A heavy bank balance alone cannot buy you authority in crypto, nor does having the most social media fans. Nevertheless, approx $25 billion investment made in crypto startup companies last year, combined with almost a trillion dollar economy into this space now, can make it challenging to cut through the noise. The debut TOP 100 CRYPTO LIST attempts to make sense of it all.

Each person on this list does incredibly important work and has significant influence in the industry. We truly admire their achievements and congratulate them for utilizing their talent, company funds, and network to bring the best to the crypto and blockchain industry.

List of the Top 100 people in Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies:

#1 The Crypto Community:  First thing first, let us appreciate the whole crypto community first for supporting the industry for more than a decade. Without the support of the whole crypto community, it was impossible to do wonders.

#2 Vitalik Buterin:  Ethereum co-founder and one of the world’s youngest crypto billionaires. A researcher and developer, he also co-founded Bitcoin Magazine.

#3 Changpeng Zhao: Changpeng Zhao is the CEO of Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume

#4 Tim Draper: A prominent venture capitalist and founder of the venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Draper University, Tim Draper has invested in Skype, Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter, and Coinbase

#5 Ben Zhou: Co-founder and CEO of Bybit, one of the top three crypto exchanges in the world. He is also a committer and supporter of BitDAO.

#6 Michael Saylor: Michael Saylor is Founder, Chairman, and CEO at MicroStrategy, an enterprise analytics and mobility software company (the largest business intelligence company that is publicly traded).

#7 Brian Armstrong: Co-founder and CEO at the open cryptocurrency trading platform and wallet Coinbase. He also co-founded GiveCrypto

#8 Jack Dorsey: Co-founder and CEO of Twitter, and Founder and CEO of the financial services company Square

#9 Elizabeth Stark: Co-founder and CEO at Lightning Labs, which created the open-source, secure, and scalable Lightning Network to transfer money efficiently

#10 Charlie Lee: Creator of Litecoin. Cryptocurrency Enthusiast. Ex-Director of Engineering at Coinbase. Managing Director of the Litecoin Foundation

#11 Chris Dixon: General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and a leader of its crypto funds ($865 million)

#12 Meltem Demirors: Chief Strategy Officer at CoinShares, an industry-leading digital asset fund managing $1+ billion

#13 Balaji Srinivasan: CTO of Coinbase and cofounder of Counsyl, Earn, Teleport, Coin Center.

#14 Andreas M. Antonopoulos: Bitcoin, open blockchains, security. entrepreneur, coder, atheist, pacifist, pilot. Author of: Mastering Bitcoin, The Internet of Money, Mastering Ethereum.

#15 Naval Ravikant: A serial entrepreneur and angel investor with numerous successful tech startups in his wake, Naval is most notable for being co-founder of Angelist in 2010, which subsequently spun off subsidiary Coinlist in October 2017 to offer ICO services to startups and investors

#16 Roger Ver: World’s first Investor in Bitcoin startups

#17 Justin Sun: Founder of Tron Foundation and BitTorrent. The First Millennial Graduate of Hupan University.

#18 Erik Voorhees: CEO at Shapeshift, co-founder of Coinapult, worked as Marketing Director at BitInstant (one of the earliest crypto exchanges), and was the founder of bitcoin gambling site Satoshi Dice.

#19 Devin Finzer: Co-founder and current CEO of OpenSea, the biggest NFT marketplace in the world

#20 Barry Silbert:  Founder and CEO of the pivotal blockchain company Digital Currency Group, the parent company of CoinDesk, Grayscale, Genesis, Foundry, and Luno

#21 Emin Gün Sirer: A Turkish-American computer scientist who developed the Avalanche Consensus protocol underlying the Avalanche blockchain platform, and is currently the CEO and co-founder of Ava Labs.

#22 Charles Hoskinson:  Co-founder of Input Output HK. Invictus Innovations (Bitshares Network) and Ethereum

#23 Michael Joseph Winkelmann:  Mostly known as Beeple in the crypto space, is a digital artist, and graphic designer

#24  Billy Markus: Co-Founder of meme token Dogecoin

#25 Alex Mashinsky: Alex has generated over $1.5 billion as the creator of eight firms and three Unicorns, with over $3 billion in exits, and currently leads the Celsius team with more than $25 billion in crypto assets.

