Top 20 Blockchain Influencers in 2024 [Latest]

If you analyze some recent technologies, you can see some odd ones that are capable of disrupting the digital workspace though creating worldwide opportunities in various domains. The blockchain is such a technology that has shown tremendous potential over the past few years.

IDC, the global marketing intelligence firm predicts that worldwide spending on blockchain is can reach up to $11.7 billion in 2022.

And, there was a 6000% increase in blockchain job growth on upwork.com – the prominent freelancing platform, in the first quarter of 2018 as compared to the previous year.

From this data, it’s so evident that Blockchain Technology can really become a game-changing one capable of reshaping the global economy. The transition towards this technology will be more effortless if you can find some of the most popular blockchain influencers on social media. Merely finding blockchain technology influencers may not meet your goals; you need to follow them and know what they recommend & trying to unveil about this technology.

Ultimate List of Best Blockchain Influencers You Should Follow 

You can go through this list of most influential people in blockchain and decide blockchain influencers worth following. We’ve made a list of the best blockchain influencers you should follow on Twitter or any other Social Network. For each of these influencers, we have included the link to his/her twitter profile. Just analyze the profiles of these top blockchain influencers on Twitter and choose the people you like to follow.

This list of blockchain technology influencers is prepared in alphabetical order of their first name. You’d have heard names of some of these blockchain influencers if you regularly update your knowledge on this area. So, just proceed to the list.   

1. Adam Back

Known to be one of the most popular blockchain influencers, Adam Black was the first one to formalize the NIFS (Non-Interactive Forward-Secrecy) security property for email. Also, he figured out that any Identity-Based Encryption (IBE) scheme can be used to provide NIFS. He was a pioneer in using non-exportable T-shirts to oppose the United States cryptography export regulations.

Anyway, the key element that makes him as one of the most influential people in blockchain would be his invention of Hashcash, a proof of work system used widely for limiting email spam and DoS (Denial of Service) attacks. 

Adam Black’s contributions in the crypto world aren’t ending with these; he was the master brain behind credlib, a library that implements various credential blockchain systems. Now he is the CEO of Blockstream, a company that provides funding of research and development of Bitcoin Core and many crypto kinds of researches.

Follow Adam Back on Twitter

2. Adam Ludwin

Interstellar (formerly Chain) is a technology company founded with a mission for “smarter and more connected economy.” Adam Ludwin is the co-founder and CEO of this company who’ve defined Cryptocurrencies as “They are a new asset class that enables decentralized applications.” As a blockchain technology influencer, he focusses more on how cryptographic ledgers can benefit financial institutions and their services. 

The Creation of “Sequence” can be considered as one of the main contributions of this blockchain influencer to the cryptographic technology. This is a cloud-based ledger for recording and managing balances management in finance and commerce wallets.

He’s always keen to make aware of financial executives about the relevance and novelty of crypto products. If you are one who closely watches FinTech innovations, then Adam Ludwin would be a name which you can find in any list of top blockchain influencers on Twitter. Also, make sure to find his interviews and talks in many of the tech and business journals to get more insights into the future of FinTech.

Follow Adam Ludwin on Twitter

3. Alexander Tapscott

Alexander Tapscott is the son of Don Taspscott, another prominent blockchain influencer we’ll get acquainted later in this guide. Together with his father, Alex Tapscott authored the book “Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology behind Bitcoin Is Changing Money, Business, and the World”.  This book is considered as one of the best sellers in the blockchain industry.

Blockchain Research Institute (BRI) is the world’s largest institution developed for researching real-world applications for this technology. This institute is another joint venture of Alex Tapscott and Don Tapscott.

Apart from these ventures, Alex has written various articles in publications such as HBR, TIME, The Huffington Post, Fortune, etc.  He is also a globally recognized speaker, business advisor, and investor.

Although he is a venture capitalist by choice of career, he has a particular interest in blockchain and related technologies. His passion for blockchain has induced the formation of a company NextBlock Global, a digital investment company in the year 2017. If you are searching for top blockchain influencers on Twitter, Alex Tapscott will be always a good choice.

Follow Alex Tapscott on Twitter

4. Andreas Antonopoulos

This man is a Greek-British advocate of bitcoin. He tweets a lot about bitcoin and its related aspects like its basics, scalability, and scam awareness etc. He is a regular speaker known for delivering talks in wide areas like psychology, economics, technology, game theory, etc. along with combining his personal experiences and current events. 

Now, he is the teaching fellow at the University of Nicosia on MSc Digital Currencies.  Also, he is the host of the popular podcast “Let’s Talk Bitcoin”. In 2014, he authored a book “Mastering Bitcoin” which is considered as one of the best technical guides ever written on this disruptive technology. 

