This material is a repost from original article of Forbes Portugal.
№1 Vitalik Buterin
Co-founder of Ethereum
Russian-Canadian programmer, one of the founders and creators of Ethereum. Vitalik is actively involved in charity. In 2022, he donated 1500 Ethereums for humanitarian assistance to Ukrainians who suffered from russian military aggression.
In the autumn of 2022, Ethereum transitioned to the Proof-of-Stake consensus protocol. The Merge of Ethereum reduced global energy consumption by 0.2%. The Crypto Carbon Ratings Institute report shows that Ethereum’s energy consumption has dropped by 99.988% and carbon emissions — by 99.992%.
№2 H.E. Justin Sun
H.E. Justin Sun is the Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Grenada to the WTO, Founder of TRON
TRON, one of the world’s largest blockchain DAO ecosystems, and Advisor to Huobi Global, one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges.
A protege of Alibaba’s Jack Ma, Sun has been named Forbes’ 30 under 30 in the Consumer Technology category several times, among other global recognitions. Sun is an avid art collector, gamer, investor, philanthropist, and space enthusiast.
№3 Pavlo Chabanov
Founder of the IT company Gliesereum Ukraine, audio and video P2P platform Simia.io, funds SpaceFex Finance and SM CAPITAL SCSp
Co-founder of the humanitarian foundation Huragan Heals. Owner, Huragan Racing Team. FIA accredited circuit and drift pilot.
Founder of the biggest European crypto liquidity provider with up to 2 bln $ daily turnover. Creator of automation and market making systems used by the Top-10 global crypto exchanges.
Pavlo is the IT entrepreneur, ukrainian developer, startuper, investor and philanthropist.
№4 Volodymyr Nosov
Entrepreneur, founder, and CEO of the WhiteBIT cryptocurrency exchange.
In 2018, the entrepreneur founded WhiteBIT, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in Europe. WBT is a utility token of the largest European cryptocurrency exchange and is currently available on various major exchanges following the Coinmarketap ranking.
Today, WhiteBIT is a team of 700+ people and more than 3 million customers from more than 150 countries. The WhiteBIT crypto exchange meets all KYC and AML requirements and is among the top 2 security exchanges in the world based on an independent Hacken audit with a AAA rating.
WhiteBIT’s goal is to contribute to blockchain technology’s mass adoption and popularization by implementing the most effective trading and staking tools on the most convenient terms.
In addition, Volodymyr actively supports Ukraine since the beginning of the war – the WhiteBIT exchange bought a pink panama and a crystal microphone of the winners of the Eurovision 2022 band Kalush for $900 thousand at a charity auction. The funds raised were directed to the Prytula Foundation and spent purchasing PD-2 drones for the Ukraine Armed Forces.
№5 Alexey Korneev
Entrepreneur, the founder of fintech startups, Operations Director at Calypso Pay
Calypso Pay an all-in-one crypto processing and acquiring platform. Calypso Pay can be integrated with a few clicks without any coding skills — you can start using the platform within a few hours. It provides one of the fastest transaction speeds with low commissions across the market and has a 300 million euro annual turnover.
№6 Andre Cronje
Vice President of MemesVice President of Memes Fantom Foundation, Independent DeFi developer and founder of Yearn.finance
Cronje is a software architect with 20 years of development experience. After completing his 3 year computer science course in 5 months he was asked to stay on as a lecturer. He moved into telecoms developing big data, high transactional infrastructure, before delving into mobile security and cryptography. His last five years have been spent building bespoke FinTech solutions and leveraging blockchain technology to provide cost-reducing financial products to the unbanked sector in Africa. He is one of the most influential people in the DeFi space.
№7 Eljaboom
Co-Founder of Okse, the first non-custodial wallet working directly with a Visa card.
A computer engineer with masters in industrial engineering. Elja is passionate about blockchain technology and certified in the Guinness world record for Cypress security, Programming and Drones.
№8 Brian Armstrong
Co-founder and CEO at Coinbase
During the funding round in 2018, the company was estimated at $8.1 billion, and in December 2020, the company filed with the SEC for a direct listing. Following a direct listing in April 2021, Coinbase’s market capitalization rose to $85 billion, and as of May 2022, Armstrong’s net worth reached $2.4 billion.
№9 Svyatoslav Dorofeev
CEO of TheWatch, a technology company, making blockchain seamlessly accessible to developers
His company offers two primary solutions, WatchData and WatchBlock, that significantly save both time and money on building crypto projects.
