Is there a bunch of money Forbes isn’t counting or something?
There is no way of knowing. There are only some public transactions, and they are fixed in time that assume it was never lost.
Additionally you would have no idea if he's holding a bunch of Dogecoin from the lows or an investor in extremely high performing PE/VC/Hedge funds.
People's balance sheets are all nuanced.
Those lists are not really worth anyone's time.
Slightly rich people want to exaggerate their wealth as much as possible.
Ultimately magazines like Forbes have very little real data to go off of, and so these lists all need to be taken with a huge grain of salt. If they were forced to put error bars on their projections people would see how worthless they really are.
"Thiel owns about 8% of Palantir Technologies, according to an analysis of its April 2021 proxy filing. He's credited with shares held directly as well as those held by Thiel Capital, PLTR Holdings, PT Ventures, STS Holdings II, FF4 Investment, Rivendell 7 and Rivendell 25 because he's the beneficial owner of these entities."
"The billionaire indirectly owns stakes in various companies through his interest in venture capital firm, Founders Fund. His stake in the firm is calculated to be 42.5% based on information in the company's 2021 Form ADV filing. It's valuation assumes insiders own 22% of the $24.5 billion in assets managed across its funds. "
"The value of his cash investments is valued based on proceeds from share sales, carried interest and reported data from Thiel's federal tax returns. It includes the value of his hedge funds."
https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/profiles/peter-a-thie...