Methodology of this list was based on quantitative company and biographical information being available. Click here to read more about how data was gathered.
1. CZ
CZ is the founder and CEO of Binance, presently the world's fastest-growing crypto exchange. Previously the CTO of OKCoin and a developer for Blockchain.info, CZ has been involved in the crypto space for years and this year landed on Forbes's list of the richest people in crypto.
2. Brian Armstrong
3. Vitalik Buterin
4. Tyler Winklevoss
Tyler is the Principal of Winklevoss Capital and co-founder and CEO of Gemini, a next-generation digital asset exchange. Winklevoss was the world's first bitcoin billionaire, and this year he helped to launch the Gemini dollar, a stablecoin designed to provide liquidity to crypto traders.
5. Brad Garlinghouse
Brad is now the CEO of crypto payments startup Ripple, which launched its xCurrent international payment protocol earlier this year. He was previously the CEO of file-sharing startup Hightail, and he also an active angel investor, with more than 40 startup investments made to date.
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6. Roger Ver
Roger was one of the earlier investors in the first crop of Bitcoin startups. He's now heavily involved with Bitcoin Cash, a hard fork of the original Bitcoin protocol that is intended to be used as cash (while fixing some of the key performance issues that have plagued Bitcoin Core in the process).
7. Barry Silbert
Barry is the founder and CEO of the Digital Currency Group, a crypto incubator and investment fund that's already been in operation for several years. In addition, he's the CEO of Grayscale Investments, a digital currency investment fund that runs the Bitcoin Investment Trust, a private trust invested exclusively in Bitcoin.
8. Jihan Wu
Jihan is one of the co-founders of Bitmain, the world's largest crypto mining company. With a net worth estimated at more than $2B, he's one of the most influential members of the blockchain industry. Prior to Bitmain, Jihan earned an economics degree for his undergraduate studies at Peking University.
9. Michael Novogratz
Formerly a hedge fund manager with Fortress Investment Group, Michael is now the CEO of crypto investment firm Galaxy Investment Partners. Roughly 20% of Novogratz's network is held in cryptocurrencies, and the famed investor is a noted "Bitcoin bull" - he previousuly predicted a price target of $20K for the cryptocurrency next year.
10. Adam Back
Adam is a renowned cryptographer and inventor best known for inventing hashcash, a proof of work system that is used by numerous email providers to combat spam. He's now the CEO of Blockstream, a startup that's focused on developing sidechains and other applications for the crypto ecosystem.
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11. Kathleen Breitman
Kathleen is the cofounder of Tezos, a decentralized governance platform, and she also plays an active role in its nonprofit entity, the Tezos Foundation.
12. Cameron Winklevoss
One half of the dynamic Winklevoss brothers, Cameron is a Co-Founder and President of the Gemini Exchange, and he's also a Principal at crypto investment fund Winklevoss Capital.
13. Pieter Wuille
Pieter is a renowned developer who focuses on Bitcoin Core, and he was instrumental in getting SegWit added to the protocol early on. He's also the co-founder of crypto startup Blockstream, which incidentally helps provide continued funding for the development of Bitcoin Core.
14. Joseph Lubin
After co-founding Ethereum, Lubin then became the founder of ConsenSys, which works on blockchain infrastructure and software projects. In addition to setting up ConsenSys VC and the Ethereum Foundation, Lubin has become an active angel investor in the crypto space.
15. Nick Szabo
A renowned cryptographer and computer scientist, Nick helped develop the entire concept of "smart contracts", and was the inventor of Bit Gold - a predecessor to Bitcoin that was release in the late 1990s. Szabo continues to actively perform research in the crypto space.
16. Brendan Blumer
Brendan is the CEO of Block.one, the company behind EOS's distributed ledge software. The Hong Kong-based entrepreneur raised more than $4B in funding for EOS's ICO, and he's now helping to build the EOS development community around the world.
17. Charlie Lee
Former Coinbase employee Charlie Lee is perhaps best known for creating Litecoin, which is now one of the largest cryptocurrencies in the world today in terms of market cap. Lee now spends the majority of his time working with the Litecoin Foundation to drive adoption.
