In July 2021; Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey and Cathie Wood appeared on The B Word live streamed discussion, talking about crypto and bitcoin. Tesla was one of the first public companies to join Michael Saylor’s initiative of adding bitcoin to its corporate treasury. “Elon R. Musk is a business magnate and investor. He is the founder, CEO, and Chief Engineer at SpaceX; angel investor, CEO, and Product Architect of Tesla, Inc.; founder of The Boring Company; and co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI. With an estimated net worth of around US$216 billion as of June 2022,[4] Musk is the wealthiest person in the world according to both the Bloomberg Billionaires Index and the Forbes real-time billionaires list. He moved to California in 1995 to attend Stanford University but decided instead to pursue a business career, co-founding the web software company Zip2 with his brother Kimbal. The startup was acquired by Compaq for $307 million in 1999. The same year, Musk co-founded online bank X.com, which merged with Confinity in 2000 to form PayPal. The company was bought by eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion. In 2002, Musk founded SpaceX, an aerospace manufacturer and space transport services company, of which he serves as CEO and Chief Engineer. In 2004, he was an early investor in electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla Motors, Inc. (now Tesla, Inc.). He became its chairman and product architect, eventually assuming the position of CEO in 2008. In 2006, he helped create SolarCity, a solar energy company that was later acquired by Tesla and became Tesla Energy. In 2015, he co-founded OpenAI, a nonprofit research company that promotes friendly artificial intelligence (AI). In 2016, he co-founded Neuralink, a neurotechnology company focused on developing brain–computer interfaces, and founded The Boring Company, a tunnel construction company. He also agreed to purchase the major American social networking service Twitter in 2022 for $44 billion. Musk has proposed the Hyperloop, a high-speed vactrain transportation system. He is the president of the Musk Foundation, an organization which donates to scientific research and education.”

Timothy Cook Draper (born June 11, 1958) is an American venture capital investor, and founder of Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ), Draper University, Draper Venture Network, Draper Associates[4] and Draper Goren Holm. His most prominent investments. Timothy Cook Draper (born June 11, 1958) is an American venture capital investor, and founder of Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ), Draper University, Draper Venture Network, Draper Associates[4] and Draper Goren Holm. His most prominent investments.

David Schwartz graduated from the University of Houston (Electrical Engineering) in 1990. In 1988, he founded David Schwartz Enterprises. There he invented a hierarchical system for distributing workloads over multiple computers, handled interactions with the USPTO to obtain the United States patent 5,025,369, managed marketing and licensing efforts. In 1991, Schwartz served as software development at Re/Max. There he conceived and developed a system to analyze public property records and identify houses that were the most likely to be over-assessed and entitled to property tax reductions. Since 1992, he was a partner of Cardiophonics. Schwartz is a co-founder of a medical device manufacturing company that developed, manufactured, and sold a noninvasive medical device to provide objective measurements of the presence and severity of heart murmurs and related conditions. Obtained FDA and other regulatory approvals to permit the legal sale and use of the device and the ability to bill insurance companies for its use. The partnership lasted for 3 years. In 1996, he worked for Worldwide Internet Solutions as a senior network manager. He supervised the design, implementation, and deployment of a regional network and a large document scan, index, search and retrieval system. Managed the development of the disaster recovery, monitoring and billing systems. In January 1998, Schwarz joined WebMasters Inc. where he worked for 13 years. He started as a director of software development. He designed the architecture for and managed the complete reimplementation of the "ConferenceRoom" chat server and related products. In 2001 he was promoted to chief technical officer. He was overseeing research, development and technical operations. The primary architect of the cloud-based storage system ("DriveShare") featuring portable client code, high-speed remote access, access control, NAT penetration, web-based access, and presentation as a local drive for ease of operation. Personal involvement included designing the overall architecture, writing the core server code, designing and supervising the implementation of the back-end storage, and coordinating teams involved in developing the client software and implementing the data center portion. In 2011, he came to Ripple and became the chief cryptographer of the company. In July 2018 he was assigned as CTO of the company based in San Francisco. He is leading a world-class group of engineers, scientists and business executives growing a global network of financial institutions using blockchain-based solutions to remove friction from global payments.

