The recently published Forbes 30 Under 30 list of promising entrepreneurs features ten leaders from the cryptocurrency and blockchain sectors. Although the title suggests otherwise, the list actually includes 600 people aged below 30 across a number of categories, and the 2020 list highlights seven representatives from the crypto industry in the finance category, one in venture capital, one in energy, and one in manufacturing.
The finance category spotlights the founder and CEO of quantitative crypto trading firm Alameda Research, and the founder of the $1.2 billion crypto derivatives exchange FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried. It also includes the CEO of Zap – a Bitcoin investment and payments company operating over the Lightning Network, Jack Mallers.
The list featured Brain Tubergen, the co-founder of the U.S.-based initial token offering and crypto exchange platform CoinList. Since it set sail in 2017, CoinList has raised over $800 million for several crypto projects backed by venture firms including Sequoia, a16z, USV, GV, Bain and Lightspeed.
Alexander Liegl, the co-founder of the Layer1 Technologies, is the only leader from the crypto mining sector to make the list – he features in the energy category. As Liegl puts it, “Mining bitcoin is about converting electricity into money.” Layer1 has unravelled the quite ambitious plan to bring 30% of the global hashing power to the US in the upcoming times.
The Women In The Forbes List
Only three of the crypto representatives to make the Forbes 2020 list are women, which shows the, albeit reducing, but still undeniable gender gap that still exists across the industry. The very first female Bitcoin Core protocol engineer Amiti Uttarwar features in the list. The other women included are Soona Amhaz, the founding partner of Volt Capital, and Flori Marquez, the co-founder of the crypto lending protocol BlockFi. Amhaz, featuring in the venture capital category, has led eight investments to date, and has backed startups like Magic, BuyCoins, and Matrix League.
Aside from Amhaz, two other crypto representatives on the list stand for venture capital firms: Joseph Krug, the co-founder of Augur and the co-chief information officer of Pantera Capital, administers about $442 million across three crypto-specific funds. On the other hand, Charlie Noyes, an investment partner at the crypto venture fund Paradigm Capital, is currently managing $100 million in positions for the largest crypto fund in the world.
Finally, the Forbes list features all three co-founders of the blockchain-based supply chain data platform Authenticiti – Andrew Yang, Jeong Woo Park, and Athanasios Karachotzitis, in the manufacturing category.
The Forbes 30 under 30 list of 2020 reflects just how far the cryptocurrency sector – founded back in 2009 by the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto with the launch of Bitcoin – has come. It certainly highlights the increasing acceptance and adoption of cryptocurrency and related tech to the mainstream markets.
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