18. Peter Smith
Peter is the CEO and co-founder of Blockchain, the world's most popular crypto wallet. Earlier this year, Peter launched Blockchain Principal Strategies, an institutional platform that helps investors gain more exposure to cryptocurrency via an over-the-counter trading desk.
19. Juan Benet
Juan is the founder and CEO of Protocol Labs, the company behind innovations like IPFS (a hypermedia protocol) and Filecoin (a crypto-driven file storage network). He's a serial entrepreneur that has started up businesses in fields as diverse as mobile gaming and knowledge sharing.
20. Dr Craig S Wright
Craig is a computer scientist and entrepreneur perhaps best known for his involvement as one of the key pioneers behind Bitcoin. He's now one of the leaders of the Bitcoin SV protocol, created in late 2018.
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21. Brandon Chez
Brandon is the CEO of CoinMarketCap, a website which tracks crypto prices and data for more than a thousand cryptocurrencies. It's now one of the world's top sources for crypto data, and has significant influence on the markets themselves.
22. Elizabeth Stark
Elizabeth is the founder and CEO of Lightning Labs, a San Francisco-based blockchain development startup. Earlier this year, she became a fellow at the Coin Center, a research center focused on developing government policy around decentralized technologies.
23. Charles Hoskinson
Charles is a serial entrepreneur in the crypto industry, having founded three crypto startups (IOHK, Invictus Innovations, and Ethereum) in the past several years. He is also involved in developing Cardano, a third-generation cryptocurrency launched last year.
24. Olaf Carlson-Wee
Olaf is the billionare CEO and founder of Polychain Capital, a crypto hedge fund that manages hundreds of millions in assets. Prior to founding Polychain, Olaf spent several years as a Product Manager at Coinbase.
25. Mike Kayamori
Mike is the CEO of Liquid, the first global cryptocurrency exchange to be regulated by the Japanese Financial Services Agency. Prior to Liquid, Mike held c-level positions at Softbank, Gungho Asia and Bharti Group.
26. John McAfee
John McAfee is a crypto investor and entrepreneur. His ventures range from serving as CEO of enterprise crypto startup Luxcore, to doing influencer marketing for emerging cryptocurrencies.
27. Pavel Durov
The serial Russian entrepreneur is perhaps best known for orchestrating Telegram's record-setting ICO last year, but he also founded VKontakte (Russia's equivalent to Facebook) and is involved in a number of other crypto projects as a mentor and advisor.
28. Yuzo Kano
After an extensive career in banking at Goldman Sachs, Yuzo founded bitFlyer, one of Japan's longest-running crypto exchanges (and the fourth-largest in the world in terms of annual turnover). He's now leading the exchange on an ambitious international expansion program.
29. Laura Shin
Laura is Forbes's senior editor covering crypto and blockchain technology, writing regularly for both its website and Forbes magazine. In addition, she also hosts Unchained - one of the most popular and top-rated podcasts in crypto.
30. Kathryn Haun
Kathryn is a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, and is an independent director at Coinbase, where she helps lead its Audit and Risk divisions. Prior to her time in the crypto industry, Kathryn was a federal prosecutor for the US Department of Justice, where she focused on financial fraud cases.
31. Jed McCaleb
Jed is the cofounder and CTO of the crypto startup Stellar. Prior to helping startup Stellar, Jed was the CTO of Ripple, and he's perhaps best-known for creating the ill-fated Mt Gox exchange (which shuttered in 2014). Jed also founded the eDonkey network, a pioneering P2P network that facilitated file transfers for thousands of users around the world.
32. Dan Morehead
Dan is the founder and CEO of Pantera Capital, one of the best-performing crypto hedge funds in the world and one of the first hedge funds to launch blockchain-focused products for investors. He's also the chairman of Bitstamp, one of the world's largest crypto exchanges.
33. Nejc Kodrič
Nejc is the cofounder and CEO of Bitstamp, one of the world's highest-volume crypto exchanges. Involved in crypto since 2011, Nejc was an early adopter of Bitcoin and eventually built Bitstamp into the first fully-licensed digital currency exchange in the EU.
34. Dominik Schiener
Italian entrepreneur Dominik Schiener is the co-founder of blockchain startup IOTA, which is building a next generation blockchain that operates on a trustless basis. He's also the co-chairman of the IOTA Foundation, which encourages development on the platform and helps to foster the broader IOTA community.