#26 Adam Back: Co-founder and CEO of Blockstream, a blockchain and Bitcoin technology company, and creator of Liquid

#27 Gavin Wood: Co-Founder of Ethereum, President, and Founder at Web3 Foundation, developer of the Polkadot Protocol

#28 Nick Szabo: Blockchain, cryptocurrency, and smart contracts pioneer

#29 Kevin Rose: Kevin Rose is about more than just crypto, he’s still very influential in the blockchain sphere. The former CEO of Digg turned investor runs the Block Zero podcast

#30 Michael Edward Novogratz: Former partner of the financial company known as Fortress Investment Group in the United States. He is the current CEO of Galaxy Investment Partners, which mainly concentrates on crypto investments.

#31 Sandeep Nailwal: The founder of Polygon ($MATIC) and an Indian entrepreneur. Nailwal is also the creator of the Crypto Covid Relief Fund in India.

#32 Cathie Wood: Founder, CEO, and CIO at ARK Invest, an investment advisory that only invests in disruptive innovations

#33 Helen Liu: Chief Operating Officer of Bybit, the world’s third most visited crypto exchange. 

#34 Kathleen Breitman: CEO of Dynamic Ledger Solutions and Co-founder at Tezos, a self-amending cryptographic ledger, and creator of the unreleased blockchain-based trading card game Emergents

#35 Hayden Adams: Founder of Uniswap, a decentralized trading protocol for ERC-20 tokens on Ethereum.

#36 Francis Xavier Suarez: 43rd mayor of Miami and an American lawyer and politician. Suarez is a crypto-friendly politician who has advocated for Miami’s growth as a cryptocurrency metropolis.

#37 Joseph Lubin: Co-founder of Ethereum and Founder of ConsenSys, a blockchain studio and consultancy creating decentralized applications, developer tools, and enterprise solutions on Ethereum.

#38 Uri Kolodny: CEO and Co-Founder of StarkWare, a company that creates zero-knowledge proof technology for permissionless blockchains using technology created at Technion by Prof.

#39 Lyn Alden: Bitcoin OG and the Founder of Lyn Alden Investment Strategy.

#40 Jeremy Allaire: Co-founder, Chairman, and CEO of Circle, a globally distributed payment system using blockchain.

#41 Tyler Winklevoss: Co-Founder and CEO of Gemini

#42 Nischal Shetty: Co-Founder of WazirX and Shardeum

#43 Sergey Nazarov: Co-Founder of Chainlink

#44 Esteban Ordano: Software engineer and co-founder of Decentraland

#45 Stani Kulechov:  Founder and CEO of Aave

#46 Marc Lowell Andreessen: An American entrepreneur, investor, and software engineer. He is the co-author of Mosaic, the first widely used web browser; co-founder of Netscape; and co-founder and general partner of Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz

#47 Elon Musk: Avid supporter of crypto and was one of if not the biggest contributors to Dogecoin’s success. He is also the new owner of Twitter Inc

#48 Ryan Selkis: Founder and CEO at Messari, a crypto data, and market intelligence startup

#49 Abhyudoy Das: Mostly known as the Face of crypto marketing in India and Asia. Currently working as the Head of India at Bybit to drive crypto mass adoption, he also advises a bunch of promising crypto projects.

#50 Gavin Andresen: Founder and Chief Scientist at Bitcoin Foundation. Prior to this, he was the Lead Core Bitcoin Developer at TruCoin.

#51 Peter Smith: CEO and Co-Founder of Blockchain, the leading financial technology for digital currencies and distributed ledgers and the top Bitcoin wallet, API, and network data platform.

#52 Olaf Carlson-Wee: Founder and CEO of Polychain Capital, one of the top cryptocurrency and blockchain investment funds, with investments in 48 companies.

#53 J. L. van der Velde: CEO at Bitfinex

#54 Rune Christensen: Co-founder and CEO of MakerDAO, the issuer of the first stablecoin for the Ethereum blockchain, Dai.

#55 Paul Tudor Jones: Founder, Chief Investment Officer, and Co-chairman of Tudor Investment Corporation

#56 Ben Goertzel: CEO of Singularity.net, an open market for AIs using blockchain, aiming to democratize AI creation, access, and benefits.

#57 Emilie Choi: President and COO of Coinbase

#58 Chamath Palihapitiya: Venture capitalist, engineer, SPAC sponsor, and the founder and CEO of Social Capital.

#59 Nayib Bukele: President of El Salvador, the first country to officially adopt Bitcoin

#60 Gary Gensler: US SEC Chairman

#61 Dan Tapiero: Seasoned Global Macro investor and GBI co-founder.

#62 Zac Prince: Founder and CEO at BlockFi, blockchain-powered wealth management software for investors in cryptocurrencies, offering interest-bearing accounts, credit, and trading.

