The rapidly evolving cryptocurrency and blockchain industry has undergone massive growth in 2017. The current fiscal however did spread shockwaves amongst the cryptocurrency community with the prices of major cryptocurrencies plummeting down the price radar. Regulatory stands taken up by government bodies around the world also did not help much in easing our confusion about the ever-changing cryptocurrency scenario. In such a case, it becomes imperative to look up to the cryptocurrency and blockchain pioneers to gain a clear understanding of what to expect in the upcoming days. Some of our readers who have been into the cryptocurrency and blockchain space for a while may know about these early adopters. But for those who are new to this revolutionary world, I have created a “List of top cryptocurrency and blockchain influencers” who have gained rapid popularity with their intellectual honesty, farfetched knowledge and thorough leadership.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/aantonop
Balaji S. Srinivasan is the CEO of Earn.com and a Board Partner at Andreessen Horowitz. Prior to taking the CEO role at Earn.com, Dr. Srinivasan was a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz.
Srinivasan posts breaking news related to cryptocurrencies related to cryptocurrencies. Apart from being partner at Andreesen Horowitz, Srinivasan has vast knowledge of cryptocurrency that can be quite valuable to the average investor.
Number of Twitter Followers of Balaji S. Srinivasan : 79.4K
Official website of Balaji S. Srinivasan : https://balajis.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/balajis
Barry Silbert is the founder and CEO of Digital Currency Group. Silbert is one of the biggest names in cryptocurrency and blockchain world today. Silbert is also involved in Grayscale Investments’ Bitcoin and Ethereum trusts .
Barry Silbert is one of the guys behind CoinDesk and is also closely involved with the Ethereum project. Silbert has a portfolio of more than 100 alt-coins, he is clearly a guy who knows what he is doing when it comes to cryptocurrencies.
Number of Twitter Followers of Barry Silbert : 146K
Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrysilbert
As an award-winning speaker, Amazon bestselling author, host of internationally acclaimed radio show Breaking Banks and CEO of successful mobile start-up Moven, Brett King focuses on how modern day business is being derailed by disruptive technology. He has secured his slot in the list of top-financial influencers worldwide with his in-depth knowledge and practical experience.
His renowned book ‘Augmented’ was recommended by Chinese President Xi Jinping for gaining greater insights into the world of artificial intelligence. He had advised the Obama run government previously on issues of Fintech policy and currently counsels bank boards and regulators on technology transformation.
Number of Twitter Followers of Brett King : 49.7K
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BrettKing
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brettking/
Brian Armstrong is the CEO and Co-founder of Coinbase the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world.Prior to setting up Coinbase in June 2012, this Masters in Computer Science student from Rice University had worked at AirBNB as a software engineer from 2011. He also worked for CarWoo.comand founded UniversityTutory.com.
News do move the cryptomarket, and to take advantage of news, Brian Armstrong is the guy to follow.Being the founder of world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, whatever he says has an impact on the cryptocurrnecy markets.
Number of Twitter Followers of Brian Armstrong: 203K
Twitter: https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong
“https://www.linkedin.com/in/barmstrong/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/barmstrong/
Brock Pierce- Cofounder of Block.One, Blockchain Capital and Chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation
Brock Pierce is a venture capitalist and entrepreneur holding an extensive track record of incubating, advising and financially supporting disruptive business ideas. He is also the founding board member of Mastercoin (first ICO). The living mantra of this founder of EOS, Blockchain Capital and Tether is “Building free market solutions to secure life, liberty, and property”. He has generated a revenue exceeding $500 million from his start-up investments and has been providing requisite guidance to the digital currency market in the sphere of gaming.
Pierce is a much sought-after speaker and faculty at the Singularity University where he regularly shares his views and opinions about developments of the crypto industry and underlying blockchain architecture. Pierce is also a co-founder of Tether.
Number of Twitter Followers of Brock Pierce : 49.7K
Twitter : https://twitter.com/brockpierce
Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/in/brockpierce/
Charlie Lee is the creator of “https://litecoin.org/” target=”_blank” rel=”nofollow noopener noreferrer”>Litecoin, which is one of the earliest derivative token of Bitcoin. After completing his Masters in Computer Science from MIT in 2000, Charlie worked with an array of tech companies including notable ones such as Google (2007 – 2013) and Guidewire Software to enrich his knowledge sphere. He was trying to get actively involved in gold trade when he stumbled upon the April 2011 issue of Silk Road which managed to garner his interest in the sphere of crypto money.