35. Bryan Bishop
Bryan is a well-known developer focused on Bitcoin Core, and he's also a key source of updates on crypto for the Bitcoin development community. Earlier this year, Bryan made waves for his letter to the SEC warning against enterprise adoption of crypto.
36. Jesse Powell
Jesse is the founder and CEO of the Kraken Bitcoin exchange, one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world in terms of trading volume. He's been involved with digital currencies for more than 15 years, and previously ran an online gaming startup for more than a decade.
37. Arianna Simpson
Arianna is the Managing Director and Founder of crypto hedge fund Autonomous Partners, which has already raised more than $10M from investors like Coinbase and Union Square Ventures. Arianna also advises several other crypto startups, and was an early employee at crypto exchange BitGo, now a leader in the institutional-grade crypto products industry.
38. Bart Stephens
Bart is a co-founder and Managing Partner at Blockchain Capital, a VC investmend fund focused on the crypto and blockchain space. In addition, he also heads up his own family fund, Stephens Investment Management, which takes a diversified investment strategy beyond crypto.
39. Marc Andreessen
Legendary entrepreneur and investor Marc Andreessen has long been on the cutting edge of crypto, and this year he extended his stake in the technology by setting up a16z Crypto, a $300M VC fund that's now focused exclusively on investing in promising crypto and blockchain projects.
40. Daniel Larimer
Daniel is a serial crypto entrepreneur and the CTO of Block.one, which oversees development of the EOS protocol and platform. He's also the inventor of DPOS, a revolutionary proof of stake-driven consensus algorithm.
41. Tricia Martinez
Tricia is the founder and CEO of Wala, a blockchain-based financial services app that's seeking to accelerate the adoption of cryptocurrencies in emerging markets. The Cape Town-based entrepreneur also heads up Wala's nonprofit arm, the Dala Foundation.
42. Arthur Hayes
Arther is the co-founder and CEO of BitMex, one of the world's largest crypto exchanges. With years of experience in the banking industry at Citigroup, Arthur is now helping the Hong Kong-based exchange execute on its ambitious growth strategy.
43. Bobby Lee
44. Valery Vavilov
Valery is the co-founder and CEO of Bitfury, Europe's largest Bitcoin mining company. In addition to conducting mining, Valery also helps the Bitfury Group develop its software and hardware solutions in the blockchain space for both enterprises and governments alike.
45. Adam Ludwin
Adam is the CEO of Interstellar, a blockchain startup formed by Chain (another of Adam's companies) and Lightyear to accelerate development of applications for the Stellar platform.
46. Charlie Shrem
Charlie is the founder of crypto advisory firm CryptoIQ, a co-founder of the Bitcoin Foundation, and the Head of Business Development at Jaxx, a crypto wallet service. Shrem helped found some of the earliest bitcoin startups, and has been an investor in Bitcoin since 2011.
47. Star Xu
Star is the co-founder and CEO of OKEx, one of the world's largest crypto exchanges. He recently announced plans to release a stablecoin pegged to the Chinese Yuan, which would be the first of its kind on the market today.
48. Michael Arrington
Perhaps best known as the founder of TechCrunch, Michael Arrington has now gotten involved in crypto in a big way. His investment fund, Arrington XRP Capital, invests in blockchain startups, with more than $100M in investments to date. Around 50% of Arrington's net worth is now held in crypto, and he recently announced plans to pivot XRP Capital to focusing on the Asia-Pacific region for future investments.
49. Naval Ravikant
A widely-respected thinker in the tech community, Naval looms large in the world of crypto as well - he's a prolific advisor and investor in numerous crypto startups. After founding AngelList in 2010, last year Naval spun off CoinList as a separate entity. The organization's goal is to provide quality ICO and advisory services to entrepreneurs and investors in the blockchain space.
50. Justin Sun
Justin is the founder and CEO of TRON (one of the largest cryptocurrencies in the world in terms of market cap), and he also heads up its nonprofit arm, the Tron Foundation. Prior to founding TRON, Justin spent several years at Ripple as its Chief Representative in China.