Brad is the CEO of financial technology company Ripple Labs. He previously was the CEO and chairman of Hightail (formerly YouSendIt). Before Hightail, he worked at AOL and Yahoo! He was born February 6, 1971 in Topeka, Kansas. Garlinghouse has a BA in economics from the University of Kansas and an MBA from Harvard Business School. The whitewashing of unflattering details from this Wikipedia page was a subject of discussion by Financial Times in August 2020. Garlinghouse had early stints at @Home Network and as a GP at @Ventures before joining Dialpad as CEO from 2000 to 2001. From 2003 to 2008, he served as Senior Vice President at Yahoo! where he ran its Homepage, Flickr, Yahoo! Mail, and Yahoo! Messenger divisions. While at Yahoo! he penned an internal memo known as the "Peanut Butter Manifesto,"[5] calling for the company to focus on its core business, rather than spreading itself too thin, like peanut butter. After Yahoo!, he served as a Senior Advisor at Silver Lake Partners, and then went on to be President of Consumer Applications at AOL from 2009 to 2011. He joined Hightail and served as its CEO until September 2014, leaving after a disagreement with the board regarding company direction. Garlinghouse previously held board positions at Animoto. Garlinghouse joined Ripple as COO in April 2015, reporting to then CEO and co-founder Chris Larsen. He was promoted to CEO in December 2016. In December 2019, Garlinghouse announced that Ripple had raised a $200M series C funding round from Tetragon, SBI Ventures and Route 66 Ventures. In 2020 Garlinghouse admitted that Ripple Labs would be losing money if it did not have the revenue generated from the sales of the XRP cryptocurrency. In 2018 and 2019, Garlinghouse claimed on multiple occasions that the published error rate for SWIFT messaging was at least 6%. Martin Walker, director of banking and finance at the Center for Evidence-Based Management has written that Garlinghouse's claims were based on mis-reading of a paper published by SWIFT that did not refer to error rates in messaging. Garlinghouse has been personally named in a group of class actions, notably Zakinov v. Ripple Labs Inc. (case number 18-6753), running since 2018 that claim Garlinghouse and his employers, Ripple Labs Inc. have been in breach of various California and Federal securities laws. He was also a party to Bitcoin Manipulation Abatement LLC v. Ripple Labs Inc., which was administratively closed with reference to case 18-6753 previously mentioned. On December 23, 2020, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a complaint alleging that Garlinghouse, Ripple Labs and Ripple Chairman Chris Larsen had committed multiple breaches of securities laws.

Armstrong was born on January 25, 1983, near San Jose, California; both of his parents were engineers.[4] He attended Rice University in Texas, and earned a dual bachelor's degree in economics and computer science in 2005, followed by a master's in computer science in 2006. While at Rice, he started a business matching tutors to students, and after graduating, spent a year in Buenos Aires while working for an education company. While in Buenos Aires, he saw firsthand the effects of hyperinflation that were affecting Argentina at the time. Armstrong's early career included working as a developer for IBM and consultant at Deloitte. In 2010, he came across the Bitcoin white paper published under the alias Satoshi Nakamoto.[4] In 2011, he joined Airbnb as a software engineer, and was exposed to payment systems in the 190 countries Airbnb operated in at the time.[6] While at Airbnb, he saw the difficulties of sending money to South America. He began working weekends and nights to write code in Ruby and JavaScript to buy and store cryptocoins. In 2012, he entered the Y Combinator startup accelerator and received a $150,000 investment, which he used to fund Coinbase. In 2012, Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam co-founded Coinbase, as a way for cryptocurrency enthusiasts to trade bitcoins and other digital currencies.[8] Armstrong was its first CEO. A 2018 funding round valued the company at $8.1 billion, and in December 2020, the company filed with the SEC to go public through a direct listing. Following a direct listing in April 2021, Coinbase's market capitalization rose to $85B and according to Forbes, as of May 2022, Armstrong has a net worth of $2.4 billion.