Charlie Lee, former Director of Engineering at Coinbase (2013-2017). Lee decided to focus full-time on Litecoin, a peer-to-peer internet currency that enables instant, near-zero cost payments to anyone in the world. Litecoin is a proven medium of commerce complementary to Bitcoin.
Number of Twitter Followers of Charlie Lee: 731K
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SatoshiLite
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chocobo/
Charlie Shrem is one of the bitcoin pioneers and also the brains behind the bitcoin foundation. Charlie led the partnerships and mergers of Fundación Bitcoin Argentina, Bitcoin Embassy of Canada, and Bitcoin Association of Australia, making sure all local Bitcoin communities have global resources and mentoring.
Shrem was the founder and former CEO at BitInstant LLC, an early Bitcoin start-?up that provided a secure, fast and convenient way of globally buying and selling of Bitcoin.
Charlie Shrem’s official website: CharlieShrem.com
Number of Twitter Followers of Charlie Shrem : 134K
Twitter: https://twitter.com/CharlieShrem
An active investor and founder of Skill Incubator, home to the largest premium community of cryptocurrency traders and investors, Chris Dunn focuses on educational and financial startups.
He’s been featured as a cryptocurrency thought leader in publications like Fox News and Entrepreneur. His goal is to help 100,000 people successfully invest in cryptocurrencies.
Chris Dunn’s Official Website : chrisdunn.com
Number of Twitter Followers of Chris Dunn : 47.2K
Twitter: “https://twitter.com/ChrisDunnTV” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>https://twitter.com/ChrisDunnTV
Don Tapscott, a media theorist has been advancing trailblazing concepts for more than three decades regarding how the transformational nature of internet can change the way we perceive business operations. He co-founded Blockchain research Institute which has been dealing with more than 70 cases of definitive investigation in the fields of implementation challenges, use-cases and organizational transformations of the blockchain strategy.
Tapscott was ranked by Thinkers50 as the second most influential management thinker on an international scale given his prolific viewpoints on the sphere of technological revolutions and its impact on the world economy.
Number of Twitter Followers of Don Tapscott : 107K
Twitter:“https://twitter.com/dtapscott” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”> https://twitter.com/dtapscott
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dontapscott/
Elizabeth Stark is a former professor at Yale and Stanford University and is presently working as the CEO of Lightning Labs . Stark co-founded Lightning Labs for building a programmable financial layer meant for the internet by making use of a scalable and fast blockchain organization. She had a pivotal role to play in the Internet freedom effort which engaged about 18 million people around the globe and defeated SOPA/PIPA. She is a fellow at crypto policy organization Coin Center and advisor at Comma.ai, which builds start-ups through autonomous driving technology. She had previously lent her words of wisdom to various blockchain and decentralized technology start-ups.
Number of Twitter Followers of Elizabeh Stark : 61.2K
Twitter:“https://twitter.com/starkness” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”> https://twitter.com/starkness
Erik Voorhees gained popularity with his constructive criticism concerning the blockchain space. Voorhees is one of the earliest adopters of cryptocurrency and is involved in the cryptocurrency market since 2011. The US born crypto businessman was previously the Marketing Director at Bitinstant and originally the CEO and founder of Coinapult. However, Shapeshift is his most fruitful project till date offering instant exchange services of Litecoin, Bitcoin and many other digital tokens and also allows the investors to create an investment portfolio on the platform.
Number of Twitter Followers of Erik Voorhees: 257K
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ErikVoorhees
Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/in/erikvoorhees/
Fred Ehsram is one of the co-founders of Coinbase. However, unlike Brian who is focused on news, Fred offers detailed personal insights on the markets through his social media accounts. Given that he is a co-founder of one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges on the planet, his insights are worth a lot.
Number of Twitter Followers of Fred Ehsram : 75.9K
Twitter: https://twitter.com/FEhrsam
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fredehrsam/
Garvin Wood co-founded the Ethereum Project with his comprehensive understanding of blockchain technology and crypto-economics. Garvin wrote the very first Ethereum implementation protocol, stewarded and designed the Solidity language and implemented the Whisper protocol. He has recently taken up the task of sharing his vast knowledge reserve with the masses through his book “Mastering Ethereum”.
