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While critics still question the future viability of digital currency, others have embraced it. Thanks to them, this industry is growing every day and attracting more people. In this article, we explore the leaders of blockchain technology who have contributed to its development, advancement, and popularization.
Table of Contents
Changpeng Zhao
According to Forbes, Zhao is one of the five wealthiest people in the blockchain industry, with a net worth of $1.9 billion. He launched Binance in July 2017 after he collected $15 million from investors. In just six months, Binance became the leading centralized crypto exchange in the world. Today, it has remained number one, with a total daily average volume of trading exceeding 20 billion.
Vitalik Buterin
Programmer Vitalik Buterin has been interested in Bitcoin since 2011. About 10 years ago, he founded Bitcoin Magazine and was an editor there for a long time. He is known as the creator of Ethereum, a global blockchain network built to work with decentralized applications and smart contracts. Today Ethereum is the second-largest blockchain platform by market capitalization after Bitcoin.
Vitalik won the World Technology Award for the idea of creating Ethereum, defeating Mark Zuckerberg and other strong contenders. In 2017 Buterin entered the top 10 of the 40 most influential people under 40.
Bryan Armstrong
Brian Armstrong founded Coinbase in 2012. It is one of the most popular trading platforms, with a market cap of $60 billion. While Armstrong is best known as the creator of Coinbase, he is also the co-founder of the charity project, GiveCrypto, which has already raised over $4 million for people living below the poverty line.
Joseph Lubin
Former Wall Street technologist Joseph Lubin has become one of the most influential people in the crypto and blockchain arena. After leaving his post as Chief Operating Officer at Ethereum, Lubin founded the ConsenSys startup incubator, consisting of various teams and projects that primarily develop solutions for the Ethereum blockchain.
Joseph is considered one of the first and main investors in Ethereum, since a few weeks before the presentation of the project, Lubin already knew Buterin.
Joyce Kim
Joyce Kim, CEO of Stellar and Managing Partner of Spark Change Capital, started working with blockchain after identifying an opportunity to eliminate banking intermediation and reduce inequality among the global population.
Kim now provides blockchain services to banks, government agencies, and the UN. The Stellar manager is also an adviser of many projects related to cryptocurrencies and ICOs.
Amber Baldet
Amber was ahead of a blockchain lab in one of the leaders of the traditional banking system — JP Morgan. Amber’s positive attitude epitomizes the enthusiastic acceptance of blockchain technology and underlines the priorities of transparency and decentralization that fundamentally clash with everything else in the financial industry.
Elizabeth Rossiello
Elizabeth Rossiello has succeeded in transforming the remittance industry and has brought positive changes to the African continent. She managed to create a market between African and digital currencies, reduce the cost of international money transfers by 75% and reduce the settlement time from 12 days to 2 hours.
Currently, Elizabeth continues to manage BitPesa as CEO and also works for Acumen Fund as a consultant.
Catherine Nicholson
Former U.S. Navy officer Katherine Nicholson runs the largest platform for building applications on the Bitcoin blockchain. The BlockCypher project was created in 2014, and a year later, its founder managed to raise $ 3.1 million from investors, including Tim Draper and Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang.
Catherine was one of the first to offer users a convenient interface for performing operations. The developers received an innovative API and the ability to scale for their projects. This has allowed BlockCypher to become the leading web service provider in the Bitcoin ecosystem.
Cryptocurrencies have already become an integral part of the world of finance. The money of the future has attracted the interest of both amateurs and investment professionals. The field of finance and cryptography has traditionally been considered a male industry. However, women in this sector have become experts and compete with their male counterparts.