“Michael Sonnenshein is the CEO of Grayscale Investments. His past experience includes working for JPMorgan Securities, as well as Barclays Wealth. He is also a member of Investopedia’s financial review board. Grayscale is one of the crypto industry’s top avenues for mainstream folks looking to buy Bitcoin on the stock market. Grayscale launched its Grayscale Bitcoin Trust in 2013 shortly after the company was founded. GBTC is stock shares backed by fractional Bitcoin ownership, traded over the counter and available via traditional market brokerage platforms. Grayscale has added other products over the years, including Ether shares. Sonnenshein has been involved with Grayscale since 2014, assuming the role of managing director in 2018 and taking the reins as the company’s CEO in early 2021. With the help of Sonnenshein, Grayscale has increased its prevalence in the crypto space, bringing its holdings above 500,000 BTC in 2020. The company picked up massive amounts of crypto assets throughout the year, at times buying BTC faster than miners could generate it. The firm also accumulated a notable amount of Ether. “So, I talk to an institution, they now look at Bitcoin as part of the same flight to safety as they might look at bonds or gold or other things that have served in that capacity for them, and that wasn’t a widely held narrative probably until about the last 12 or 18 months,” Sonnenshein told media outlet The Compound during a March interview. Holding one of the main avenues for buying Bitcoin in the traditional financial world, Grayscale will likely continue gaining prevalence, especially given the recent trend of institutional Bitcoin interest. Although some players opted to buy spot BTC, Guggenheim expressed interest in buying $500 million worth of GBTC. With Sonnenshein helping to lead the ship, the firm could also continue taking over more and more of Bitcoin’s circulating supply.  Given his appointment as CEO at the start of the year, one might expect Sonnenshein to continue with the same trajectory Grayscale has been on over the past year. “As CEO, Sonnenshein will set the strategic direction of the firm, scale Grayscale’s business by investing in its people and operational capabilities, and expand the ability of investors to access the digital currency asset class,” the company said in a public statement about the role shift, adding: “The firm expects to double its staff in 2021, as well as roll out multiple new products.”

“Originally a developer of 3D graphics and virtual reality software, Andresen became involved in developing products for the bitcoin market in 2010, and was declared by Satoshi Nakamoto as the lead developer of the reference implementation for bitcoin client software after Satoshi Nakamoto announced his departure. In 2012 Andresen founded the Bitcoin Foundation to support and nurture the development of the bitcoin currency, and by 2014 left his software development role to concentrate on his work with the Foundation. Andresen graduated from Princeton University in 1988. He began his career working on 3D graphics software at Silicon Graphics Computer Systems. In 1996, he co-authored the VRML 2.0 specification,[3] and later published a reference manual for VRML 2.0. Since leaving Silicon Valley in 1996, Andresen has tackled a wide variety of software-related ventures, including CTO of an early Voice over IP startup and co-founder of a company that made multiplayer online games for blind people and their sighted friends. Andresen was the lead developer for a part of the bitcoin digital currency project, working to create a secure, stable "cash for the Internet." Andresen discovered bitcoin in 2010, considering its design to be brilliant. Soon after he created a website named The Bitcoin Faucet which gave away bitcoin. In April 2011, Forbes quoted Andresen as saying, "Bitcoin is designed to bring us back to a decentralized currency of the people," and "this is like better gold than gold." After joining the developers contributing to Bitcoin along with Satoshi Nakamoto, he went on to become lead developer of the client software for the bitcoin network. He stepped back as lead maintainer in 2014. Andresen also created ClearCoin, an escrow-type of service, which was closed on about June 23, 2011. After several years working on the software, Andresen left the role of lead developer of bitcoin to work on the strategic development of its technology. He conceived of the Bitcoin Foundation which became reality in 2012. In May 2016 Andresen stated that the Australian programmer and entrepreneur Craig Wright was Nakamoto, but later expressed regret getting involved in the "'who was Satoshi' game. Andresen has not contributed to Bitcoin since February 2016. He had become critical of the failure of bitcoin developers to increase network capacity, and helped put together Bitcoin XT as alternative software. His commit access to Bitcoin Core on GitHub was revoked in May 2016 after stating Wright was Satoshi Nakamoto. In November 2017, Andresen expressed support for rival currency Bitcoin Cash, stating "Bitcoin Cash is what I started working on in 2010"

