option.
According to Online Poker Report, Bilzerian recently signed a sponsorship deal with GGPoker. The online card hall cropped up in 2014, but has recently seen a surge in popularity with the tapping of top pros including Daniel Negreanu, Elky, Fedor Holz, Brynn Kenney, and Felipe Ramos for ambassadorship.
Bilzerian, who has achieved none of the titles or community recognition of the aforementioned players, may seem like an odd choice to poker fans. Until one considers massive 32.7-million Instagram following and his penchant for getting his name in the news, often controversially. And for better or worse, he managed to splash the pot on the day he inked a deal.
OPR adds that Bilzerian called female poker player and GGPoker customer Vanessa Kade a “hoe” on Twitter after she openly disproved of his hiring announcement.
“Sponsoring a sleazy, sexist tool with toxic followers as poker’s biggest ambassador lends validity to the idea that he’s an accurate representation of our sport, Kade wrote. “Not unlike supporting a president with similar traits because he would benefit our bottom line. Not worth the price.”
Fast-forward a few months, and GGPoker terminated its contract with Kade. The GGPoker employee who sent the email reportedly scolded Kade for her comments, saying that as a woman who was treated well by the company, she was offended.
GGPoker then did damage controller by tweeting out a lengthy statement.
“GGPoker recently ended an affiliate relationship with a former partner [Kade] due to their violation of our terms & conditions. There were on-going actions over three months. While the timing of our ending of the agreement was poor, we could not continue that partnership when there are over 1,000 ffiliates who are following our rules and continuing to work hard with us to grow the game.”
In a reply to that tweet, GGPoker also made a sort of half-apology to Kade, writing ” we our sorry for how [Kade] feels about our recent ambassador signing. We do hope things improve between you.” (For what it’s worth, Kade recently won the PokerStars Sunday Millions 15th Anniversary tournament, beating out 70,000 entrants to take home $1.5 million.)
This won’t be the last time Dan Bilzerian says something controversial, but he may have special clauses built into his GGPoker contract. A quick look through his Twitter feed reveals a number of statements that are definitely offensive to some. Such statements include, “Stop apologizing for your skin color you fucking retards, enough with the virtue signaling” in response to Coca-Cola training their employees to “be less white” and “I don’t care what anyone says, if you’re a dude and you pay these bitches on only fans you’re a sucker.”
And despite what’s been written about Ignite’s economic efficacy, Bilzerian recently tweeted a screen grab stating that fourth-quarter revenue in 2020 was $10.1 million, exceeding the past three quarters’ revenue combined.
“Ignite announces a profitable 4th quarter, I guess the press and the dumb fucking YouTubers were wrong. Shocking,” he tweeted.
As for the aforementioned book, he recently tweeted that it was finished in the most Bilzerian way possible.
“I finished my book, 360 pages in 57 days. It took me 15 hours a day with one day off. I only smoked weed 3 times and I went 10 days without sex.”