WatchData supports Ethereum, Bitcoin, Binance Smart Chain, and Tron, and up to date, over 460 companies and developers are using WatchData, with this number growing every month.
№10 Violet Abtahi
COO of Enya Labs
She is not your typical founder – although she is known for being one of the few influential female leaders in the blockchain space, her compassion is her superpower.
As the COO of Enya Labs, she cofounded Boba Network, the only multichain layer-2 blockchain scaling solution and the only smart contract platform that delivers Web3-Web2 interoperability – a key enabler of a scalable decentralized future. She travels the world to understand and learn the pain points of humanity.
She has led global expansions, funding, and contract negotiations, and oversaw regulatory affairs, focusing on emerging markets in three continents and over 27 countries across the globe.
№11 Farkhad Shagulyamov
CEO and Co-Founder of Velas
Influential speaker with a wealth of business experience. Farkhad is the CEO and Co-Founder of Velas, the fastest EVM blockchain and ecosystem for smart contracts and dApps. Velas is based in Zug, Switzerland and has grown quickly to become a leading technology company in the region.
Since its establishment in 2019, Farkhad has grown Velas to partner with the world-renowned Scuderia Ferrari F1, Spacechain and IQONIQ, a sports and entertainment fan engagement platform.
№12 Andriy Velykyy
Co-Founder at Allbridge.io
Warwick Business School alumni and Warwick University Ambassador in Ukraine joined the crypto space in 2015, starting with building mining farms. Then, in May 2021, he launched Allbridge with his partner feeling the lack of cross-chain products on the market. Since then, Allbridge has become the leading bridging solution with over $6.3 billion in bridged volume, offering the support of 16 different EVM and non-EVM networks.
In September 2022, they launched a new stablecoin-oriented product, enabling seamless cross-chain swaps of stablecoin assets in one click between Ethereum, BNB Chain, Tron, and Solana.
№13 Devin Finzer and Alex Atallah
OpenSea founders
In early 2022, OpenSea conducted a new round of investments, and the company’s capitalization crossed the $13.3 billion mark. The founders’ wealth increased respectively and now stands at $2.2 billion each.
№14 Brian Shroder
CEO of Binance.US
Brian is a savvy and accomplished business executive. He brings an entrepreneurial spirit and innovative thinking to many of the world’s most prestigious and transformational companies such as BCG, Uber, Ant Financial, and Binance.US.
№15 Kain Warwick
Founder of Synthetix
Warwick is the founder of Synthetix, a synthetic asset issuance platform built on Ethereum that specializes in the minting and creation of synthetic tokens.
Warwick runs one of the largest decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystems with Synthetix. He also made a splash as co-founder and CEO of the retail payment network Blueshyft which is currently the largest cryptocurrency payment gateway in Australia.
№16 Ben Zhou
Co-founder and CEO of Bybit
He spearheaded the cryptocurrency derivatives exchange into a platform of more than one million users from its foundation in 2018. Bybit is one of the world’s top five crypto derivative exchanges that have liquidity for the BTC USD perpetual contract.
Established in March 2018, Bybit is one of growing cryptocurrency derivatives exchanges, with more than a million registered users. Bybit endeavors to provide a professional, smart, intuitive, and innovative trading experience to serve traders. Bybit offers 24/7 multi-language support as part of their service.
№17 Sandeep Nailwal
Co-founder Polygon
Sandeep Nailwal is a Delhi-based software developer who began his IT career in 2010 as a software engineer at Computer Sciences Corporation. In 2014, he joined Deloitte as a consultant and worked on management consulting and program management initiatives. From 2015 to 2016, Nailwal worked as the chief technology and supply chain officer for Welspun Group.
In March 2016, Nailwal launched ScopeWeaver as CEO, but became interested in AI and blockchain technology soon after. In 2017, Nailwal joined Polygon (Matic Network), Ethereum scaling Layer-2, as co-founder and COO. Currently Matic is top 10 cryptocurrency on Coinmarketcap and they have partnerships with JPMorgan, Reddit, Starbucks and other giants.
№18 Brian Grassadonia
Member of Square’s executive management team. Co-creator of Cash App
Brian leads Cash App across products, engineering, design, operations, machine learning, marketing, and branding and manages the business’s comprehensive P&L.
№19 Olaf Carlson-Wee
Founder and CEO of Polychain Capital
Founder of a cryptocurrency hedge fund that saw its assets rise from $4 million to $300 million in recent months, fueled by a portfolio of tokens with values that have skyrocketed this year. Backed by venture funds like Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital.