Garvin Wood Official Website: Gavwood.com
Number of Twitter Followers of Garvin Wood : 38.9K
Twitter : https://twitter.com/@gavofyork
Gavin Andresen is the one of the core developers of Bitcoin. Andresen has deep insight and knowledge on cryptocurrencies. He helped program bitcoin code together with Satoshi Nakamoto and is one of the most prominent members of the bitcoin community. So much so, that he has access to the alert key that allows him to broadcast messages about critical network problems to all Bitcoin clients. Control of the source code repository and the alert key was handed down from Satoshi to Andresen before disappearing.
Official Website of Gavin Andresen – gavinandresen.ninja
Jimmy Song is a bitcoin developer as well as a regular contributor to Coindesk. This guy understands cryptocurrency inside out.
Number of Twitter Followers of Jimmy Song : 101K
Twitter: https://twitter.com/jimmysong
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmysong/
John McAfee, a tech veteran is one of the best guys to follow when it comes to cryptocurrencies. McAfee has made a huge prediction that Bitcoin Price will touch $1 Million by 2020. John McAfee regularly explores cryptocurrency topics in his Twitter feed, by mentioning some of the good ICO projects and crypto coins existing in the market.
John McAfee is the Chief Cybersecurity Visionary at MGT Capital Investments. His connection to MGT, one of the top bitcoin miners in North America, makes him one of the top blockchain and cryptocurrency influencer.
Number of Twitter Followers of John Mcafee : 800K
Twitter: https://twitter.com/officialmcafee
Joseph Lubin is the founder of ConsenSys which develops utilities and applications to cater to the requirements of the next-generation decentralized web. This Canadian entrepreneur who co-founded Ethereum was recently nominated as one of the most influential personalities in cryptocurrency space by CoinDesk.
Number of Twitter Followers of Joseph Lubin : 71.3K
Twitter : https://twitter.com/ethereumJoseph
Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/in/joseph-lubin-48406489/
Keynote-speaker, bestselling author and serial entrepreneur are few of the many attributes of this versatile trauma surgeon. Julian Hosp co-founded a Fintech firm by the name of TenX based out in Singapore which offers its users with a debit card payment system for instantaneously spending multiple digital currencies irrespective of geo-location or time. He is invited frequently at global fintech summits to share his knowledge in the field of best ICO practices, future of cryptocurrency and current blockchain trends.
Number of Twitter Followers of Julian Hosp: 34.5K
Twitter: https://twitter.com/julianhosp
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julianhosp/
Laura Shin is a writer and senior editor at Forbes, Shin manages the publication’s crypto and blockchain technology coverage.
Shin hosts the podcast Unchained: Big Ideas From The Worlds Of Cryptocurrency and Blockchain, which delves deep into the same subjects as her column. Through these mediums, Shin has become a trusted voice in the industry.
Laura Shin Podacast: https://www.forbes.com/podcasts/unchained/#48387c945b4f
Laura Shin Official Website: Laurashin.com
Number of Twitter Followers of Laura Shin : 79.1K
Twitter:“https://twitter.com/laurashin” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”> https://twitter.com/laurashin
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurashin/
Meltem Demirors has worked hard to bag her place in the elite group of female blockchain influencers powered by her heavyweight curriculum vitae. Meltem is an advisor at the MIT Media Lab, member of global future council on blockchain at World Economic Forum and vice-president at Digital Currency Group. She brings along diverse flavours of corporate treasury, management consulting, supply chain management and commodities trading to the table while building the global network of Digital Currency Group.
Meltem is a lecturer for the newest course unveiled by Oxford University on blockchain technology and a guest lecturer at MIT Media Lab.
Number of Twitter Followers of Meltem Demirors: 46.9K
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Melt_Dem
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meltdem/
Naval Ravikant, the co-founder and CEO of AngelList gained massive popularity when he published the blue print for initial coin offerings through a blog post back in 2014. Later he went ahead with the controversial prediction that,“Blockchains will replace networks with markets.”
He previously co-founded Vast.com and Epinions.com. Naval had also invested in numerous companies such as Uber, Twitter, Stack Overflow, Yammer and Wanelo. Naval seeks a blockchain alternative to twitter.
Mr.Ravikant revealed his intentions to sponsor a prize to reward anyone who can develop a decentralized version of twitter, where users will be able to monetize their contributions.
