The crypto sector is growing, and we owe its rapid development and adoption to those brilliant minds who are behind the most impactful projects. We’ve already written an article about the powerful ladies who are moving the world of digital finance, so we won’t be repetitive. The list of the most influential people in the world of crypto we’ve not mentioned before, and the most interesting facts (we bet most of them will be new to you) can be found below.
Changpeng Zhao, co-founder and former CEO of Binance
Often referred to as CZ and the “crypto prophet, Changpeng Zhao is a unique figure in the financial world. With him, Binance launched in July 2017 and turned from an idea into the leading crypto exchange with millions of trading volumes in just 6 months.
Now, what makes him unique? Let’s have a look at some facts from his biography.
Changpeng Zhao was born in Jiangsu, a coastal province in China in a family of teachers. Soon after he was born, his parents moved to Canada. However, the family struggled, and he had to work at McDonald's and a gas station to help them out.
Changpeng Zhao graduated from McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, where he majored in computer science.
He worked for the Tokyo Stock Exchange developing software for matching trade orders. Further, he moved to work for the Bloomberg Tradebook where he developed a futures trading software. And finally, in 2005, Zhao moved back to China where he launched Fusion Systems, his first business developing “some of the fastest automated high-frequency trading platforms for stockbrokers.
Zhao first heard about Bitcoin in 2013 during a poker game with Boddy Lee who recommended him to invest 10% of his money into the new cryptocurrency. Instead, Zhao sold his apartment in Shanghai and bought Bitcoins for all the money he had.
After the Binance launch in 2017, the exchange managed to raise $15 millions in the initial coin offering. Trading activities started eleven years later. And after 6 months, Binance has grown into the largest crypto trading platform. Within less than a year, he became a billionaire.
Changpeng Zhao loves Binance, and the only stock he has ever invested in is his platform. He holds just two cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin and BNB, a native coin of Binance.
Until 2022, Zhao used to live nomadic life moving from hotel to hotel. He doesn’t own a car and only in 2022, he bought a home in Dubai.
Now, Changpeng Zhao is accused by the SEC of money laundering and evasion of US law. He quit the CEO position of Binance, however, he remains one of the major crypto figures in the space.
And finally, some facts that have not been disclosed to the public earlier.
Changpeng Zhao and the chief marketing officer of Binance He Yi are life partners, with three common children. Before, Zhao was married to Yang Weiqing, and they have two kids.
Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum founder
Vitalik Buterin is a Russian-Canadian programmer who launched Ethereum in 2013. Vitalik was born in Kolomna, Moscow region, on January 31, 1994. When he was six, his parents moved to Canada, and there, the school where he went quickly upgraded him to the class for gifted kids. His peers considered him as math genius, and teachers perceived him as an “oddity”. However, Vitalik was not very social and was missing in many extracurricular activities.
Along with studying, his passion was World of Warcraft (WoW) which he played passionately from 2007 to 2010, until the game removed an essential component from his walrock’s spell. This fact highlighted for him the drawbacks of centralized control and inspired him to start Ethereum.
Vitalik learned about Bitcoin when he was 17 from his father. He became inspired by the new technology and started researching it, eventually ending up writing articles for Bitcoin Weekly.
In 2011, he with Mihai Alisie co-founded Bitcoin Magazine - his first serious publication devoted to cryptocurrency.
2013 was the year of traveling to different countries, meeting with crypto enthusiasts, checking projects, and finally ending up with the idea of a project that would be superior to Bitcoin. However, the Bitcoin simple programming language couldn’t handle it, so Vitalik came up with the idea to create a platform coded in a new programming language - Ethereum. The same year, he returned to Toronto and published the Ethereum whitepaper. He was 19 at that time.
The interest in the whitepaper was growing, and in 2014, Vitalik introduced Ethereum at the Bitcoin conference in Miami. The Ethereum ICO raised approx. $18 mln in Bitcoin, and Vitalik got the “Thiel Fellowship” grant worth $100,000. After that, he quit the university and devoted all his time to the project.
Jihan Wu, Bitmain co-founder
Jihan Wu is not spoken about as much as Zhao or Buterin, but his impact on the development of the crypto world cannot be undervalued. He is known for founding Bitmain Technologies, one of the companies that have changed the crypto mining industry.
Jihan Wu was born and grew up in China, where he graduated from Peking University. He learned about Bitcoin in 2013 and raised funds from his friends and family members to buy 900 Bitcoins.
In late 2011, he was the first to translate the Bitcoin whitepaper written by Satoshi Nakamoto into Chinese.
In 2013, Jihan Wu reached out to the microelectronics engineer Micree Zhan and convinced him to co-found Bitmain, and in November of that year, they developed Antminer S1, the first Bitcoin mining rig. This has revolutionized the mining business by allowing everybody to mine BTC with the help of plug-and-play hardware.
Over time, Bitminer grew into the world’s largest manufacturer of Bitcoin mining chips.
In 2019, Jihan stepped down as co-CEO of Bitmainer and founded Matrixport, a financial services company for cryptocurrencies.
Jihan Wu is believed to be the mastermind behind the launch of Bitcoin Cash, even though he declined it.
Brian Armstrong, Coinbase co-founder and CEO
When speaking about famous founders of centralized crypto exchanges, Brian Armstrong cannot be missed. A co-founder and CEO of Coinbase, one of the biggest crypto exchanges and the first cryptocurrency exchange that went public, was born in a family of engineers in 1984. He attended a male Catholic school and then, went to Rice University in Houston, Texas, for his undergraduate studies. He graduated with a dual bachelor’s degree in economics and computer science and stayed on at Rice for a master’s in computer science.
When being at the university, he co-founded UniversityTutor.com to connect students and parents with tutors all around the world. 9 years after the business was founded, it was acquired by Johnson Educational Technologies LLC.
Further, he worked for IBM and Deloitte as a developer and consultant until he learned about Bitcoin in 2010. In 2012, he joined the Y Combinator startup accelerator program, and there, he met Fred Ehrsam with whom he later launched Coinbase. Thanks to smart marketing and top security level, Coinbase went public in 2021.
Bottom Line
The crypto industry is still young, and we can observe how it is being shaped and how it evolves. The people mentioned above have contributed immensely to the crypto world we know now, and their impact will last for decades.