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Influencers: 30 Figures to Guide You Through the Blockchain Landscape

Jack FilibaMay 12, 2018
blockchain influencers

The blockchain movement is largely coupled with the prevalence of social media, allowing the industry’s leading figures to communicate messages to their followers and engage in discourse designed to shape the landscape. While doing your own research should always take precedence over listening to the words of others, there are many blockchain influencers worth following to help you engage in the industry’s most important discussions.

However, it is no secret that the digital currency landscape is somewhat of a modern-day ‘Wild West.’ With the barrier for entry now lower than ever for innovators and consumers, it can be hard to know where to begin and who to listen to.

Vitalik Buterin

Vitalik Buterin is arguably the most famous name in the digital currency industry. This young Russian-Canadian programer is credited as the co-founder of Ethereum, and is involved in just about all of the industry’s pressing topics.

Buterin uses his presence to trade thoughts and ideas with fellow developers, and is quick to engage with the community.

Don Tapscott

Don Tapscott is one of Canada’s leading blockchain influencers. He serves as the co-founder and CEO of the Blockchain Research Institute, a Toronto-based organization dedicated to developing real-world applications for blockchain technology.

Alex Tapscott

The son of Don Tapscott, Alex co-founded the Blockchain Research Institute and collaborated with Don to co-author one of the industry’s most famous books, Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin Is Changing Money, Business, and the World.

Like his father, the younger Tapscott uses his platform to discuss the things that make blockchain technology worth thinking about. The pair have been extremely vocal in the past about blockchain’s merit as a ‘second internet,’ praising the technology’s ability to grant intrinsic value to digital assets through the Internet of Value.

Brad Garlinghouse

Brad Garlinghouse serves as Ripple’s CEO, and is currently one of the industry’s most influential figures. However, Garlinghouse often stands outside of the ‘rebellious nature’ of many digital currency advocates, instead working with existing institutions in order to improve financial services.

Gavin Andresen

Gavin Andresen was one of Bitcoin’s early developers and was extremely foundational in its early days of development. Now, Andresen continues to remain highly influential in the digital currency landscape, despite no longer working as one of Bitcoin’s core developers.

Jun Hasegawa

Jun Hasegawa is the founder and CEO of Omise, an international payments gateway. Its subsidiary, OmiseGO, claims to be the first ever implementation of the Ethereum scaling solution, Plasma.

Charlie Lee

Charlie Lee started Litecoin as a fork of the Bitcoin Core client in 2011. Litecoin has since amassed one of the industry’s largest market caps, and has its own approach to scaling.

On Twitter, Lee uses his large platform to freely speak his mind on topics relating to digital currencies, and often support similar projects and movements within the space.

Nicolas Cary

Nicholas Cary is the CEO of Blockchain.info. In 2014 he led the biggest round of venture capital financing in the digital currency sector at the time, raising $30.5 million USD (nearly $40 million CAD). In 2017, he raised a further $40 million USD (around $52 million CAD) in another wave of financing.

Joseph Lubin

Joseph Lubin is a significant figure in Canada’s blockchain movement. Lubin is famous for his work as an Ethereum co-founder and for helping to establish the Ethereum Foundation in Toronto.

Now, Lubin’s primary focus is with ConsenSys, project which aims to build a decentralized Web 3.0 on the Ethereum platform.

Brendan Eich

Brendan Eich co-founded the Mozilla project, and is credited as being the creator of JavaScript. Eich now works with Brave Software, where his team is focusing on an initiative called Basic Attention Token (BAT). BAT aims to shift the balance of power currently observed in the world of online advertising.

Nick Szabo

Originally, Szabo wanted to create the world’s first decentralized digital currency with his idea for “Bit Gold.” Bit Gold was never formally released but is believed to be the direct predecessor to Bitcoin.

Today, Szabo’s work as a cryptographer and as an active blockchain expert attract many to follow him on social media.

Anthony Diiorio

Aside from his work as a co-founder of Ethereum, Diiorio is the CEO and founder of Jaxx, a digital currency wallet that allows users to store their digital assets on their computer or mobile device.

Jaxx is the child of another of Diiorio’s projects, Decentral, of which he is also the founder and CEO. Decentral is a Toronto-based project which aims to be a hub for blockchain innovation.

Chris Burniske

Chris Burniske is a partner with the venture capital firm, Placeholder. He’s also the co-author of Cryptoassets and formerly led ARK Invest’s cryptoassets initiative.

On Twitter, Burniske currently has almost 100,000 followers, and uses a lot of his time on the platform engaging in discussions related to the digital currency industry.

Adam Back

Adam Back is the inventor of Hashcash, a proof-of-work system used in many anti-spam measures. Back is a cryptographer and self-professed ‘cypherpunk’. On Twitter, he is often vocal about his digital currency advocacy and promotes others in the space.

