Top 10 people in the bitcoin industry: who we followed and who worried in 2019

2019 may be remembered as one of the most controversial years for the industry. The long-awaited native never arrivedit happened, regulators began to monitor the situation on the market even more closely, forecasts of bitcoin prices became more and more ambiguous, and a wave of layoffs covered startups.

However, the crypto industry has become moretransparent, exchanges began to struggle with fake trading volumes, and developers continued to work on improving the protocols and eliminating vulnerabilities. In addition, institutions have really begun to invest more in bitcoin, and politicians have even taken into account market development initiatives in their programs.

However, the industry is not only built on startups,coins, projects or codes, but also on the people who do this. ForkLog compiled its own list of key persons whose ideas, statements and initiatives in 2019 were most visible and discussed, and also influenced the development of the entire cryptocurrency market.

10. Vitalik Buterin

This year has been difficult for Ethereum, althoughbut productive. In February, the Constantinople hardfork took place on the network, and in December — Istanbul. In addition, at the beginning of the year, a “complexity bomb” was activated, reducing emissions by 25%.

The founder of Ethereum managed to talk about «problem areas» network, explain how the transition to Ethereum 2.0 will happen, invite Elon Musk to the conference and even read a rap.

9. Xi Jinping

The Chinese leader «blew up»blockchain market in October. He stated that China should become a leader in the field of blockchain, which provoked not only a sharp, albeit short-term, increase in the price of Bitcoin, but also a real wave of news from China related to distributed ledger technology. Some even called what was happening “Pump C.”

Almost immediately after the speech of the leader of the PRCThe All-China Assembly of People's Representatives (the local parliament) approved the law on cryptography, and later a committee was formed in China to standardize the blockchain. People's Bank of China has stepped up with the issuance of the digital renminbi. Local media reported on the launch by leading universities of the country of courses on the study of technology and the upcoming blockchain initiatives of local municipalities. Shares of China's leading blockchain companies soared. Blockchain even became the word of the year in China.

Despite all the hype around the technology,underlying cryptocurrencies, on the cryptocurrencies themselves, the Chinese «blockchain challenge» impact was not what many expected. Bitcoin’s growth turned out to be short-term, and some perceived the initiatives of local authorities more as an impending “nationalization of the cryptocurrency infrastructure.” Time will tell what China's claim to leadership in the blockchain sphere will actually mean for the industry. However, it is safe to say that Jinping's statement took this race to a completely different level.

8. Rune Christensen

In 2019, the stablecoin market continued to developat a rapid pace. Another trend this year — There is a real buzz around the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector. In this regard, the MakerDAO project led by Rune Christensen plays one of the key roles.

This year, MakerDAO was able to eliminate critical vulnerabilities, present a multi-security version of Dai stablecoin and raise $ 27.5 million for expansion in Asian markets.

7. Justin Sun

Founder of TRON — one of the most popular people on Twitter. Only in March, the number of Sun’s subscribers on the social network reached a million, and at the end of the year it exceeded two.

It is worth recognizing that working with the San audiencecan. Against the backdrop of «announcements» the founder of TRON, the price of the coin kept growing, and his ability to «catch hype» difficult to overestimate — donations for environmental activist Greta Thunberg or the same failed lunch with the famous Bitcoin critic, billionaire Warren Buffett.

Despite the fact that largely because of thisSana’s personality is perceived by some in the community with a degree of irony, and he himself is accused of centralizing TRON, this year he became a prominent figure not only in terms of drawing attention to the crypto industry.

In January, bought by San BitTorrent withwith a hundred millionth user base, it carried out a $ 7.2 million crowdsale in just 18 minutes. In addition, in August, the Sun Network solution for “unlimited” scaling of the TRON network was released, and in November Sun confirmed the purchase of a stake in the Poloniex bitcoin exchange.

6. Kelly Loffler

Since last year, everyone was looking forward tolaunch of the Bakkt cryptocurrency platform, which was supposed to revive the market. And although the platform itself cannot yet boast of great success, for its CEO Kelly Loffler the year was truly successful.

In December, Loffler was appointed Georgia Senator by post in Bakkt. Many expect that she will become the lobbyist of cryptocurrencies in American politics.