He is also maintaining a popular YouTube channel “aantonop” with more than 100,000K subscribers. In the year 2018 itself, he has delivered more than 10 public talks for advocating bitcoin technology.  His contributions as a blockchain influencer have definitely made an impact on the mainstream adoption of blockchain and related technologies.

In December, he had received unsolicited donations of over 100 bitcoins (worth $1.3 million) by his thousands of followers – well enough to prove his authority over this domain. In any case,

He’ll be one of the best blockchain influencers you should follow if you really want valuable insights from one of the world’s foremost bitcoin experts.

Follow Andreas Antonopoulos on Twitter

5. Blythe Masters

If you are looking for women influencers in blockchain technology, Blythe Masters definitely deserves a place in your list. She is CEO of Digital Asset Holdings, a FinTech company developing distributed ledger technology for the applications.

Before moving to this position, she worked in JP Morgan about 23 years executing numerous financial roles including head of global commodities. Now, she is the advisory board member of US Chamber of Digital Commerce, international advisory board member of Santander Group and the chairman of Governing board of open source Hyperledger Project of Linux Foundation.

Anyway, the main contribution of Blythe Master would be the creation of the credit default swap as a financial instrument. Credit Default Swap (CDS) is a financial swap contract between an investor and another party where both of them swap their credit risks with each other.

In May 2018, Masters was listed at the number 4 spot in the list of 100 most influential women in blockchain technology. She’s the co-chair in the Global Fund for Women and a board member in The Breast Cancer Research Foundation.

It’d be a right decision if you include Blythe Maters’ name in your Blockchain influencers list.

Follow Blythe Masters on Twitter

6. Brad Garlinghouse 

This man is the CEO of Ripple Labs, a FinTech company developing the cryptocurrency or payment protocol “Ripple” or XRP. When saying as a payment protocol, Ripple is a real-time gross settlement system built upon distributed open source protocol. 

Before joining Ripple Labs, Brad Garlinghouse worked in a number of companies including Yahoo, AOL, Silver Lake, etc.  He was the CEO and chairman of Hightail, CEO of the Dialpad, President of Applications and commerce at AOL, SVP of communications community & front doors at Yahoo, and General Partner at @ventures. Also, he was the board member of companies like Animoto and Tonic Health. 

Brad is interested in writing blockchain related articles in various journals and publications. He firmly believes XRP can take over Bitcoin’s space as the leader in cryptocurrency sooner or later. If you are interested in the ripple cryptocurrency, Brad should be foremost blockchain influencer in your following list.

Follow Brad Garlinghouse on Twitter

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7. Changpeng Zhao

How many of you have heard about Binance? If you carefully follow incidents in the world of the crypto market, I bet you’d be. Binance is the worlds’ largest cryptocurrency exchange based on the volume of trading. Changpeng Zhao is a Chinese-Canadian entrepreneur who founded Binance in 2017.

Leading the company as the CEO, Changpeng Zhao has devised definite efforts to attain a BNB market capitalization of $1.3 billion for this company. Now, this cryptocurrency exchange acts as a trading platform for more than 100 Cryptocurrencies. Before launching Biance, he was the founding partner of Fusion Systems, a high-frequency trading system for brokers. Also, he was the Head of Development at Blockchain for about a year before leaving in 2014.

After his tenure at Blockchain, he founded a company BijieTech, an exchange systems provider. It was in July 2017, Zhao launched Biance, after the $15 million funding raised during an ICO. It took only 6 months for this company to become the biggest crypto exchange in the world. Now, Binance is capable of handling 1.4 million transactions in each second. 

In February 2018, he was listed in the third place at “Richest people in Cryptocurrency” by Forbes Magazine. As of December 2019, the net worth of this blockchain influencer is estimated to be 1.4 billion USD.

Follow Changpeng Zhao on Twitter

8. Carolyn Reckhow

Carolyn Reckhow is the Head of Operations & Client Services at Casa Inc. Casa is a company that provides a comprehensive multi-signature security system for digital assets including Cryptocurrencies. With a strong academic and professional background from Social sciences, Carolyn is considering herself as a macro social worker for the internet.

Her career leap towards blockchain happened in the year 2015, where she was the co-founder of “Fabriq”. It was a community governance & reputation system built using Ethereum cryptocurrency created for the purpose of providing a basic structure to liquid democratic communities.

After her tenure at Fabriq, Carolyn was the director of global operations at Consensus Systems (also known as ConsenSys). She worked there around 3 years before joining Casa. She is very active in delivering her own thoughts and opinions on various aspects of crypto and blockchain technology.