Number of Twitter Followers of Naval Ravikant : 388K
Twitter: https://twitter.com/naval
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/navalr/
There are some who till this day still vehemently claim that Nick Szabo is in fact, the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto; the creator of Bitcoin. Throughout the early period of the Bitcoin revolution, the then-fledgling crypto community was rife with the assertion that Nick Szabo was the anonymous Bitcoin creator. However, Nick has always denied the claim.
Nick Szabo is a colossal figure not just only in the cryptocurrency community but also for his work in cryptography and digital currency in general. Nick coined the term “smart contract”. Smart contracts are a central part of the Ethereum blockchain ecosystem. His digital currency “Bit gold” was in many ways a precursor to Bitcoin. Though it was never implemented, bitgold shared a lot of similarities with the core protocols on which Bitcoin is built on.
A graduate of computer science from Washington University, he is a consummate expert in cryptography, blockchain programming language, and cryptocurrency architecture. Such is his influence in the Ethereum community that the developers named a subunit of ether in his name. 1 Szabo is one-millionth of an Ether.
Number of Twitter Followers of Nick Szabo: 190K
Twitter: https://twitter.com/nickszabo4
This lifelong technologist and serial entrepreneur attributes most of his insights to the experience gathered from travelling around the world. He carried out poverty reduction assessments in rural India before focusing on the development of start-ups. Fuelled by his deep love for positive digital disruption, Nicolas co-founded “https://www.blockchain.com/” target=”_blank” rel=”nofollow noopener noreferrer”>BlockChain which is one of the most popular bitcoin wallet increasingly used worldwide.
Nicolas recently co-founded Youth Business USA which is a prominent youth business accelerator running with benevolent objectives. He has made media appearances in chat shows hosted by OCED, World Economic Forum, CNN, Wired, Entrepreneur, Marketwatch and many more. He even bagged the 2015 European Digital Leader award courtesy his innovative and inspiring contribution towards advancement of digital world.
Number of Twitter Followers of Nicolas Cary: 35.9K
Twitter:“https://twitter.com/niccary” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”> https://twitter.com/niccary
Linkedin:“https://www.linkedin.com/in/ncary/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”> https://www.linkedin.com/in/ncary/
Nicola trades cryptocurrencies (apart from forex, commodities and stocks) for a living, and is quite successful going by the followers she has on Facebook. Following her daily Facebook discussions can help you make a fortune from cryptocurrency trading.
Nicola Duke official website : Nictrades.com
Number of Twitter Followers of Nicola Duke: 77.1K
Twitter: https://twitter.com/NicTrades
Richard Brown is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for R3CEV, a startup firm focused on building and empowering the next generation of global financial services technology.
R3, short for R3CEV is focusing on building a partnership of global banks to design and deliver advanced Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) to the global financial markets and the banking system.
Richard Brown also acts as an advisor to different ICO projects in the market. Richards has also advised several firms, like Chromaway and Elliptic Enterprises, about cryptocurrencies and decentralisation.
Number of Twitter Followers of Richard Gendal Brown: 11.7K
Twitter: https://twitter.com/gendal
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gendal/
Roger Ver, also know as Bitcoin Jesus has been an emblematic figure behind the 1st August 2017 hard fork of Bitcoin network which gave birth to Bitcoin Cash. He served as a CEO of MemoryDealers.com which has slowly emerged as a world leader in the networking and memory equipment industry. He came to know about Bitcoin back in 2011 and had since then been a prolific investor in Bitcoin start-ups. Under his guidance, MemoryDealers became the first commercial business-house to open its floodgate to bitcoin as a medium of payment.
Number of Twitter Followers of Roger Ver : 490K
Twitter: https://twitter.com/rogerkver
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rogerver/
As a highly experienced Technology officer and practising Fintech professor, Sally takes up bespoke projects which specialize in transformational change triggered by the massive spread of disruptive technologies. She is the Chief Technology Officer at Mind Fit and a member of the Strategic Management Board for TeamBlockchain. She received global accolades for her work in the field of blockchain, robotics, machine learning, artificial intelligence, emergent technology and digital transformation. Sally, an accomplished author and keynote speaker also contributes regularly to leading technology, business and academic publications.
Number of Twitter Followers of Sally Eaves : 65.6K
Twitter: https://twitter.com/sallyeaves
Linkedin:“https://www.linkedin.com/in/sally-eaves/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”> https://www.linkedin.com/in/sally-eaves/
Tiffany came to know about the massive potential of Bitcoin back in 2012 and since then she had been an outspoken advocate of this emerging phenomenon. She focused mostly on how cryptocurrencies can help in community building.