“Changpeng Zhao or “CZ” as he is fondly known within the crypto community is one of the more recognizable personalities in the blockchain and cryptocurrency space. Zhao’s is a story of a rapid ascendency to fame and recognition from relative obscurity. These days, CZ is the CEO Binance, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchange platforms in the world. His crypto holdings give him a net worth of between $1 – $2 billion putting him in the elite class of cryptocurrency billionaires. Perhaps one of the most profound aspects of CZ’s story is the fact that 7 months ago, Binance had not been established and his biggest involvement in the cryptocurrency space was a stint at OKCoin which ended with his resignation in 2015.”

Jihan Wu Co founded Bitmain together with Micree Zhan in 2013. Bitmain has become the world's largest computer chip company for bitcoin mining, with US$2.5 billion in revenue in 2017. He is a leading supporter of Bitcoin Cash, a hard fork of bitcoin created in 2017 with increased transaction capacity. He topped Forbes' 2020 World’s Billionaires List as one of the five youngest billionaires in Asia. After college, Wu worked as a financial analyst for a private equity firm. In May 2011, he discovered bitcoin and raised 100,000 yuan from family and friends to purchase 900 bitcoins. He and fellow bitcoin enthusiast Chang Jia (长铗) founded Babite (巴比特), China's first bitcoin community site. In late 2011, he was the first to translate Satoshi Nakamoto's bitcoin white paper into Chinese. In 2012, Wu invested in the bitcoin mining company ASICMINER, one of the first company produced ASIC that is used to mine Bitcoin worldwide which was co-founded by Friedcat (烤猫). Although initially successful with more than a thousand times of investment return given to its investors, Friedcat later ran into technical difficulties and exited the business. Wu also lost his investment purchasing hardware from another mining hardware company, Cannon Creative. In 2013 Wu reached out to the microelectronics engineer Micree Zhan, whom he had met a few years before, and convinced Zhan to co-found Bitmain with him. In November 2013, Zhan developed Antminer S1, the company's first mining rig. Sales soon took off, but hit a downturn in 2014 when fraud was discovered at the Japanese bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox, leading to its collapse. In 2015, Bitmain developed Antminer S5, which became the best-selling mining equipment as bitcoin prices recovered. Bitmain grew into the world's largest computer chip company for bitcoin mining, reporting US$2.5 billion in revenue in 2017. In 2018, Wu owned 20% of Bitmain shares, and Zhan 36%. Wu has been a vocal proponent for increasing bitcoin's transaction capacity, which is limited to only seven per second due to the 1-megabyte size limit of bitcoin blocks, but the proposal was opposed by traditionalists. After two years of debate between the two camps, a Shenzhen-based mining company called ViaBTC, which Bitmain had invested in, orchestrated a hard fork of bitcoin, creating Bitcoin Cash in August 2017. Wu's critics accuse him of being the mastermind behind the fork, calling him "Jihad", a play on his given name,[3] but Wu denied that he or Bitmain had so much influence in the matter. In 2019, Wu stepped down as co-CEO of Bitmain and founded Matrixport, a financial services company for cryptocurrencies. To circumvent China's ban on cryptocurrency trading, the company is based in Singapore. In 2021, Wu officially left Bitmain saying the disagreement between himself and Micree Zhan has finally been settled amicably. As a result, the cryptocurrency mining pool BTC.com and mining cloud service Bitdeer have spun off from Bitmain and Wu will be the chairman.  Later, BTC.com was sold to a public company BTCM

