Just for your info, and for your challenge to becoming one of the future Crypto and/or Blockchain Creator!
Working on crypto projects and investment portfolios I made some researches in the last two years. I was reading all I could about crypto and blockchain projects and find out about great people who created these projects that have changed the world in a good way!
So, I want to share some results of my research with you about people behind the projects. Maybe these will inspire some of Uptrennd readers or maybe some of interview takers will want to have them invited! Many of them are Angel Investors who are spending in crypto and blockchain projects, so, if you have a good crypto project so not hesitate to find a way to contact them. I do have their contact details but cannot share publicly, however, you can find their contact details by checking their names on Twitter or LinkedIn.
Brian Armstrong — the co-founder and CEO of Coinbase, one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world; he was featured in the 2014 movie, "The Rise of Bitcoin".
Vitalik Buterin — known as the creator and one of the key programmer's of Ethereum. He recently released Daico concept to gain traction as a more secure (and safe) way to run an ICO.
Brad Garlinghouse — the CEO of crypto payments startup Ripple, which launched its xCurrent international payment protocol earlier this year.
Roger Ver — one of the earlier investors in the first crop of Bitcoin startups. He's now involved with Bitcoin Cash, a hard fork of the original Bitcoin protocol.
Barry Silbert — the founder and CEO of the Digital Currency Group, a crypto incubator and investment fund that's already been in operation for several years, and the CEO of Grayscale Investments, a digital currency investment fund that runs the Bitcoin Investment Trust.
Jihan Wu — one of the co-founders of Bitmain (the world's largest crypto mining company) and the most influential members of the blockchain industry.
Adam Back — the CEO of Blockstream, and 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.
Michael Novogratz — the CEO of crypto investment firm Galaxy Investment Partners. He previously predicted a price target of $20K for the cryptocurrency!
Kathleen Breitman — the cofounder of Tezos, a decentralized governance platform; she also plays an active role in its nonprofit entity, the Tezos Foundation.
Tyler Winklevoss — the Principal of Winklevoss Capital and co-founder and CEO of Gemini, a next-generation digital asset exchange. He was the world's first bitcoin billionaire.
Cameron Winklevoss — one half of the dynamic Winklevoss brothers, co-Founder and President of the Gemini Exchange; also a Principal at crypto investment fund Winklevoss Capital.
Pieter Wuille — co-founder of crypto startup Blockstream and the developer focuses on Bitcoin Core, he was instrumental in getting SegWit added to the protocol early on.
Joseph Lubin — co-founder of Ethereum, then the founder of ConsenSys, which works on blockchain infrastructure and software projects. In addition, he has become an active angel investor in the crypto space.
Charlie Lee — former Coinbase employee Charlie Lee is perhaps best known for creating Litecoin, one of the largest cryptocurrencies in the world in terms of market cap. He is deeply involved now at the Litecoin Foundation.
Nick Szabo — cryptographer and computer scientist, has 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.
Brendan Blumer — 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.
Peter Smith — the CEO and co-founder of Blockchain, the world's most popular crypto wallet. Also, launched Blockchain Principal Strategies, a platform that helps investors gain more exposure to cryptocurrency via an over-the-counter trading desk.
Dr Craig S Wright — a computer scientist and entrepreneur perhaps best known for his involvement as one of the key pioneers behind Bitcoin; he's one of the leaders of the Bitcoin SV protocol.
Juan Benet — the founder and CEO of Protocol Labs, the company behind innovations like IPFS (a hypermedia protocol) and Filecoin (a crypto-driven file storage network).
Elizabeth Stark — the founder and CEO of Lightning Labs, a blockchain development startup, and a member at the research Coin Center, focused on developing government policy for decentralized technologies.
Brandon Chez — the CEO of CoinMarketCap, a website which tracks crypto prices and data for more than a thousand cryptocurrencies.
Charles Hoskinson — a serial entrepreneur in the crypto industry who founded 3 crypto startups (IOHK, Invictus Innovations, and Ethereum) in the past several years; he is also involved in developing Cardano cryptocurrency.