5. Pavel Durov

Despite the huge number of rumors thatFor a long time we went around the blockchain project Telegram Open Network, only this year the Telegram team with Pavel Durov at the head officially confirmed its launch.

Nevertheless, the ubiquitous TONUnited States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Despite this, Telegram is optimistic about the situation, and the project investors supported the team and declared their readiness to wait.

In the meantime, Pavel Durov himself is preparing for trial in Russiacontinued to fight with the messenger. He made a knight's move and liquidated Telegram Messenger LLP, which Roskomnadzor blocks by court order. True, this did not affect the desire of the Russian authorities to restrict access to the messenger.

4. David Marcus and Mark Zuckerberg

One of the main themes of this year not only in the worlddigital currencies, but also on the general news agenda was Facebook’s announcement of the launch of the «stable global cryptocurrency Libra«. At the same time, the company introduced the Calibra mobile wallet, which should allow you to send Libra tokens via Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp.

David Marcus fought off a flurry of criticismregulators, who suffered the project after the announcement, and Mark Zuckerberg even announced Facebook’s readiness to withdraw from the Libra Association in the event of a premature launch.

Convince the authorities and central banks of different countries inThe security of the Libra launch has not yet been successful, but the announcement itself provoked a wave of discussion of digital assets at the highest level — Regulators almost universally began to think about issuing their own digital coins and began to develop legal norms for the industry.

3. Brian Armstrong

The head of the leading US Bitcoin exchange Coinbase often becomes the person involved in a diverse list of the most notable personalities of not only the cryptocurrency industry, but also the business as a whole. And absolutely deserved.

Armstrong has an ambitious plan to createan open financial system, as well as making "100 million people start using cryptocurrencies." And he confidently goes to his goal. This year, Coinbase announced the expansion of the geography of its services to 11 more countries, and its debit card became available to residents of Spain, Germany, France, Italy and other countries. In addition, in 2019, the exchange bought the Xapo service and patented a system for sending bitcoins by email.

In addition, the company led by Armstrongactively fought against the SEC attacks on the crypto industry. Together with the startup, Kik Coinbase launched a fund to cover litigation costs during the proceedings with the SEC, and also joined the cryptocurrency conformity assessment system with the definition of securities (one of the regulator's main accusations regarding various digital assets).

2. Jack Dorsey

Twitter CEO is the only one who can truly understand cryptocurrency. This opinion was expressed by Quartz journalist Matthew de Silva.

Jack Dorsey, who is also the headthe famous social network and payment platform Square, is known as a longtime supporter of bitcoin. He vehemently denies any possibility of issuing his own digital currency Twitter or joining Libra because of the belief that Bitcoin and only Bitcoin can become the native currency of the Internet.

At the same time, Dorsey intends to financethe development of a decentralized standard for social networks, I’m ready to pay the developers of blockchain solutions with cryptocurrency and is actively promoting bitcoin among the establishment.

1. Changpeng Zhao

Perhaps to list all the successesBitcoin exchange Binance for 2019 will require a separate article — it managed to launch an OTC platform, its own decentralized exchange, a platform for margin trading, two platforms for futures products, an initiative for Binance X developers, and a platform for staking crypto assets.

In addition, the company launched fiat exchanges, began full-scale access to the markets of the CIS countries, and the price of its native Binance Coin token broke records several times in relation to bitcoin.

Zhao himself rose in the ranking of the richest peopleOf China and topped the list of important persons of the crypto industry from Messari. Readers of the ForkLog Telegram channel also called Zhao the person of the year based on an anonymous survey.

The head of Binance managed to get into a scandal this yearwith fake news, call Vladimir Putin the most influential person in the blockchain space (and later say that it was just a joke) and criticize Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin.

ForkLog managed to communicate with a real«rock star» crypto industry this year. Zhao told the ForkLog editors about his first investments in Bitcoin, hacker attacks on the exchange and his own condition in an exclusive interview.

Of course, outside of any lists the main personindustry was and remains Satoshi Nakamoto, the mystery of whose identity has not yet been solved. 2019 marked 11 years since the publication of the Bitcoin white paper, the first peer-to-peer payment system in history. It was from this document that the history of an industry with a multi-billion dollar capitalization, hundreds of blockchain projects, and most importantly — the idea of millions of people that this world can change. And everything is just beginning.