№20 Jon Lerner
Co-founder and CEO of CoinTracker
CoinTracker is the market leader in portfolio tracking and tax compliance for cryptocurrencies. With tracking over 3% of the crypto market worldwide, CoinTracker helps users track their crypto portfolio in one place and calculate and optimize their crypto capital gains taxes easily and accurately.
№21 Alexey Pavlov
Founder and main shareholder of Kauri.One, Kauri.Finance, estimated at $21 million
Kauri.One is a cryptocurrency software development company. White label, Saas or Baas to create own exchange, payment system, neo bank or wallet.
Kauri.Finance is a licensed B2B broker providing services for processing, opening IBAN, supplying liquidity and investing in a regulated cryptocurrency fund.
№22 Asaf Meir
Founder and chief executive officer at Solidus Labs
At the end of 2017, Meir founded the fintech startup Solidus Labs. His company offers the first cryptographic, end-to-end, automated and testable market watch and risk monitoring centre specifically designed for digital assets.
Having gained impressive experience in computer science as well as business technology over the course of his career, Meir is currently a leading expert, in-demand speaker and digital asset compliance advisor.
№23 Ben Weiss
Co-founder of CoinFlip
In 20, he served as the Chief Operating Officer of CoinFlip before being appointed as Chief Executive Officer in April 2021. Since its inception, Ben has led the company’s strategy and helped CoinFlip surpass $1B in transaction volume.
Weiss leads the company’s long-term business strategy, provides financial oversight and maintains strong relationships with banks and regulators.
№24 Illia Polosukhin
Co-founder of NEAR Protocol
Illia Polosukhin is a co-founder of NEAR Protocol, a decentralized developer platform powered by a shared smart contract blockchain.
NEAR Protocol launched its main net in 2020 and is focused on supporting the creator economy. Illia has more than 10 years of industry experience, including 3 years at Google, where he was a major TensorFlow contributor and manager of the team building question-answering capabilities for the core Google search, as well as an author of several notable research papers.
№25 Juan Benet
Founder and CEO at Protocol Labs
Protocol Labs has created a new way to store and share files online: the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS). He is aimed to improve and replace HTTP, the content-serving protocol that has come to dominate the Web.
Benet graduated from Stanford and the startup accelerator YCombinator. He created FileCoin, a crypto token that incentivizes people to store files on a peer-to-peer system.
№26 Ted Livingston
Founder and CEO of Code Inc
This former intern at Blackberry put $45,000 into a music-sharing service for the company’s free phone messenger, then started his own messaging platform Kik when Blackberry’s wouldn’t work on other phones.
№27 Hayden Adams
Founder of the Uniswap Protocol and CEO at Uniswap Labs
Hayden Adams is the creator of Uniswap, one of the most widely used decentralized applications built on Ethereum and currently the world’s leading DeFi DEX. Prior to Uniswap, Adams was an engineer at Siemens. He graduated from Stony Brook University in 2016 with a bachelor’s degree in engineering.
№28 Sergey Nazarov
Co-founder of Chainlink
Sergey Nazarov is the son of Russian immigrants and a co-founder of Chainlink. However, many in the crypto community see Nazarov as a possible candidate for being the creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto.
He claims to have been in crypto for over 10 years, which would mark his start around the time the Bitcoin white paper was published. Regardless, Nazarov is publicly known for developing the Chainlink network, known for hybrid smart contracts and blockchain oracles.
№29 Roham Gharegozlou
CEO and founder of Axiom Zen
Gharegozlou founded Axiom Zen, a venture studio named by Canadian Business magazine as one of Canada’s most innovative companies. But he’s best known for giving the world CryptoKitties, digital cats that can be traded on a public blockchain.
№30 Anthony Pompliano
Investor at Pomp Investments
Anthony Pompliano, an American entrepreneur and venture capitalist, is one of the biggest figures in crypto. Also referred to as “Pomp” in the crypto community, he is famous for hosting The Pomp Podcast and publishing “The Pomp Letter,” a daily crypto-related newsletter, to over 45,000 investors. Pomp is also a co-founder and partner at Morgan Creek Digital, the crypto arm of major investment management firm Morgan Creek Capital.
Pompliano is one of the biggest crypto influencers on Twitter, holding an audience of nearly 1,6 million subscribers.
№31 Rupert Barksfield
CEO of Amulet
He bought his first Bitcoin in 2016 before co-founding the Crypto Crowd in 2017 and going on to winning the AiBC blockchain startup competition, Wolves Summit and Web Summit finalists.