Olaf Carlson-Wee — the billionare CEO and founder of Polychain Capital, a crypto hedge fund that manages hundreds of millions in assets.
Mike Kayamori — CEO of Liquid, the first global cryptocurrency exchange to be regulated by the Japanese Financial Services Agency.
John McAfee — crypto investor and entrepreneur and his ventures range from being the CEO of enterprise crypto startup Luxcore to doing influencer marketing for cryptocurrencies.
Pavel Durov — serial Russian entrepreneur perhaps best known for orchestrating Telegram's record-setting ICO; he also founded VKontakte (Russia's equivalent to Facebook).
Yuzo Kano — after an extensive career in banking at Goldman Sachs, he founded bitFlyer, one of Japan's longest-running crypto exchanges.
Laura Shin — Forbes's senior editor covering crypto and blockchain technology, writing regularly for both its website and Forbes magazine; she also hosts Unchained - one of the most popular and top-rated podcasts in crypto.
Kathryn Haun — General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, and is an independent director at Coinbase, where she helps lead its Audit and Risk divisions.
Jed McCaleb — cofounder and CTO of the crypto startup Stellar. Prior to helping startup Stellar, Jed was the CTO of Ripple. Jed also founded the eDonkey network, a pioneering P2P network that facilitated file transfers around the world.
Dan Morehead — 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, and the chairman of Bitstamp exchange.
Nejc Kodrič — co-founder and CEO of Bitstamp, one of the world's highest-volume crypto exchanges, and an early adopter of Bitcoin.
Dominik Schiener — co-founder of blockchain startup IOTA, which is building a next generation blockchain that operates on a trustless basis, and the co-chairman of the IOTA Foundation.
Marc Andreessen — well-known entrepreneur and investor who initiated a16z Crypto, a $300M VC fund that's now focused exclusively on investing in promising crypto and blockchain projects.
Bryan Bishop — well-known developer focused on Bitcoin Core, he's also a key source of updates on crypto for the Bitcoin development community.
Jesse Powell — the founder and CEO of the Kraken Bitcoin exchange, one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world in terms of trading volume.
Arianna Simpson — 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.
Bart Stephens — co-founder and Managing Partner at Blockchain Capital, a VC investmend fund focused on the crypto and blockchain space.
Daniel Larimer — a serial crypto entrepreneur and the CTO of Block.one, which oversees development of the EOS protocol and platform and the inventor of DPOS, a proof of stake-driven consensus algorithm.
Tricia Martinez — founder and CEO of Wala, a blockchain-based financial services app that's seeking to accelerate the adoption of cryptocurrencies in emerging markets.
Arthur Hayes — 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.
Bobby Lee — co-founder of BTCC (formerly BTC China), one of Asia's leading digital asset exchanges, and board member of the Bitcoin Foundation being highly active in China's crypto community.
Valery Vavilov — co-founder and CEO of Bitfury, Europe's largest Bitcoin mining company; he helps the Bitfury Group develop its software and hardware solutions in the blockchain space.
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.
Charlie Shrem — 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.
Star Xu — the co-founder and CEO of OKEx, one of the world's largest crypto exchanges, with hundreds of coins and tokens.
Michael Arrington — best known as the founder of TechCrunch, involved in crypto, and his investment fund, Arrington XRP Capital, spends in blockchain startups, with more than $100M in investments to date.
Naval Ravikant — an investor in numerous crypto startups, founder of AngelList in 2010, and then CoinList which provides quality advisory services to entrepreneurs and investors in the blockchain space.
Gabriel Dumitriu — known in the community as “The Blockchain Buddy”, is the creator of few interesting blockchain projects; he is the co-founder of Reitis Blockchain Real Estate project.
Don Tapscott — author and public speaker, passionate about blockchain and co-writer of the bestselling book “The Blockchain Revolution”.
There are many more of them, of course, and if you know someone that merits to be mentioned please recommend by posting comments.
