CoinDesk 2023 Most Influential Annual List Top 10

1. Casey Rodarmor is the founder of the Bitcoin protocol Ordinals. Ordinals are seen as NFTs on Bitcoin, allowing data to be recorded on Bitcoin. Initially, Ordinals sparked criticism from many Bitcoin enthusiasts, but in a significant sense, it gave rise to the first wave of meme frenzy on the Bitcoin network.

2. Ryan Selkis is not only the founder and CEO of Messari but has also been working to build a political "fundraising machine" for the crypto industry over the past two years, preparing to influence the 2024 elections. Ryan Selkis recently handed over this work to the political action committee (PAC) Fairshake. An insider said the company has about $15 million in funds. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong stated in October that he personally donated $1 million to Fairshake and hopes the PAC can raise $50 million or more. Fairshake has begun to deploy these funds; Politico reported in November that the PAC had spent $1.2 million on television ads for House candidates in recent months.

3. Jenny Johnson is the CEO of Franklin Templeton, a $1.33 trillion asset management company, leading the company into the forefront of the cryptocurrency field. Franklin Templeton, along with other financial giants such as BlackRock and Fidelity, has applied for the listing of a Bitcoin ETF in the United States and provides digital asset exposure to clients, even having nodes on multiple proof-of-stake blockchains such as Ethereum, Solana, and Stellar.

4. Lido DAO has democratized ETH staking and has taken a dominant position. However, Lido DAO is either a fortress against central control in Ethereum or may accelerate Ethereum's trend toward centralization.

5. Paolo Ardoino, as Tether CTO, is seeking to diversify the company's investments. Paolo Ardoino is one of the most hardworking individuals in the cryptocurrency field. On GitHub, he has made 3,275 code contributions this year (an average of 2-3 times per day) and made 37,720 submissions in 2017.

6. Jose Fernandez da Ponte, as PayPal's Senior Vice President and General Manager, has driven the payment giant to release the USD stablecoin PYUSD this year, bringing more efficient internet-based payments to people around the world. Jose Fernandez da Ponte assumes, "In the next five years, we will see a tenfold increase in the asset size of stablecoins. We are still in the early stages. I don't think anyone has a solid position or market share. In the future, we will also deploy on other protocols. For us, the most decisive factors are scale and throughput."

7. Gary Gensler (Chair of the U.S. SEC) is undoubtedly the most influential regulator or law enforcement official. In 2023, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) achieved partial victory in its case against Ripple (or suffered partial defeat, depending on how you look at it). As for spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), while issuers and exchanges still hold hope for their approval, the expectation for spot Bitcoin ETFs to be approved next month has surged unprecedentedly high.

8. Brian Armstrong is a heavyweight figure in the exchange world who is currently unscathed. With CZ leaving Binance and SBF being imprisoned, Coinbase is facing significant regulatory resistance. In June of this year, the SEC filed a major lawsuit against Coinbase, accusing it of operating as an unregistered securities exchange, broker, and clearing agency. In addition, Coinbase launched its own Layer 2 blockchain Base and derivatives exchange this year, and with the ETF expected to be launched in 2024, Coinbase is preparing for the next wave of cryptocurrency with it being the preferred partner for most issuers.

9. Sam Altman is changing the world. From ChatGPT to Worldcoin, Sam Altman is ambitious and stands in the new wave. Recommended reading: "The creator of ChatGPT, and a dream of a world currency"

10. Brad Garlinghouse (Co-founder of Ripple) achieved a significant victory in a legal case this year that had a major impact on the future of cryptocurrencies. On July 13, 2023, U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres ruled in favor of Ripple in the SEC's charges, stating that XRP itself does not meet the "contract, transaction, or scheme" requirements of the Howey test for investment contracts, and that Ripple's institutional sales of XRP constituted unregistered investment contract offers and sales.

CoinDesk 2023 Most Influential: Honors Top 40

• Digital artist Refik Anadol and the Yawanawa indigenous community in Brazil released the Winds of Yawanawa series, which had a total trading volume of 8759 ETH as NFTs. In addition, their AI-based video work "Unsupervised" has been acquired by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York as a permanent collection.