Tyler Winklevoss is one of the most prominent figures in the cryptocurrency community. Along with his twin brother Tyler Winklevoss, He founded Gemini, a digital-currency exchange and custodian where he holds the title of president. Gemini was the first licensed Ether and Zcash exchange and was also the first to launch Bitcoin futures contracts. The Chicago Board Options Exchange, the largest United States options exchange, uses Gemini’s Bitcoin market data to create its Bitcoin trading products. The Winklevoss twins also founded Winklevoss Capital in 2012, a firm that actively invests in early stage startups. In 2018, Tyler and his brother were featured on Forbes’ first “The Richest People in Cryptocurrency” list. He is also a graduate of Harvard University where he conceived the idea for the social network ConnectU alongside his brother and his classmate Divya Narendra. In 2004, ConnectU filed a suit against Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg, alleging that he had copied its idea. A settlement agreement was later reached for $65 million. Apart from his professional accomplishments, Winklevoss is also an Olympic rower, with him and his brother representing the U.S. at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, where they finished sixth. Throughout 2020, Tyler Winklevoss continued to be vocally bullish toward Bitcoin and Ether across news and social media platforms. One of Gemini’s major highlights of the year was its partnership launched at the beginning of May with Samsung, a global leader in the smartphone industry, that allowed Samsung users to link their Samsung blockchain wallets with Gemini accounts to view their balances and transfer cryptocurrencies. In July, Gemini also announced its partnership with the privacy-focused Brave browser, which allows users to hold crypto from within the browser. Gemini continued to expand its reach in 2020, encouraging European investors to use its platform by launching crypto trading against the euro and the pound sterling. In September, the Winklevoss twins announced their belief in decentralized finance when Gemini became a participant in the markets by listing 15 DeFi tokens. Alongside Kraken, Gemini announced trading support for Filecoin ahead of its mainnet launch on Oct. 15. Also in October, it partnered with crypto tax startup Taxbit to optimize cryptocurrency tax reporting for Gemini users.

Cameron Winklevoss is one of the most prominent figures in the cryptocurrency community. Along with his twin brother Tyler Winklevoss, He founded Gemini, a digital-currency exchange and custodian where he holds the title of president. Gemini was the first licensed Ether and Zcash exchange and was also the first to launch Bitcoin futures contracts. The Chicago Board Options Exchange, the largest United States options exchange, uses Gemini’s Bitcoin market data to create its Bitcoin trading products. The Winklevoss twins also founded Winklevoss Capital in 2012, a firm that actively invests in early stage startups. In 2018, Cameron Winklevoss and his brother were featured on Forbes’ first “The Richest People in Cryptocurrency” list. He is also a graduate of Harvard University where he conceived the idea for the social network ConnectU alongside his brother and his classmate Divya Narendra. In 2004, ConnectU filed a suit against Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg, alleging that he had copied its idea. A settlement agreement was later reached for $65 million. Apart from his professional accomplishments, Winklevoss is also an Olympic rower, with him and his brother representing the U.S. at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, where they finished sixth. Throughout 2020, Cameron Winklevoss continued to be vocally bullish toward Bitcoin and Ether across news and social media platforms. One of Gemini’s major highlights of the year was its partnership launched at the beginning of May with Samsung, a global leader in the smartphone industry, that allowed Samsung users to link their Samsung blockchain wallets with Gemini accounts to view their balances and transfer cryptocurrencies. In July, Gemini also announced its partnership with the privacy-focused Brave browser, which allows users to hold crypto from within the browser. Gemini continued to expand its reach in 2020, encouraging European investors to use its platform by launching crypto trading against the euro and the pound sterling. In September, the Winklevoss twins announced their belief in decentralized finance when Gemini became a participant in the markets by listing 15 DeFi tokens. Alongside Kraken, Gemini announced trading support for Filecoin ahead of its mainnet launch on Oct. 15. Also in October, it partnered with crypto tax startup Taxbit to optimize cryptocurrency tax reporting for Gemini users.