Rupert is currently the CEO of Amulet, the fastest-growing DeFi cover protocol in crypto built on Solana for the rust ecosystem. He is a career entrepreneur starting his first business at 12 before transitioning through Fintech, Medtech, adtech and eventtech.
№32 Fred Ehrsam
Co-founder of Paradigm and Coinbase
Fred Ehrsam left the company in 2017 but remains on the board of directors and still owns a 6% stake in the firm. He currently runs Paradigm, which invests primarily in crypto companies and new tokens.
№33 Lucaz Lee
CEO and founder of Affyn
The founder and CEO of Affyn, is reinventing the gaming model with a sustainable play-and-earn economy and has successfully secured over $20 million in funding within four months.
As a seasoned leader with more than nine years of experience, he is no stranger to leading international teams to growth and success, including helping to launch a startup that was acquired by a NASDAQ-listed firm.
№34 Dmitry Machikhin
IT entrepreneur and investor, founder and CEO at Bitok.org
Dmitry has been an active supporter of blockchain technology and an investor since 2016. He advised more than 30 blockchain projects in total and is the author of more than 100 articles in media.
Since 2022 has been ranked as one of the world’s top fintech advisors, according to Chambers. Total advisory/founding portfolio market cap exceeds $100 million.
№35 Meltem Demirors
Chief Strategy Officer of CoinShares
Meltem Demirors is Chief Strategy Officer of CoinShares, an investment firm that manages $750 million in assets, and is a trusted partner to investors and entrepreneurs navigating the digital asset ecosystem. Meltem oversees the firm’s managed strategies group and its New York office, and leads corporate development as a board director. Previously, she was part of the founding team of Digital Currency Group. She teaches at MIT and Oxford, and serves on the WEF Blockchain Council.
№36 Pratik Gauri
Founder and CEO of 5ire
Pratik Gauri is an Indian social entrepreneur, investor, speaker, and writer, commonly known as the creator of the 5th Industrial Revolution. He championed the UN Sustainable Development Goals and helped the world move from a commercial to a not-for-profit economy for over a decade.
Pratik founded 8 companies before founding 5ire, a blockchain ecosystem that provides sustainability, technology, and innovation to create the 5th Industrial Revolution.
He has been recognized as Entrepreneur 35 Under 35, TIMES 40 Under 40, ET Now Leaders of Tomorrow, Greenbiz Global 30 Under 30, AsiaOne 40 Under 40 Most Influential Leaders, British Petroleum Scholar, World Economic Forum Global Shaper, One Young World Ambassador, Al Gore’s Climate Leader, Startup Leadership Program Fellow, UNLEASH 2019 Winner, Top 50 Voices in Asia by Earth Day Network and Changemaker at Global Action on Poverty.
VP of Product at Circle
Venezuelan native and MIT/Cornell math and CS. For many years she has been fond of cryptography and creating financial products for consumers and businesses. Former JPM FX trader and co-founder of Trigger, helping consumers invest rationally through the rules of the market. Currently leads the marketing and product development team at Circle.
№37 Alexander Belov
Blockchain public speaker, co-Founder of Coinstelegram fund, contributor at Entrepreneur.com and Forbes Monaco
Alex is in Top 10 leading blockchain entrepreneurs 2020. Top 30 influential people in blockchain industry.
Alex is also Encrypted Production Bitcoin documentary film Co-Founder (El Salvador, Dubai episodes). CZ – founder Binance, Nayib Bukele – president of El Salvador, Justin Sun – Tron Founder, Charles Hoskinson- Cardano founder and many others participating in the film.
№38 Kathleen Breitman
Co-founder of Tezos
Tezos co-founder, CEO of Dynamic Ledger Solutions, a company which created the first version of Tezos, a blockchain-based smart contract platform with an on-chain governance mechanism to coordinate and push upgrades to its network. Prior to this, Kathleen was a senior strategy associate for R3, a consortium of more than 70 financial firms. She has also worked at Accenture, Bridgewater Associates, and the Wall Street Journal. She holds a degree from Cornell University.
№39 Damian Merlak
Founder at Tokens, Co-founder of Bitstamp
Merlak and his business partner, Nejc Kodrič, thought that they could build an exchange of their own and launched Bitstamp that year. Bitstamp has developed into the largest and most liquid exchange in the world. In 2017, Merlak carried out an ICO for Tokens.net, a platform for trading ERC20 tokens and other crypto assets.
№40 Michael Kong
CEO/CIO at Fantom Foundation
Fantom aims to provide technologies combining scalability, decentralization and security. To bring this vision to life, the Fantom Foundation is developing various parts of the open system and working closely with partners to support the implementation of Fantom technology.
