# 2020 Crypto's Most Influential people **Authors:** Just a Girl into Crypto --- So...CoinDesk published a list of the Most Influential people in Crypto for 2020 and ask readers to choose their top 5. ![Image](https://storage.googleapis.com/holdex-posts/0633d485-0df6-4608-b906-19a61fc1e454/5cff44c4-5513-415b-8c0e-7755d0700020-2020-crypto.png) I think it's be interesting to bring this to Holdex and find out **what the Holdex community thinks**! Here is how this works: 1. Pick your top 5 2. Think if there is someone missing in the list 3. Reply to this post with your top 5 from the list (kindly just mention the number associated with the name) + anyone who's missing. A sample reply would look like this *"Here are my picks: 3, 8, 10, 12, 15 and Vitalik Buterin"*. Got it? 4. At the beginning of November I'll publish the results. **READY?** 1 **Robert Leshner, Compound founder**: For leading the first DeFi project to overtake MakerDAO. 2 **Wang Chun, F2Pool co-founder**: For encoding “History has repeated,” on the Bitcoin halving block. 3 **Stani Kulechov, Aave CEO**: For changing the game of DeFi lending. 4 **Peter Szilagiy**: For leading Geth and providing healthy Eth 2.0 skepticism. 5 **Pieter Wuille, Blockstream co-founder**: For working on SegWit, Taproot and Schnorr. 6 **John Wolpert, Baseline creator**: For breathing life back into enterprise blockchain. 7 **People’s Bank of China**: For leading the charge to national digital currencies. 8 **Bruce Fenton, managing director at Chainstone Lab**s: For sounding off on coronavirus early. 9 **Olaoluwa "Laolu" Osuntokun, CTO of Lightning Labs**: Lightning went wumbo. 10 **SamCzSun, white hat hacker**: For being Ethereum’s top white hat hacker. 11 **Jesse Powell, Kraken CEO**: For pushing through the first crypto bank. 12 **Anthony Pompliano, Morgan Creek Digital co-founder**: Relentless bitcoin optimist. 13 **Aubrey Strobel, Lolli communications director**: Because memes matter. 14 **Graham Ivan Clark, teenage Twitter hacker**: For bringing attention to the flaws of centralized social media companies. 15 **The anon who called out Craig Wright by signing a Bitcoin address CSW claimed to own.** 16 **Alex Mesmej, creator of $ALEX**: For riding the wave of self tokenization. 17 **Su Zhu, Three Arrows Capital CEO**: For insightful analysis. 18 **Brian Brooks, Acting Comptroller of the Currency**: For taking charge at the OCC. 19 **Hayden Adams, Uniswap founder**: For inventing one of DeFi’s critical protocols. 20 **Pavel Durov, Telegram CEO**: For battling the SEC 21 **Udi Wertheimer, Reckless VR**: For bridging the gap between crypto and virtual reality. 22 **Danny Ryan**: For being Ethereum 2.0’s lead developer. 23 **Brendon Chez, CoinMarketCap founder**: For selling CMC in one of crypto’s largest ever M&A deals. 24 **Chef Nomi, SushiSwap creator**: For forking Uniswap, creating discussion around governance tokens and VC funding. 25 **Blue Kirby, Yearn cheerleader**: For teaching us the importance of having “skin in the game.” 26 **Alan Silbert, INX CEO**: For leading the charge on blockchain-based IPOs. 27 **"Defi Degens”**: For seeking yield everywhere. 28 **Balaji S. Srinivasan**: For being an early siren for the coronavirus pandemic. 29 **Brian Armstrong, Coinbase CEO**: For taking an “apolitical” stand. 30 **Patrick Byrne, former Overstock CEO**: For continued support of tokenization. 31 **Hester “Crypto Mom” Peirce, Securities and Exchange Commission Commissioner**: For being one of the most prominent crypto advocates among the U.S. regulators 32 **Christine Lagarde, European Central Bank president**: For directing Europe towards a digital euro. 33 **Paolo Ardoino, Tether CTO**: For being the face of the world's largest stablecoin. 34 **Jerome Powell, Federal Reserve chairman**: For ushering in an unprecedented level of stimulus, indirectly proving Bitcoin’s core thesis. 35 **Kristin Smith, executive director of the Blockchain Association**: For being crypto’s advocate in Washington, D.C. 36 **Mike Belshe, BitGo CEO**: For leading the top custodian for BTC on ETH and BitGo’s "Prime Broker" status. 37 **Juan Benet, Protocol Labs CEO**: For launching Filecoin. 38 **Gavin Wood, Polkadot founder**: For launching his second top 5 blockchain, Polkadot, this year. 39 **Paul Tudor Jones, hedge fund billionaire**: For giving institutional weight to BTC bag holding. 40 **Michael Saylor, MicroStrategy CEO**: Unabashed bitcoin bull, leads the first non-crypto, publicly traded companies to put bitcoin on its balance sheet. 41 **Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX CEO**: For creating a cornerstone derivatives exchange. 42 **Hive, hardfork of Steem**: For forking away from Justin Sun’s hostile takeover. 43 **Financial Action Task Force**: For pushing through the “Travel Rule.” 44 **Muneeb Ali, Blockstack CEO**: For building Bitcoin’s answer to Web 3.0. 45 **Brad Garlinghouse, Ripple CEO**: For bringing charges against YouTube. 46 **Chris Giancarlo, former CFTC chief**: For bringing the digital dollar to the halls of Congress. 47 **Alan Lane, Silvergate Bank CEO**: For running crypto’s bank. 48 **Dan Elitzer, Yam.Finance creator**: For providing the rocket fuel for the vegetable coin bull market. 49 **Arthur Hayes, BitMEX CEO**: For remaining out of grasp. 50 **Cami Russo, Defiant creator**: For being the DeFi and Ethereum whisperer. 51 **Roham Gharegozlou, Dapper Labs CEO**: For breathing life back into NFTs. 52 **Ryan Selkis, Messari founder**: For building one of crypto’s most reliable data aggregators. 53 **J.K. Rowling, author**: For bringing crypto Twitter together and tearing us apart. 54 **Andre Cronje, Yearn.Finance creator**: For pioneering DeFi “fair launches” and yield farming. 55 **None of the above.**