• Rune Christensen (Co-founder of MakerDAO) has brought real-world assets such as U.S. Treasury bonds into the blockchain on a large scale this year.

• Larry Fink (CEO of BlackRock) is one of the biggest Bitcoin believers on Wall Street. BlackRock reignited interest in Bitcoin ETFs this year. Several other traditional financial institutions, including Fidelity, Franklin Templeton, and VanEck, as well as native crypto institutions like Bitwise and Hashdex, have also applied to list their own Bitcoin ETFs.

• Jordi Baylina is the Chief Technology Officer of Polygon, leading the launch of Polygon zkEVM. Baylina is also an OG in the crypto industry, having founded a white hat organization that saved funds from the Ethereum DAO hack in 2016. Baylina also created the Hermez Network, a zero-knowledge rollup network, which was acquired by Polygon in 2021.

• Avery Ching: Co-founder and CTO of Aptos Labs.

• Stefan Berger (Key legislator in the EU) has led the development of the EU's regulatory framework for the crypto asset market (MiCA) and is currently studying the digital euro.

• Cuy Sheffield (Crypto lead at Visa): Since 2021, Visa and Circle have been using blockchain to improve cross-border payments. In the third quarter of this year, Visa announced that it would send USDC to specific merchants through Solana in a new pilot.

Jesse Pollak is the head of Coinbase's Layer2 network Base. After the launch of Base, other exchanges followed suit.

Karl Floersch is the CEO of OP Labs, responsible for overseeing the release of OP Stack.

Recommended reading: "Optimism Feast? An Overview of OP Stack's Ecosystem Projects"

Lisa Neigut is a developer at Blockstream and has been working on developing Lightning v2 since 2019, preparing for its launch by the end of the year.

Sergey Nazarov is the co-founder of the oracle platform Chainlink. Since 2022, the Chainlink platform has achieved over $9 trillion in transaction value across a wide range of verticals, including banking, decentralized finance, global trade, gaming, insurance, and other major industries.

Jeremy Allaire founded Circle Internet Financial in 2013 and is a heavyweight figure in the cryptocurrency field. Circle is pushing for stablecoins like USDC to enter the mainstream financial sector and further promote global financial inclusion, while navigating the complex world of cryptocurrency regulation.

Mike Belshe is the CEO of the cryptocurrency custodian BitGo, which completed a $1 billion funding round in August of this year, valuing the company at $17.5 billion.

Ria Bhutoria: Partner at Castle Island Ventures. Before joining Castle Island Ventures as a partner, she focused on identifying potential investments in Web3.

Balaji Srinivasan is the former CTO of Coinbase, who bet $1 million on the imminent collapse of the US dollar during the banking crisis at the beginning of 2023.

Yat Siu is the co-founder and executive director of Animoca Brands. By 2023, Animoca Brands' portfolio has expanded to 450 projects and brands.

Paul Sztorc is a Bitcoin developer who, along with his Bitcoin development company Layer 2 Labs, proposed BIP 300, which suggests introducing sidechains to allow developers to build on the main network without permission, import new features, and use Bitcoin's massive hashing power to validate side networks.

Racer is the co-founder of the overnight Web3 social platform friend.tech.

Recommended reading: "Foresight Ventures: Is friend.tech a 'SocialFi Revolution' or a 'Wild Gamble'?"

Miguel Morel is the CEO of the blockchain data analytics platform Arkham. The Intel Exchange platform released by Arkham pays people to help identify wallets, causing a stir with its so-called "dox-to-earn" program.

Ogle: Helped recover over $3.5 billion from cryptocurrency protocol vulnerabilities.

Caroline Ellison is the former girlfriend of SBF and former CEO of Alameda Research, who provided shocking testimony in the fraud trial against SBF.

Recommended reading: "Testifying, Caroline, the former girlfriend of SBF, on Sam, Alameda, and FTX" and "SBF's former girlfriend Caroline's diary exposed: the story with SBF and Alameda"

Pascal Gauthier is the CEO of Ledger. Ledger launched a controversial seed recovery service this year.

