CoinDesk reveals the most influential people in Bitcoin and blockchain in 2015

Author: Velvet Gold Mine

As we reflect on what has been a fascinating year for Bitcoin, it’s natural to assess our individual accomplishments by the impact we’ve had on the industry.

Of course, this year's talk is about more than just Bitcoin: a potential Bitcoin technology (blockchain Bitcoin electronic wallet) has its own market and almost fanatical institutional interest. A year ago, blockchain seemed like an almost impossible project to develop. Now banks and major financial institutions are launching blockchain projects to test the possibilities of the technology.

The industry needs influential people who can solve problems on technical or management issues and create awareness: to come up with revolutionary new approaches to solve serious global problems and build elegant new companies to bring this exciting emerging technology to the masses.

We've come up with our own thoughts based on our 2015 user survey, and we'd like you and the rest of the public to give us your input in our reader survey.

The top ten on this year's list were determined by taking into account the biggest events that took place this year, the contributions of the nominated individuals to society, and the results of our survey.
So, who will be at the top this year? Read on to find out…

Bobby Lee

Li Baozhi is the CEO of Shanghai-based bitcoin exchange BTCC (formerly China BTC). Li has been working to reduce the gap between the Eastern and Western bitcoin communities and has a great influence.

Recently, Li has been a frequent attendee at conferences and has a prominent position at outreach meetings. Li does translation and coordination work at the Scaling Bitcoin Workshop, ensuring that Chinese Bitcoin developers can communicate with Western developers.

His reputation is high enough that he can easily make headlines about Bitcoin; his popularity is high enough that he can vote on the Bitcoin Foundation's board of directors.

Blythe Masters

Women have always been lacking in technology. Bitcoin needs to make further progress in this regard. However, Blythe Masters is a notable exception. She is the top financial executive in the blockchain, or the entire Bitcoin industry.

Masters was the head of global commodities at JPMorgan and is now CEO of DA (Digital Asset Holdings), a company that provides settlement and ledger services for digital assets.

Her expertise and excellent skills made her the cover of Bloomberg Businessweek (the most influential business magazine in the United States). Her startup has acquired many Bitcoin companies and is rumored to have received funding from JP Morgan and Santander Bank.

While Masters is not a fan of Bitcoin (she has made this known publicly), she, like others, has done a lot to promote blockchain technology on Wall Street, even turning down a job at Barclays Investment Bank to stay at DA.

Balaji Srinivasan

Srinivasan is the head of a bitcoin startup called 21 Inc. 21 Inc was founded without much fanfare, and it has accumulated a lot of venture capital funding over a long period of time, so few people outside the company know about the company's business plans.

Yet in March, 21Inc finally made global headlines when it revealed it had raised a total of $116 million, the most ever raised by a Bitcoin company. But the question was, what exactly was its amazing product or service?

Finally, in May of this year, a document revealed that 21 Inc’s technology could enable robotic Bitcoin transactions to facilitate a real-time market for network bandwidth.

• Some time later, 21Inc finally released a product: a small-scale mining device called a Bitcoin PC, which it began selling on Amazon in November.

• The filing of the patent hints at more products to come, but many believe that 21Inc’s Bitcoin computer will kick off a new wave of development and innovation in the industry.

• Srinivasan undoubtedly had a significant impact in 2015 as Bitcoin’s global popularity grew and large numbers of Bitcoin devices became major exports.

Theymos

Theymos is a controversial figure in the Bitcoin community. Theymos is also the pseudonym of one of the moderators of the Reddit Bitcoin forum (r/Bitcoin).

His modest style has caused controversy. One user jokingly suggested that Theymos might ban Satoshi Nakamoto (the inventor of Bitcoin) due to the inherent strictness of the Bitcoin community, its immutable policy regulations and alleged censorship.

Things got so bad that other entrepreneurs tried to take over r/Bitcoin’s position as the industry’s main discussion forum.

Bitcoin evangelist Roger Ver, sometimes called "Bitcoin Jesus," began running the Bitcoin.com forums for bitcoin users, and launched another reddit forum, r/btc. There is an unissued DATT initiative to fully decentralize Reddit.

Whether or not you agree with Theymos’ style, he has undoubtedly influenced the Bitcoin community and its surrounding discussions, although that influence may be challenged again next year.

Gavin Andresen

The bitcoin community is currently focused on a major technical discussion about how best to change the code to allow more transactions, and the network’s longtime maintainer is unsurprisingly at the center of the discussion.

Andresen was very vocal about his view that production should be expanded significantly in a short period of time.

Programmer Andresen participated in the forum and enthusiastically presented his views on Bitcoin XT, a new client designed specifically for bitcoin miners to vote on bitcoin's 1 MB block size limit.