Follow Carolyn Reckhow on Twitter

9. Charlie Lee

Charlie Lee is really a big fish on the crypto world. This blockchain influencer rose to fame with his invention of Litecoin, a popular cryptocurrency which is often denoted to “be the silver to Bitcoin’s gold. Although the Litecoin is somewhat similar to bitcoin, it has faster block generation and hence it offers much faster transaction confirmation as compared to the latter.

Charlie Lee is an MIT graduate who worked as a software engineer in Google for more than a decade. It was during his tenure at Google, he released Litecoin on the Bitcointalk forum. He could mine only 150 coins before the currency being released to the public.

Charlie Lee left Google in 2013 and started working at Coinbase, the digital cryptocurrency exchange. At Coinbase, he held positions including Engineering Manager and Director of engineering. Within a few years, he sold almost all his Litecoin holdings because of the perceived conflict of interest. Currently, he’s working full time on Litecoin foundation to escalate the rate of global Litecoin adaption.

Just leave the number of people you are following on blockchain and related technologies on any social media. You can follow any number of blockchain influencers, advocates or educators.  But, what if you are not following the real masterminds behind such technologies? Charlie Lee is such a blockchain influencer you can’t ever miss in your list if your intention is to follow top blockchain influencers on Twitter.

Follow Charlie Lee on Twitter

10. Don Tapscott

Since we have already discussed Alex Tapscott, assuming that you have some information regarding Don Tapscott, one of the most popular blockchain influencers of this period. Apart from the blockchain revolution book that we already discussed, he has authored (or co-authored) more than 10 books.

He was the chairman and founder of international think tank New Paradigm. He’s also the founding leader of Global Solutions Network, an organization for researching the potential of global web-based networks for various aspects like problem-solving, cooperation and governance. 

Now he is the CEO of The Tapscott Group where he focusses on how the new technology can bring transformation for not only the business but the entire society. Also, he’s the executive chairman of Blockchain Research Institute (BRI), the think tank he co-founded along with his son Alex Tapscott.

Till now, he has been featured in many of the journals and publications as one of the most influential people in the blockchain. If you are making such a list of blockchain influencers – no matter of how big or small it is, Don Tapscott is one of the best blockchain influencers you should follow and include in any of such list.

Follow Don Tapscott on Twitter

11. Elizabeth Stark

This blockchain influencer is the CEO and co-founder of Lightning Labs, a company that builds an open protocol layer that uses blockchain technology to make private, cheap and fast transactions available to anyone around the world. She is a fellow at the leading digital currency policy organization, Coin Centre. Also, she works as an advisor to Chia, a company that builds a new blockchain protocol on grounds of space-time proof and related concepts. 

Before establishing Lighting Labs, Stark was a teacher at Yale and Stanford University on concepts like the future of the internet. Also, she did the role of a visiting fellow at Yale’s Information Society Project. 

Elizabeth Stark was one of the main advocates behind internet freedom efforts and protests against SOPA and PIPA, the infamous proposed laws in the United States. As a result of the combined efforts and protests, lawmakers had to abolish these laws.

Stark held the role of an entrepreneur-in-residence at Stanford StartX as well. She has a great track recording of providing advice to startups in various domains including decentralized technology, cryptocurrency, Artificial intelligence along with being an active contributor to the bitcoin community. She is a law graduate from Harvard.

Follow Elizabeth Stark on Twitter

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12. Erik Voorhees

Eric Voorhees is the CEO and founder of ShapeShift.io, an instant and safe cryptocurrency exchange for Ethereum and bitcoin. He strongly advocates the separation of money from state control. 

Eric was the co-founder of the startup Coinapult, a bitcoin platform that allows sending bitcoins securely via email and SMS. SatoshiDice, a gaming website using bitcoin was another proprietorship of Erik. In 2013, Erik sold this website for 126,315 BTC (12.4 million USD at that time).

He completed his graduation in BA, Business Leadership & Political Economics from the University of Puget Sound. Apart from being a blockchain influencer, he loves digital media & communication channels and e-commerce. 

Follow Erik Voorhees on Twitter

13. Gavin Andresen 

He is a software engineer who has done remarkable contributions in blockchain technology. From a background of developing virtual reality software and 3D graphics, he gradually became a blockchain influencer by developing products for bitcoin markets.

When Satoshi Nakamoto announced his departure from active bitcoin undertakings, he behooved Gavin Andresen as the lead developer in the reference implementation part for bitcoin client software, which is now known as bitcoin core. Gavin created a website “The Bitcoin Faucet” that functioned as a bitcoin gave away the system.