51. Blythe Masters
Blythe is the CEO of Digital Asset Holdings, a fintech startup that's developing distributed ledger technology for the financial industry. Previously, Blythe spent time as an executive at JP Morgan Chase.
52. Erik Voorhees
Erik is the CEO and founder of Zug-based Shapeshift - an instant, decentralized exchange for digital assets. He is also the cofounder of bitcoin startups Coinapult and SatoshiDice, and formerly was the Director of Marketing for BitInstant, one of the earliest crypto exchanges.
53. Don Tapscott
Don is a world-renowned author and pubilc speaker, and in recent years he's become more passionate about blockchain than ever. He's the founder of the Blockchain Research Institute, which helps organizations navigate the blockchain ecosystem, and co-wrote the bestselling book The Blockchain Revolution.
54. Apolo Anton Ohno
Eight-time US Olympic gold medalist Apolo Ohno recently began foraying into crypto when he founded HybridBlock, a crypto trading platform designed for novice and institutional investors alike. Ohno and his team plan to raise $50M in the platform's ICO, and have just launched the exchange's first line of products.
55. Vinny Lingham
Vinny is a crypto investor and entrepreneur who's the CEO and co-founder of Civic, an identity management platform. He's also the founder of SiliconCape, a nonprofit focused on attracting startups and tech investment to South Africa.
56. Anthony Pompliano
Anthony Pompliano is the founder of Morgan Creek Digital Assets, an investment firm that helps provide access to blockchain technology for institutional investors. He previously founded venture investment firm Full Tilt Capital, which was later sold to Morgan Creek.
57. Jimmy Song
Jimmy is a well-known Bitcoin educator, developer, and entrepreneur. Based in Austin, he runs the wildly popular "Programming Blockchain" course, which teaches the basics of blockchain development - and as a prominent public speaker, he's also a regular on the crypto conference circuit.
58. Ari Paul
Ari is the CIO and Managing Partner of BlockTower Capital, an investment firm that leverages professional trading and portfolio management in the crypto markets. Prior to his time in crypto, Ari was the portfolio manager for the principal hedge fund run by the University of Chicago.
59. Tuur Demeester
Tuur is the founder and CEO of Austin-based Adamant Capital, a crypto fund focused on investing in Bitcoin and other digital currencies. Tuur is also a widely-read cryptoeconomist, and he also speaks frequently at crypto conferences around the world.
60. Tim Draper
Tim Draper is one of the world's best-known venture capitalists, and he's perhaps most famous for his prescient 2014 purchase of 30,000 Bitcoins at a US government auction. He's well-known for his frequent Bitcoin price predictions, and reports on the crypto markets.
61. Connie Gallippi
Connie is the founder and Executive Director at BitGive, the world's first government-recognized Bitcoin nonprofit. The organization is aimed at leveraging cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology to empower charitable organizations around the world.
62. Ryan Selkis
Ryan is the Founder and CEO of Messari, an open data library for crypto assets. Prior to founding Messari, Ryan was the Managing Director of CoinDesk, one of the world's largest crypto news websites.
63. Riccardo Spagni
Riccardo is a critical member of the Monero Core team, and as its project lead, he's one of the key members maintaining the platform. With a background in software development, Riccardo is the most prolific developer working on Monero at the moment, and he's the public face of the organization as well - giving regular talks on the cryptocurrency at conferences and meetups around the world.
64. Jon Matonis
Jon Matonis is the founding director and executive director of the Bitcoin Foundation, an organization that's driving awareness around Bitcoin and establishing best practices around the platform for businesses to leverage. As a longtime banking professional, Matonis also serves on the board of directors at Globitex, an institutional-grade crypto exchange based in Lithuania.
65. Vlad Zamfir
Blockchain researcher Vlad Zamfir has been involved in crypto for years, and he's presently a full-time researcher at the Ethereum Foundation. He's now working on a solution for sharding the Ethereum blockchain, and presented a proof-of-concept for his idea at a hackathon earlier this year.
66. Da Hongfei
A true pioneer in Asia's crypto ecosystem, Da is the co-founder of NEO (formerly known as AntShares), one of the most widely-used cryptocurrencies in the world. He's also the founder and CEO of China-based OnChain, a blockchain technology firm that provides consulting services to businesses looking to build their own enterprise blockchains.