Tiffany has been Ranked #23 in “The Top 100 People in Fintech.” by Richtopia and #34 in the “250 top blockchain influencers on Twitter” by Jaypalter.ca
At present, Tiffany Hayden is working as a community manager at “https://edgesecure.co/” target=”_blank” rel=”nofollow noopener noreferrer”>EdgeSecure, a data security platform. EdgeSecure uses blockchain technology and claims to remove the large scale data breaches.
Number of Twitter Followers of Tiffany Hayden : 61.1K
Twitter: https://twitter.com/haydentiff
Tim Draper is a renowned Venture Capitalist and an Angel Investor. Tim is the founder of Draper Associates which specializes in seed-stage investment in “extraordinary projects.” Tim has been an avid participant in the crypto space.
One of his riskiest moves was in 2014 when he bought 3000 bitcoins at a time when the markets were highly unstable. Clearly, he knew what he was doing, if bitcoin’s value growth since then is anything to go by.
Tim is something of a lucky charm for ICOs as his association with any ICO often leads to a successful crowdfunding exercise. He backed the Tezos project in 2017 that raised over $200 million. He also supported and invested in the Bancor project which raised over $150 million. Tim has also been vocal in calls for the SEC to provide a favorable regulatory framework for ICOs and cryptos in general.
Number of Twitter Followers of Tim Draper : 77.7K
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TimDraper
Tuur Demeester, an Austrian economics discovered Bitcoin while on a research trip to Argentina. He immediately started recommending the same as a potential investment tool at a time when it was valued at just $5. Presently he is working as the Editor-in-Chief at Adamant Research which focuses mostly on securing global macro investment opportunities by leveraging blockchain and bitcoin technology. Powered by his academic rigour, out of the box approach, productive investment paranoia and focus on historical patterns, Turr has been publicly commenting since 2008 on macro-economic trends.
Number of Twitter Followers of Tuur Demeester : 152K
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TuurDemeester
Vinny Lingham, the star of Shark Tank South Africa, is a well-known Internet entrepreneur who immigrated to California a decade ago and is currently the co-founder and CEO of Civic, a blockchain startup that is leading a global digital identity revolution.
Vinny is an active technology investor primarily in Silicon Valley, focusing on Bitcoin and Blockchain projects in particular. He also partnered with one of his previous co-founders to establish an investment fund in South Africa called Newtown Partners.
Vinny Lingham Official website : – VinnyLingham.com
Number of Twitter Followers of Vinny Lingham : 139K
Twitter: https://twitter.com/VinnyLingham
Vitalik Buterin is a Russian-Canadian software developer who co-founded Ethereum, in 2013 when he was just 19 years old. At present, while writing this article, Ethereum is the second biggest cryptocurrency network in the world.
Vitalik also co-founded the Bitcoin Magazine in 2011 which is regularly followed by cryptocurrency aficionados around the globe.
Vitalik Buterin wrote the code of Ethereum in collaboration with other developers which has tasted unprecedented success with the implementation of the revolutionary smart contracts. Vitalik is one of the early adopters of bitcoin and has made a fortune from it.
Number of Twitter Followers of Vitalik Buterin : 696K
Twitter: https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin
Linkedin:“https://www.linkedin.com/in/vitalik-buterin-267a7450/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”> https://www.linkedin.com/in/vitalik-buterin-267a7450/
He is a Toronto based researcher, venture investor and best-selling author of “The Business Blockchain.”
William had been working in collaboration with entrepreneurs, start-ups, leaders, pioneers, enterprise executives and practitioners to make break-through innovation powered by crypto-technology. Coupled with his vast expertise gathered from being in technology industry since the last 30 years, William has slowly evolved into a respected thought leader. He founded three start-ups by the name of Eqentia, CYBERManagement and Engagio and held senior positions previously with Cognizant, Hewlett-Packard and Aberdeen Group.
Presently he is working as a Board Of Director with OB1 and general partner at Virtual Capital ventures.
Number of Twitter Followers of William Mougayar: 22.4K
Twitter: https://twitter.com/wmougayar
Linkedin:
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Rohit Kukreja
Rohit Kukreja is a Commerce graduate with Financial Markets expertise involving Stocks, Forex, Futures & Options Market and now Bitcoins & Cryptocurrency Markets. Blockchain Enthusiast but not a techie, Rohit is an active member of various Blockchain & Crypto communities all over India.
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