#63 Kate Rouch: Chief Marketing Officer of Coinbase, a leading crypto exchange globally

#64 He Yi: Co-Founder and CMO of Binance. Leader of Binance Labs

#65 Sumit Gupta: Indian crypto entrepreneur and CEO of CoinDCX

#66 Dan Morehead: Founder and CEO of Pantera Capital, the first US investment firm with funds in cryptocurrencies and blockchain.

#67 Asra Nadeem: President of Draper University and Draper University Venture Fund

#68 Joyce Kim: Co-founder and Executive Director of Stellar, an open payment network using blockchain to bridge global and digital currencies and assets

#69 Su Zhu: Co-Founder and CEO of Three Arrows Capital Ltd, a Singapore-based hedge fund.

#70 Brandon Chez: Founder and CEO of CoinMarketCap, one of the most-visited sources of cryptocurrency rankings, data, and others.

#71 Fred Ehrsam: Co-founder of the early-stage crypto and blockchain investment fund Paradigm

#72 Jinglan Wang: Co-founder and CEO at Optimism PBC, an Ethereum OVM that aims “to enhance and enshrine fair access to public goods on the internet through the development of open-source software.”

#73 Galia Benartzi: Co-founder and in Business Development at The Bprotocol Foundation, developing the Bancor protocol, which creates tradable smart tokens leveraging algorithmic pricing and the network effect.

#74 Nathaniel Whittermore: Host of The Breakdown, a popular daily crypto podcast with numerous followers. He led marketing for FTX which faced bankruptcy recently.

#75 Kathryn Haun: General partner at Andreessen Horrowitz’s crypto division

#76 Andre Cronje: DeFi Architect at Ethereum and freelance, with projects including yearn.finance, curve.finance, and ytrade.finance. He is also Chief Crypto Code Reviewer at the ICO review and cryptocurrency media company CryptoBriefing.

#77 Laura Shin: Host of the podcasts Unchained and Unconfirmed, and her upcoming book will be published by PublicAffairs 

#78 Danny Ryan: Researcher leading Eth2 at the Ethereum Foundation. Prior to this, he was a cryptocurrency investor and contributed to open-source Ethereum projects. 

#79 Roneil Rumburg: Audius’ Co-Founder and CEO. Roneil has also served as an Engineering Partner at KPCB Edge

#80 Ari Paul: Co-founder and Chief Information Officer of BlockTower Capital

#81 Leah Wald: CEO of Valkyrie Funds

#82 Preethi Kasireddy: Writer and autodidact who offers a free email course on cryptocurrency

#83 Linda Xie: Co-founder of the crypto asset investment management company Scalar Capital

#84 Arianna Simpson: Deal Partner at Andreessen Horowitz and Managing Director at Autonomous Partners (ASP), a crypto hedge and venture capital fund.

#85 Ashish Singhal: CEO of CoinSwitch Kuber, a crypto aggregator unicorn

#86 Joe DiPasquale: CEO of BitBull Capital, the first cryptocurrency fund of hedge funds

#87 Kain Warwick: Founder at Synthetix

#88 Amber Baldet: Co-founder and CEO of Clovyr. A leader in the financial industry’s turn towards blockchain, she was Executive Director for the Blockchain Center of Excellence at J.P. Morgan and is on the Blockchain Council of the World Economic Forum

#89 Elemont: Co-Founder and CEO of Vita Inu (Vinu) cryptocurrency

#90 Muneeb Ali: Co-founder of Blockstack, an open-source network to build Bitcoin apps and smart contracts.

#91 Bogdan Evtushenko: CEO and Co-Founder of Trace Metaverse to initiate the first smartphone-based metaverse

#92 Bobby Ong: Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer at CoinGecko, a data aggregator charting 7,000+ cryptocurrencies on 400+ exchanges.

#93 Dan Schulman: President and CEO of PayPal, which has recently allowed users to buy, hold, and sell cryptocurrencies within their PayPal wallets

#94 Anatoly Yakovenko: Russian computer engineer and Solana (SOL) project co-founder

#95 Robert Leshner: CEO and Founder of Compound Labs

#96 Mike Belshe: Co-founder and CEO at BitGo, offering institutional support for crypto assets security, finance, trading, and custody

#97 CRYPTO CO฿AIN: Founder of crypto Twitter

#98 Kristin Smith: Executive Director of the Blockchain Association, a trade association located in Washington, DC

#99 Soichiro Takaoka: Founder and CEO of Social Good Foundation and creator of SocialGood ($SG) Token

#100 Yuzo Kano: bitFlyer Group Founder & CEO of bitFlyer USA, bitFlyer Blockchain, and Chairman of bitFlyer EUROPE. Chairman of Japan Blockchain Association. (JBA)