The blockchain industry is currently worth roughly 200 billion dollars when we’re talking about market capitalization. That’s the value of all the cryptocurrencies combined, but the real value lies in the people that are active within the industry. Over the years we have seen tech-savvy entrepreneurs go from unknown voices to proper celebrities. In this article, we would like to zoom in on some of these figures, see what they are about and how big they currently are.
5. Jihan Wu
This is a name that might not ring a bell to every single investor, but it might be the man with the most influence across the board. Wu co-founded the Bitmain corporation back in 2013. Bitmain is a mining company that’s responsible for roughly 15% of today’s Bitcoin hashrate. The control of such a large amount of the hashrate makes it easier to push certain protocol updates, like the Bitcoin Unlimited that Wu has been supporting for quite some time now. The Bitcoin Unlimited protocol would increase the block size and thereby allow more transactions to occur. Sources say currently 40% support this upgrade.
4. Jack Dorsey
Back in the early days of Bitcoin, this name was not heard that often in the cryptocurrency industry. However, the man was making a name for himself as the founder of Twitter. These days, Twitter is one of the dominant social media platforms around, but that’s not Jack Dorsey’s only venture. He is also the founder of Square, a mobile payment application that now allows you to directly purchase Bitcoin inside the application. For the past years, Dorsey has been supporting Bitcoin, especially the decentralization part.
3. Andreas Antonopoulos
Do you have any of these friends that keep saying how good Bitcoin is, how amazing their newest cryptocurrency is and that you should join the revolution straight away? Well, that’s Andreas. He has been spreading the Bitcoin message for over a decade by giving presentations anywhere in the world and writing books. He wrote ‘The internet of money’ parts one and two and released a book on ‘Mastering Bitcoin’ and ‘Mastering Ethereum’. The man has more than 500,000 people following him on Twitter, so it’s safe to say the man has quite an influence on the entire industry.
2. Brian Armstrong
Ever heard about Coinbase? That’s the company that Brian Armstrong is responsible for. He’s the current CEO and was one of the founders back in 2012, in the early days of Bitcoin. You might think, why does this man have so much influence? Well, Coinbase is one of the companies in the industry that is known for having direct links to the more traditional world of finance. They are open about partnerships with companies like Shell, Goldman Sachs and many more. Besides that, Coinbase leads an investment fund that takes positions in many upcoming cryptocurrency projects. With over 13 million users, Coinbase has shown its capabilities of boosting the prices of cryptocurrencies in many different cases.
1. Changpeng Zhao
As the CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao, better known as CZ, has made a name for himself in a really short period of time. He started as a simple employee of Blockchain.Info, and then worked as a part of the managing team of Okcoinbefore he founded Binance in 2017. It turned out to be the perfect timing, and ever since Binance grew out to be the most dominant exchange in the entire industry. They have started trends of pumping up the price of a coin by simply announcing the listing on their exchange. Besides that, they have created a reputation of releasing new features every single day. You can trade with fiat, margin trade, lend out your crypto, invest in early stage projects with their IEO’s and many more. The question here is, where is the limit for Binance?
All of the people in the list, they all have a couple of things in common; they are relatively young and they do not like central organs. They all love decentralization and all strive to give the power back to the people instead of big corporations. The industry is big, but in comparison to other industries it’s really small. In the upcoming years, we’ll probably see many more crypto-celebrities. Who knows, it could just be you!