Anatoly Yakovenko (Co-founder of Solana Labs) and Solana have made a comeback, with the SOL token rising by over 500% this year, and the DeFi and NFT ecosystems flourishing.

Analisa Torres is a judge who gave hope to Ripple and XRP, injecting a shot in the arm for the cryptocurrency industry with her partial support for Ripple's ruling on XRP.

Patrick McHenry is the Chairman of the U.S. House Financial Services Committee, who, after PayPal announced the launch of a payment stablecoin, stated that stablecoins could become the backbone of the 21st-century payment system if issued within a clear regulatory framework.

Richard Teng (New CEO of Binance) is leading Binance into a new era of compliance.

Hayden Adams is the founder of Uniswap. In June, Uniswap announced the upcoming release of version V4, which will allow for custom liquidity pools through "hooks," native support for dynamic fees, adding on-chain limit orders, or decentralizing large orders through Time-Weighted Average Market Maker (TWAMM).

Recommended reading: "Uniswap v4 Unveiled: What New Features Spark Imagination?"

Pacman's NFT marketplace Blur has disrupted OpenSea's dominance in the NFT market. Last month, it launched its own revenue-generating Layer2 network Blast, attracting $700 million in locked-in value in just two weeks.

Ravi Menon is the Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). Singapore maintains a balanced approach to cryptocurrency regulation, requiring Singapore Digital Payment Token (DPT) service providers to prevent retail cryptocurrency speculation by not offering financing, margin trading, or any trading incentive measures in its comprehensive proposed regulatory framework for cryptocurrency service providers.

Luca Schnetzler is the CEO of the blue-chip Pudgy Penguins series. Under Luca Schnetzler's leadership, Pudgy Penguins weathered the cryptocurrency winter and became a "beacon of hope" in the digital collectibles field.

In April 2022, a group led by Luca Netz purchased control and licensing fees for the project from the original four co-founders of Pudgy Penguins. In May 2023, Pudgy Penguins completed a $90 million funding round, led by 1kx, with other investors including Big Brain Holdings, Kronos Research, and the founders of LayerZero Labs.

At the same time, Pudgy Penguins began launching real toys based on the Pudgy Penguin IP, Pudgy Toys. These toys were listed in 2,000 Walmart stores in the United States at the end of September and made their first appearance in Canadian Toys "R" Us stores in November.

Shytoshi Kusama (Chief Developer of Shiba Inu) and the SHIB community: This year, with the launch of Shibarium, Shytoshi Kusama and the SHIB community have become an undeniable force in the DeFi and Web3 space. The Manny Pacquiao Foundation, a non-profit organization led by a World Boxing Council champion, will utilize the Shibarium blockchain to meet fundraising and other operational needs.

Antonio Juliano is the CEO of dYdX. This year, dYdX transitioned from Ethereum to Cosmos and launched dYdX Chain.

Stani Kulechov is the founder and CEO of Avara, the software development company behind Aave. This year, Aave's lending protocol was upgraded, and its open-source social media protocol, Lens, was recently launched on the Polygon mainnet with the Lens V2 version.

Recommended reading: "Lens V2 Features: From Composable Social Network, Monetization to Profile V2"

Caroline Pham is a commissioner at the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and proposed a time-limited pilot program to regulate the cryptocurrency market and tokenization.

Ron Faris is the General Manager of Nike's Virtual Studio, which is dedicated to deepening digital and virtual experiences with fans and customers.

Barry Silbert is the CEO of Digital Currency Group (DCG). DCG is facing a series of lawsuits and complex situations in 2023. In November, DCG sold CoinDesk to the institutional digital asset exchange Bullish, which it had acquired CoinDesk for $500,000 in trading value in 2016.

Elizabeth Warren is considered the "chief cryptocurrency critic" in Washington, D.C., and is skeptical of cryptocurrencies.

Martin Köppelman: Co-founder of Gnosis Chain, Martin Köppelmann.

Julia Leung is the new CEO of the Securities and Futures Commission of Hong Kong, positioning Hong Kong as a cryptocurrency hub.

Ian Allison (CoinDesk reporter) received the George Polk Award for Financial Reporting for his coverage of Alameda Research's balance sheet.

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