The crypto industry is large and is becoming increasingly important. It's relatively easy to measure which companies and protocols are most important, but who are the most important people? We looked into it and came across these “three kings” of the crypto industry.
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3: Brian Armstrong (Coinbase)
Just a few months ago, Binance co-founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao (“CZ”) was probably in third place, but now the CEO had to resign from his position and was fined heavily by the US government. Binance is alleged to have committed securities fraud and manipulated the market.
Binance has also shrunk significantly in recent months in favor of other crypto exchanges. CZ reportedly still has a lot of assets and Binance is still by far the largest trading platform according to CoinGecko data, but we will give that title to someone else.
To do this, we can simply grab the largest owner of the second largest exchange. The biggest competitor is currently OKX, but this company is relatively one-sided. OKX has little more than a trading platform.
For us, Coinbase is therefore something special. According to CoinGecko, this company ranks fourth in terms of trading volume, but offers much more than just crypto trading. It is also one of the largest custodians in the crypto market. For example, Coinbase is already working with several ETF issuers who want to issue Bitcoin (BTC) spot ETFs in the US as quickly as possible. As a venture capitalist, Coinbase also invests in young companies, of which it is the largest, according to research by CoinGecko.
Coinbase-meFounder and CEO Brian Armstrong can also be heard regularly speaking about what needs to be done in the industry. For example, he believes that the US urgently needs good crypto regulations, otherwise countries like China will overtake the US. Armstrong is one of the most influential people in the industry.
2: Vitalik Buterin? Or Satoshi?
One of the most famous names in crypto-land is of course Satoshi Nakamoto, the inventor of Bitcoin. With an estimated holding of 1 million BTC, he is considered one of the largest Bitcoin investors. But it's still not entirely clear who that is. This is expected to be a pseudonym. So whether you can count it is a personal preference.
The largest altcoin is currently Ethereum (ETH). This coin's performance was very disappointing in 2023, but with a total market value of around $270 billion, it is still by far the largest altcoin. Layer 2 networks continued to be very popular in 2023. Even Coinbase’s own base blockchain is based on the Layer 2 blockchain Optimism (OP). Many of these networks are based on Ethereum (ETH).
One of the most important and active creators of Ethereum is Vitalik Buterin. He recently took a new step to make the Ethereum network more efficient. Not much later, with a simple comment, he managed to create a major rise for another major altcoin. As the co-founder of the largest altcoin to date, Vitalik is number 2 in our opinion.
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1: BlackRock's Larry Fink
We find the first place the most difficult to award because the world is too complicated to simply give this title to the owner of the largest crypto company. The crypto industry is closely connected to the rest of the financial world, as almost all major crypto companies are funded by money from investors who have been around longer than the crypto industry itself.
BlackRock is undoubtedly the largest asset manager, but how much money it has invested in the crypto industry is not necessarily clear. The company makes much of its money by charging commissions from customers for whom it actively manages money, meaning the net amount it has invested in cryptocurrencies and crypto stocks could be significant.
BlackRock also manages a lot of money passively through exchange traded funds (ETFs). In this way, it almost automatically has a huge stake in the largest publicly traded crypto companies, including Coinbase (COIN), Bitcoin miners such as Marathon Digital (MARA), Riot Platforms (RIOT) and MicroStrategy (MSTR). It doesn't have to do anything for that.
We haven't even started with the spot ETF that BlackRock is preparing for Bitcoin. Approval of this fund is not yet certain, but the company is so influential that experts say approval is almost guaranteed. If this succeeds, it would like to put 2 billion into its own fund in the first week. As the crypto industry grows, BlackRock's influence on this sector will continue to increase. Chairman and CEO is Larry Fink. He is not only one of the most important people in the financial industry, but apparently also in the crypto sector.
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