67. Mick Hagen
Mick is the founder and CEO of Mainframe, a blockchain-based communication network that's impervious to censorship or surveillance. He's also a budding angel investor, having made several investments in startups like MyCrypto and others in recent years.
68. Jeremy Allaire
Jeremy is the co-founder of Circle, a P2P crypto payments platform that allows users to store both fiat currency and crypto in one place. Prior to entering the crypto industry, the serial entrepreneur founded Brightcove, an online video streaming platform that went public in 2012.
69. Linda Xie
Linda is the cofounder and Managing Director of San Francisco-based Scalar Capital, a cryptoasset hedge fund that's already raised more than $20M in funding from institutional and private investors. Prior to founding Scalar, Xie worked in product management at Coinbase and held a number of roles in the banking industry as well.
70. James Radecki
James is the Global Head of Business Development at Cumberland, a division of DRW that acts as one of the largest Bitcoin trading desks in the world. Prior to his time in crypto, James spent nearly two decades as a Managing Director at Goldman Sachs.
71. Mark Yusko
Mark is the founder and CIO of Morgan Creek Capital Management (parent company of Morgan Creek Digital), an investment firm that advises pension funds and family offices.
72. Jill Carlson
Jill is a Cryptocurrency Consultant at Juno, her consulting firm focused on providing advisory services to crypto and blockchain startups. Prior to setting out on her own, Jill was a strategy lead at Chain, and was a credit trader at Goldman Sachs for several years as well.
73. Tone Vays
Formerly a VP at JP Morgan Chase, Tone is now a crypto pundit, analyst, and investor who's most famous for hosting the CryptoScam YouTube podcast, which has more than 75K subscribers.
74. Kris Marszalek
Kris is the CEO of Crypto.com accelerating the world's transition to cryptocurrency. In 2018, Crypto.com rebranded, shipped its MCO Visa Cards in Singapore, and announced Crypto.com Chain and Crypto.com Pay.
75. Jeff Wilcke
Jeff Wilcke is a co-founder of Ethereum and a co-founder of Amsterdam-based Grid Games. He's a prolific developer who's also quite active on Twitter, sharing frequent insights and updates from the Ethereum ecosystem.
76. Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn
Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn is a cybersecurity specialist and the CEO of privacy-focused cryptocurrency zCash. As a well-known cyberphunk, Zooko was also responsible for the creation of the decentralized system Tahoe-Least-Authority File Store, which is still used by numerous organizations as an online backup system.
77. Pierre Rochard
Pierre is a software engineer and CEO of Bitcoin Advisory, a New York-based advisory firm that helps hedge funds and crypto investing groups make better investment decisions. He's also the co-founder of the Satoshi Nakamoto Institute, a non-profit that curates the best primary source literature on crypto.
78. Matt Corallo
Matt is a Bitcoin developer who works full-time on open-source Bitcoin projects at Chaincode Labs, a crypto incubator that helps coordinate efforts among disparate Bitcoin development startups.
79. Lon Wong
Lon is the CEO of Gibraltar-based blockchain streaming platform ProximaX. He's also the President of the NEM.io foundation, which seeks to promote the further development of NEM technology. Lon is active in the crypto advisory space as well, serving as an advisor to startups like Huobi, Liven, and others.
80. Adam Draper
Adam is the founder and Managing Director of Boost VC, a venture capital firm focused on the crypto industry. As part of Boost, Adam also runs Boost Incubator, an incubator focused on helping crypto startups scale and achieve mass market adoption.
81. Stephen Pair
Stephen is the cofounder and CEO of BitPay, one of the very first companies founded in the Bitcoin payments arena. With tenures at companies like IBM and others, Stephen has long been involved in the software development field, and now speaks regularly at crypto events around the world.
82. Matthew Tan
Matthew is the CEO and Founder of Etherscan and Blockscan - both Blockchain API and analytics platforms. With more than two decades of experience in the high tech industry, Matthew also acts as an advisor to a number of crypto startups.