References (in alphabetical order):
Arianna Simpson — Autonomous Partners: https://www.ariannasimpson.com
Adam Back — Blockstream: https://blockstream.com/about/
Adam Ludwin — Interstellar: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamludwin/
Arthur Hayes — BitMex: https://www.bitmex.com/app/aboutUs
Ben Horowitz — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Horowitz
Brian Armstrong — Coinbase: https://blog.coinbase.com
Brad Garlinghouse — Ripple: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brad_Garlinghouse
Barry Silbert — Digital Currency Group: https://dcg.co/who-we-are/
Brendan Blumer — Block.one; EOS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Blumer
Brandon Chez — CoinMarketCap: https://coinmarketcap.com
Bart Stephens — Blockchain Capital: https://blockchain.capital/team/
Bobby Lee — BTCC Exchange and Ballet, the simple & elegant wallet
Bryan Bishop — Bitcoin Core: https://twitter.com/BaldBryan/
Charlie Shrem — CryptoIQ: https://cryptoiq.co
Cameron Winklevoss — Gemini Exchange: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cameron_Winklevoss
Charles Hoskinson — IOHK; Invictus Innovations: https://iohk.io/en/team/charles-hoskinson
Charlie Lee — Litecoin: https://litecoin.org/
Dr Craig S Wright — Bitcoin SV protocol: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Steven_Wright
Dan Morehead — Pantera Capital: https://www.panteracapital.com/team
Daniel Larimer — Block.one: https://block.one/team/dan-larimer/
Dominik Schiener — IOTA: https://www.iota.org/the-foundation/team
Don Tapscott — The Blockchain Revolution: http://blockchain-revolution.com/
Elizabeth Stark — Lightning Labs: https://twitter.com/starkness/
Gabriel Dumitriu — The Blockchain Buddy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dumitriugabriel/
Jesse Powell — Kraken: https://twitter.com/jespow/
Jihan Wu — Bitmain: https://twitter.com/JihanWu/
Joseph Lubin — ConsenSys: https://consensys.net/about/joseph-lubin-founder-of-consensys/
Juan Benet — Protocol Labs: https://twitter.com/juanbenet/
John McAfee — crypto investor and entrepreneur: https://cointelegraph.com/tags/john-mcafee
Jed McCaleb — Stellar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jed_McCaleb
Kathryn Haun — Coinbase: https://twitter.com/katie_haun/
Kathleen Breitman — Tezos: https://www.crunchbase.com/person/kathleen-breitman
Laura Shin — Forbes; Unchained: https://unchainedpodcast.com/
Marc Andreessen — a16z Crypto: https://a16z.com/crypto/
Michael Novogratz — Galaxy Investment Partners: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Novogratz
Mike Kayamori — Liquid: https://blog.liquid.com/author/mike-kayamori
Michael Arrington — TechCrunch: https://www.crunchbase.com/person/michael-arrington
Naval Ravikant — AngelList; CoinList: https://angel.co/naval
Nick Szabo — https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/smart-contracts.asp
Nejc Kodrič — Bitstamp: https://www.bitstamp.net/about-us/
Olaf Carlson-Wee — Polychain Capital: https://cryptoslate.com/people/olaf-carlson-wee/
Pieter Wuille — Blockstream: https://twitter.com/pwuille/
Peter Smith — Blockchain crypto wallet: https://www.blockchain.com/team
Pavel Durov — Vkontakte: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavel_Durov
Roger Ver — Bitcoin Cash: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Ver
Star Xu — OKEx: https://www.okex.me
Tricia Martinez — Wala: https://twitter.com/TriciaTita/photo
Tyler Winklevoss — Winklevoss Capital: https://winklevosscapital.com
Valery Vavilov — Bitfury: https://twitter.com/valeryvavilov/
Vitalik Buterin — Ethereum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalik_Buterin
Yuzo Kano — bitFlyer: https://twitter.com/YuzoKano/
Header image source free commercial license: Pixabay