After working several years as a bitcoin core developer, he started working on the strategic development of bitcoin technology. He founded the Bitcoin Foundation in 2012 to support further developments of bitcoin currency. Finally, he left his software engineering job to fully engage his work with the Bitcoin Foundation.

The role of the Bitcoin Foundation to restore the reputation of the status of bitcoin currency is appreciable. Gavin Andresen was the “chief scientist” in the foundation. Anyhow, he hasn’t been active in contributing to bitcoin core since February 2016. And his GitHub commit access was canceled in May 2016.

Gavin Andresen would be one of the most popular blockchain influencers you can ever find if you are specifically searching for influencers in bitcoin technology.

Follow Gavin Andresen on Twitter

14. Joseph Lubin

If we closely analyze the development of Ethereum, we can certainly see Joseph Lubin under the names blockchain technology influencers who have made remarkable contributions.

He is a Canadian entrepreneur who has founded several companies related to blockchain technology. He is one of the blockchain influencers who has been involved in cross-industry groups attempting to find solutions to governance issues.

ConsenSys is a blockchain company founded by Joseph Lubin in 2015 for developing Ethereum -based decentralized applications and software services. 

A blockchain explorer namely Ether.camp,” GroupGnosis”- a platform for prediction, “EtherSign”- a cryptographic tool for signing and managing documents, etc. are some of the initiatives by this company. Several projects under this company raised public capital in the form of ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings).

Another notable contribution to Joseph Lubin to the blockchain world would the creation of the Ethereum Foundation, a non-profit organization established for the fair& independent working of Ethereum infrastructure just like ICAAN for the internet. It’s estimated that Joseph Lubin possesses a net worth in between 1-5 billion USD.

Follow Joseph Lubin on Twitter

15. Nick Szabo

This man is a cypherpunk renowned for his researches on digital currency and digital contracts. He was the first one who coined the concept and procedure “smart contracts” in the blockchain world.

According to him, such a procedure is mandatory for regulating highly evolved practices in the form of electronic commerce protocols between strangers over the internet. Within its inception, smart contracts became an integral feature of cryptocurrency without any more delay.

 In his blog “unenumerated“, he discusses his thoughts and ideas related to a wide variety of subjects in blockchain and related disciplines.

He is a graduate in computer science from Washington University. His expertise range from cryptographic architecture, the legal history of cryptocurrency, economics, blockchain programming language and so on. It was because of his influence in the Ethereum community, a subnet of ether was assigned in his name by Ethereum developers. Szabo has the value of one-millionth of an ether. 

Nick Szabo was one among the people who were speculated as Satoshi Nakamoto, the unknown person who developed bitcoin. Although Szabo denied it, many people still believe that he is Nakamoto. The main reason for this belief is his puzzling character. Even we can find many of his public lectures and consulting history, he is somewhat reluctant to reveal his personal information. Anyway, we can easily find his valuable insights in the crypto space via his blog and Twitter profile.

No matter whether your blockchain influencers list is short or long, Nick Szabo definitely deserves a place in the best blockchain influencers you should follow.

Follow Nick Szabo on Twitter

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16. Nicolas Cary

Nicolas Cary is the co-founder of blockchain.com, a crypto wallet that supports Ethereum, bitcoin and Bitcoin cash. He launched it along with Peter Smith, who’s its CEO and Cary being the president.

Cary is the founding member of Blockchain Commission for Sustainable Development, a commission established for developing a multi-sectoral framework to assist UN, member states, intergovernmental organizations, etc.

In 2014, Nicolas Cary led the greatest ever VC financing of digital currency, raising near to 30 million USD. Again similar financing happened in 2017, where he could raise an additional 40 million USD.    

Nicolas Cary is a serial entrepreneur and a technology evangelist in addition to being a blockchain technology influencer. He received the “European Digital Leader of the Year” award by ICT Spring for his innovative ventures on the digital space.

He is very much confident in the potential of blockchain to make the society better through transparency in digital payment systems and Internet of Things. He is also the co-founder of skysthelimit.org, a non-profit digital platform established to assist young professionals who have aspirations towards Entrepreneurship and business management.

Cary is a graduate from the University of Puget Sound. He is always keen to ensure the best practices in his company including product marketing, customer service, and so on.

He has featured in a number of media publications and journals including Wired, Forbes, Entrepreneur, CNN, CNET, TechCrunch, ZDNet, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, etc. 