83. Tushar Jain
Tushar is a Managing Partner at Multicoin Capital, an Austin-based cryptofund that uses venture capital strategies to achieve market liquidity in the crypto markets. Prior to Multicoin, Tushar helped found ePatientFinder, a healthcare and medtech startup.
84. Luis Iván Cuende
Luis is the co-founder of the Aragon Project, an Ethereum-based blockchain collaboration tool - and he also heads up its for-profit entity, Aragon One. Luis is an active advisor, and presently mentors a number of blockchain projects around the world.
85. Mike Belshe
A longtime computer science and programming specialist, Mike is the co-founder and CEO of Bitgo, an institutional-grade crypto investment service. He was also the inventor of SPDY (now known as HTTP 2.0) and previously co-founded Lookout Software (which was acquired by Microsoft in 2006).
86. Josh Fraser
Josh is the co-founder of Origin Protocol, a protocol for building decentralized sharing economy marketplaces using Dapps. A seasoned crypto investor and entrepreneur, Josh speaks frequently at conferences around the world on Origin's mission and vision.
87. Marco Streng
Marco is the founder and CEO of Genesis Mining, which, with more than 2 million customers worldwide, is now the world's largest cloud-based crypto mining company. He's a frequent public speaker on blockchain, and appears regularly at conferences to speak about crypto.
88. Matthew Spoke
Matthew is the founder of the AION Network, a multi-chain blockchain platform designed to address many of the key scalability challenges posed by traditional blockchain development efforts today.
89. Andreas M. Antonopoulos
Andreas is a world-famous author, entrepreneur, and speaker who's passionate about bringing the excitement of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency to the world. He co-hosts the Let's Talk Bitcoin podcast, and also wrote the first edition of Mastering Bitcoin, which was published last year.
90. Micah Winkelspecht
Micah is the CEO of Gem that built one of the first multisig cryptocurrency wallets and a platform that provided core cryptocurrency processing, transaction, and security services to companies including Bitwage, GoCoin, Purse.io and more.
91. Eric Larchevêque
Eric is the CEO and co-founder of Ledger, a Bitcoin security startup that focuses on building end to end security solutions for blockchain-based applications. Eric also founded la Maison du Bitcoin, a maker space for French entrepreneurs involved in crypto.
92. Ran NeuNer
Ran is the host of CNBC's widely-viewed CryptoTrader TV show, one of the most popular crypto-related shows on television. He's also the founder of Onchain Capital, a crypto investment and advisory group.
93. Meltem Demirors
Meltem is a cryptocurrency investor and advisor that's perhaps best known for her involvement with crypto treasury startup CoinShares, where she serves as its Chief Strategy Officer. She also is a prolific lecturer on blockchain, and presently teaches on the subject at both the University of Oxford and MIT's Media Lab.
94. Dan Wasyluk
'Blockchain Dan' is the founder and CEO of Blockchain Foundry, an organization that helps enterprises build blockchain-based software applications. He's also a core contributor to the Syscoin protocol, which is the world's fastest token creation platform.
95. Julian Zawistowski
Julian is the CEO and co-founder of Golem Factory, an organization that's building what it describes as "the first truly decentralized supercomputer". In addition to being a crypto entrepreneur, Julian is also a mentor and advisor to several other blockchain projects.
96. Carolyn Reckhow
Carolyn is the Head of Operations and Client Services at Casa, a dApp startup building a blockchain-based cryptographic key platform. Prior to Casa, Carolyn was the Director of Global Operations for New York-based ConsenSys.
97. Catherine Coley
Catherine is Ripple's Head of XRP Institutional Liquidity. With more than a decade of experience in the international financial markets, she's now focused on helping Ripple hone its institutional product offerings, particularly as they relate to its XRP cryptocurrency.
98. Elizabeth McCauley
Elizabeth is a freelance blockchain business development and marketing consultant who also advises crypto companies. She presently advises startups like Crypto Media Hub and Biterra Capital on their business development strategy, and posts regularly on Twitter about topics like ICO marketing and crypto investing.
99. Preethi Kasireddy
Preethi is a longtime blockchain engineer who transitioned from a career at Goldman Sachs to becoming the founder and CEO of TruStory, a startup that helps organizations detect (and stop) ICO scams before the scam. The startup raised $3M in funding earlier this year, and its platform is now in development.