The initiative continues to be debated, with Andresen’s introduction of the plan proving somewhat jarring, and the sudden launch of BitcoinXT leading to exaggerated market share and negative headlines.

Andresen, who regularly participates in the Bitcoin community and contributes to Bitcoin’s code, was also on last year’s list, ranking fifth.

Vitalik Buterin

Despite his young age, Buterin has already achieved a lot in the digital currency industry, and his resume is impressive enough. In addition to being an editor and author for Bitcoin Magazine, he has also participated in several well-known projects.

Buterin is from Toronto, Canada. He participated in the creation of Dark Wallet and KryptoKit, and then he founded Ethereum, a blockchain network dedicated to serving distributed applications.

As the face of the project, Buterin also regularly attends conferences and was ranked sixth in last year’s “most influential people” poll.

However, 2015 was an especially big year for crowdfunding projects, with high expectations, delays and rumors of behind-the-scenes crises.

But Ethereum has persisted, pulling out of a big event in London to show businesses the benefits its technology, which is still in its infancy, can bring. Ethereum is now powering a number of new startups.

In short, 2015 was the year Ethereum had to prove itself, and although Ethereum was only a short time old, it is no exaggeration to say that it has already become an integral part of the industry.

Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam

No one has done more to make Bitcoin mainstream than the co-founders of Coinbase, whose user-friendly international exchange and wallet platform gave non-technical users an easy way to buy and use Bitcoin.

But as their startup grows, Armstrong and Ehrsam seem increasingly intent on positioning themselves as thought leaders in the industry.

This year, Armstrong and Ehrsam have also become more adept at using their company blog and social media to promote their ideas about how bitcoin needs to evolve.

In the process, they are not afraid to express their views on the media's poor coverage of Bitcoin technology, and are not afraid of the pressure brought by altcoins in promoting Bitcoin.

Although Coinbase has faced some criticism from the community on social platforms for its strict adherence to global regulations, Armstrong and Ehrsam have continued to work hard for Bitcoin.

Wences Casares, CEO of emerging bitcoin securities firm Xapo, remains a prominent figure in the bitcoin and blockchain industry.

Even more striking is that Xapo has continued to attract attention despite a relatively quiet 2015. The startup has released few new products and services this year and is now focusing on a lawsuit against a former employer that hired its key executives.

But while Casares has been relatively quiet on the business side of things, he has received widespread coverage for his words and deeds, even for non-news related announcements, and he is willing to share his views with anyone who wants to know more about how Bitcoin can change the world.

He is an entrepreneur from Argentina who has gained recognition for promoting digital currencies to reticent financiers in Silicon Valley and Wall Street, even as he says his outreach has drawn derision from skeptics.

Brian Forde

Since being inducted into MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative (DCI) in April, the former White House senior adviser has been effective in introducing the benefits of Bitcoin and blockchain to people both inside and outside the prestigious university.

As part of MIT's Media Lab, DCI is trying to get other departments involved, whether they're in the School of Engineering or the School of Broadcasting and Journalism, to expose a new generation of young people to this emerging technology.

Although Forde's public appearances have become more limited recently, he is working hard to spread the word about the need for technology so that people can work towards DCI's goals and understand why they are set.

This year, he has also used the power of MIT’s brand to bring technical support to groups that have historically received little attention in the industry conversation, and has been vocal on topics such as New York State’s BitLicense regulations.

Satoshi Nakamoto

It’s the pseudonym of the controversial genius (or geniuses) who invented Bitcoin and once again proved his or her enormous influence on the industry this year. According to Wired and Gizmodo’s “reveal,” Craig Wright, an Australian entrepreneur, is the more widely known Nakamoto, and Bitcoin’s mysterious creator showed just how much attention he can bring to the technology. Even in a week when the industry’s most acclaimed solution to scalability and its most old-fashioned trade organization seemed ready to collapse at any moment, Nakamoto’s influence overshadowed all other developments.
What followed became a more or less predictable script.

Experts dismissed Nakamoto’s true identity as unimportant, while other media outlets sought to expose flaws in the emerging evidence. Regardless, the Bitcoin community soon began to develop a conversation that would dominate mainstream publications around the world.

While Nakamoto is often labeled as the “creator of Bitcoin,” he or she is also the inventor of the decentralized ledger, the blockchain. Even major banks seem to be increasingly keen to leverage this “technology,” but Nakamoto and his or her invention remain at the center of conversation, topping the list in our survey.


JPM compiled from
Coindesk, CoinDesk's Most Influential People in Bitcoin and Blockchain 2015.