Andreas Antonopoulos

Andreas Antonopoulos calls himself the “open blockchain expert,” and is one of the most prevalent blockchain figures on Twitter. You can find Antonopoulos at the heart of most discussions on the platform, and he is rarely silent when it comes to discussing his views on emerging technology.

Adam Ludwin

Adam Ludwin is the CEO of Chain, a technology company that says its mission is to create a “smarter and more connected economy.” Across his accounts, Ludwin is a good source for blockchain discussion, as he rarely shys away from engaging in long-winded Twitter rants.

Naval Ravikant

Naval Ravikant is the CEO & Founder of AngelList, a site which aims to ‘democratize’ the investment process.

Ravikant has one of the largest followings in the blockchain space, and is often cited as one of the industry’s brightest thinkers. Aside from his personal account, individuals can also follow his curated feed of blockchain proponents.

Max Keiser

Max Keiser hosts the Keiser Report, a show which he claims has the world’s largest global cryptocurrency audience. Keiser is a digital currency advocate and a prominent source of discussion within the industry.

Adryenn Ashley

Adryenn Ashley is a blockchain innovator who often discusses the landscape and promotes her projects to her sizeable Twitter audience. Ashley is not only an advocate of blockchain’s potential to disrupt the tech world, but also its potential to help the international community.

Vinny Lingham

Vinny Lingham’s tweets come with a disclaimer warning his audience that he is often tweeting sarcastically. In reality, Lingham is an emerging technology and digital currency advocate that serves as the CEO of Civic, a project which aims to build a global ID platform using blockchain.

Stacy Herbert

Stacy Herbert works on the Keiser Report with her husband Max, and is a television presenter that turned her primary attention to digital currencies over the last few years. Herbert’s large following makes her a significant commentator in the industry.

Jimmy Song

Jimmy Song is a self-professed bitcoin developer and entrepreneur. With over 100,000 followers on Twitter, Song uses his platform to promote blockchain education for both tech enthusiasts and members of the general public.

Sebastien Meunier

Sebastien Meunier is a highly-active blockchain and financial technology enthusiast. On his Twitter, interested parties can find a wealth of resources that Meunier promotes. This includes everything from articles about the fintech industry, to statistics that serve to illustrate how blockchain is changing the world of finance.

Vlad Zamfir

Vlad Zamfir is most famous for his work as the founder of Casper, a scaling solution designed to allow digital currencies like Ethereum to handle their surge in popularity without facing longer transaction times or higher transaction fees.

Despite serving as a prominent Ethereum developer, Zamfir is quick to criticize the Ethereum platform when necessary, hoping to promote discussions about the industry’s ability to sustain itself moving forward.  

Tuur Demesteer

Tuur Demeester is an economist and investor who focuses on Bitcoin. Further, Demesteer is somewhat of a prominent blockchain thought leader on Twitter, engaging in various discussions of both practical and philosophical nature.

Tim Draper

Tim Draper is a venture capital investor that founded DFJ Venture Capital, as well as Draper Associates. Draper is not only a financial backer of blockchain projects, he is a vocal supporter of blockchain technology, speaking at-length about its potential for mass adoption.

Fred Wilson

Fred Wilson is a venture capitalist who serves as the founder of Union Square Ventures, a firm which recently backed CryptoKitties in its $12 million dollar wave of recent funding.

Elaborating on the investment decision of his firm, Wilson called digital collectibles a concept previously impossible prior to blockchain. Wilson is vocal in his belief that providing value to digital assets will serve as one of the industry’s mainstream use cases.

Barry Silbert

Barry Silbert is the founder and CEO of the Digital Currency Group, a venture capital company that focuses on the digital currency industry. DCG remains an active investor in the digital currency industry with over 50 prominent industry investments to-date.

Gavin Wood

Gavin Wood is the founder and CTO of Parity Technologies. Further, Wood is credited as an Ethereum co-founder and contributed largely to the technical blueprint that outlined Ethereum and its virtual machine. His Twitter is focused on “all things Web 3.0.”

Charles Hoskinson

Hoskinson served as an Ethereum co-founder before leaving the project following an internal dispute in June 2014. He later founded IOHK, a company that builds blockchains and digital currencies on behalf of other entities. In 2017, Hoskinson led IOHK to release the digital currency Cardano.

Hundreds of pioneers lead the industry forward

While the figures on this list hold various significant achievements and lead their followers to engage in important digital currency discussions, this list barely scratches the surface of all the blockchain influencers working to build up the space.

Hundreds of ordinary developers, investors, and pioneers are driving the digital currency industry as the decentralization movement continues forward. The rapidly evolving landscape is constantly accommodating new pioneers looking to promote discussion and leave their mark on the world as it exists today.

 

 

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