Follow Nicolas Cary on Twitter

17. Perianne Boring

Ever heard about of Chamber of Digital Commerce? Well, it is an American advocacy group that supports and promotes emerging technologies such as blockchain, digital assets, digital currency, etc. Perianne Boring founded this organization in 2014. In the following year, Blythe Masters joined as an advisory board member. 

Boring has completed her graduation in Bachelor of Science (Business Administration-management, economics) from the University of Florida. Also, she is an adjunct professor, blockchain at Georgetown University McDonough School of Business. In Forbes, she writes the column “The Beauty of Blockchain”. 

Recently, Boring was named under the list of 10 most influential people in Blockchain by the Coindesk, the leading crypto news portal. And, Forbes magazine chose her as one among “America’s Top 50 Women in Tech” in 2018.

Follow Perianne Boring on Twitter

18. Preethi Kasireddy

Preethi Kasireddy is the Founder & CEO at TruStory, a stealth mode blockchain startup to identify the authenticity of claims that people make online. Kasireddy launched this startup in November 2017. She was the co-founder of sapien.ai, an artificial intelligence-based startup that builds intelligent applications.

Kasireddy is an alumnus of the University of Southern California. Her graduation was in BS, Industrial and Systems Engineering with a minor in business. Before launching TruStory, she has worked in a number of acclaimed companies like Goldman Sachs, Panavision, Coinbase, Andreessen Horowitz etc. 

She shares her valuable knowledge of Blockchain technology through her Medium and Twitter profiles. Through her Medium account, she often tries to break common misconceptions and misperceptions regarding blockchain technologies. 

Follow Preethi Kasireddy on Twitter

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19. Roger Ver

Perhaps, this man would be the first one who has invested in any bitcoin startup. He was one of the main advocates of bitcoin adoption from its initial days. He considers investing in bitcoin and related cryptos as a mean to promote economic freedom.

Roger Ver started investing in bitcoin in 2011. He has invested more than a million dollars into bitcoin-related startups like Z.cash, blcockchain.com, pursue.io, bitpay, kraken, bitcoin.com, etc.

Currently, he’s the CEO of bitcoin.com, a wallet service that provides bitcoin and bitcoin cash services. During his career that spans over 20 years, he established a number of businesses. His name can always include in the list of the top blockchain influencers on Twitter.

Follow Roger Ver on Twitter

20. Vitalik Buterin

How we can relate bitcoin to Satoshi Nakamoto? There’s the same link between Vitalik Buterin and Ethereum, another popular cryptocurrency. Buterin was a Russsian-Canadian programmer who can be considered as one of the most popular blockchain influencers ever.

He learned about bitcoin at the age of 17 and became very interested in it. He co-founded Bitcoin magazine along with Mihai Alisieon on September 2011. 

It was in late 2013, Buterin first published a white paper describing Ethereum. In early 2014, the formal development of the Ethereum software project started through a Swiss company, Ethereum Switzerland GmbH. In a couple of years, a lot of technical innovations happened around this cryptocurrency, although there were concerns regarding its security and scalability. Buterin was a member of the editorial board of Ledger.

To overcome these concerns regarding Ethereum, a consortium namely Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) formed in March 2017. There were a number of Fortune 500 companies, research groups, and startups as part of this alliance. Initially started with 30 members, this consortium expended to 150 members within a few months.

Apart from the development of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin is a regular contributor to a number of open-source projects such as pybitcointools, multisig.info, btckeysplit, and Kryptokit. He is also well known for his philanthropic endeavors. In the year 2018, he has donated $5 million worth of ether to various research foundations and organizations for charities.

Follow Vitalik Buterin on Twitter

Final Words

Now, you may have learned a lot about the blockchain influencers from various domains. You can find venture capitalists, serial entrepreneurs, software engineers, financial analysts, and marketers in this list.  And, there are blockchain technologists related to digital currencies such as XRP, bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, etc. Anyway as you know, this list of influencers in the blockchain isn’t complete yet. There are still many influencers out there.  But, we have tried to make this list as it features only the most influential people in the blockchain you may follow.

Apart from Twitter, you can find these people in many other social network sites and publications like medium.com, Forbes, etc. These influencers can provide you valuable insights and the latest updates on this technology. So, follow these blockchain influencers to enhance your knowledge and validate your knowledge with the Certified Blockchain Expert certification. 

Join us now for the blockchain certification training and get ready to become a certified blockchain expert.

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About Pavan Gumaste

Pavan Rao is a programmer / Developer by Profession and Cloud Computing Professional by choice with in-depth knowledge in AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform. He helps the organisation figure out what to build, ensure successful delivery, and incorporate user learning to improve the strategy and product further.

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