Jeremy Sturdivant is the man that answered the advert from Laszlo Hanyecz. Although the NY Post article reports $365 million as the amount. The accurate price as of October 2021 high of $69,000 per coin, equates to $6.9 billion for 2 slices of pizza. “In May 2010, California student Jeremy Sturdivant, then 19, noticed a bizarre request on a cryptocurrency internet forum: He could receive 10,000 bitcoins, at the time reportedly valued at $41, in exchange for the delivery of two large pizzas to Florida resident Laszlo Hanyecz, 28. Sturdivant filled the order, sending him two large pizzas (cheese and “supreme”) from Papa John’s — a transaction that would become the first physical purchase made with bitcoin in history, marked by the annual Bitcoin Pizza Day on May 22.”

Laszlo Hanyecz a developer is spent $3.8 billion on pizzas in the summer of 2010. The $3.8 billion price is calculated using $38,000 per bitcoin. “Laszlo Hanyecz  made the first documented purchase of a good with bitcoin when he bought two Domino's pizzas from jercos for 10,000 BTC. Laszlo had made contributions to Bitcoin's source code in the past. On May 17, 2010, laszlo posted a request to buy pizza with bitcoin. It was on May 22, that he reported successfully trading 10,000 BTC for two pizzas, with jercos ordering the pizza and receiving the coins. The bitcoins were quoted at $41 at the time of the offer. The Pizza Index is the value of the bitcoins spent on the pizzas, were they to be sold rather than spent on pizza. It started at $41 when the transaction actually occurred, and rose significantly since then, topping at $15.5 million in April 2017. To commemorate the transaction, May 22 is dubbed Bitcoin Pizza Day. Pizza providers worldwide offer discounts to bitcoin users to commemorate laszlo's purchase.”

Michael Saylor deserves huge credit for advocating and galvanizing public company CEOs to put a portion of their treasury in Bitcoin. His advocacy won over Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey and others. He is one of the longest serving public company CEOs in the U.S. MicroStrategy is one of the first that will participate in Fidelity’s employee retirement plan whereby employees can put Bitcon as part of their 401k. “Michael Saylor is the Chairman & CEO of MicroStrategy (MSTR), a publicly traded business intelligence firm that he founded in 1989. He is also the founder of Alarm.com (ALRM), named inventor on 40+ patents, & author of the book “The Mobile Wave”. He founded & serves as trustee for the Saylor Academy (saylor.org), a non-profit organization that has provided free education to over 1 million students. He is an advocate for the Bitcoin Standard (hope.com). He has dual degrees from MIT in Aerospace Engineering & History of Science.”

a16z the Venture Capital firm founded by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz was one of the first mega VC firms that invested and continues to invest in Crypto. As of May 2022, a16z had three Crypto Funds. Fund III raised in June 2021 was $2.2 billion. As of January 2022; the Financial Times reported a16z is seeking $3.5 for its fourth Crypto Fund. As of May 21, 2022, the number of the firms crypto team stood at 68 employees. For the uninitiated, a16z s one of the biggest VC firms in the world, they usually get it right early with some of the biggest companies globally.

“In 1999 Roger began his career by founding MemoryDealers.com at the age of nineteen while still attending college. Under his leadership the company quickly grew to become a market leader, employing dozens of people across the world and generating millions of dollars in revenue. In 2005 Roger saw an opportunity in the market for fibre optic transceivers used in networking subsystems, so he founded Agilestar.com. Agilestar went on to become a world leader in optical transceivers used by fortune 100 companies around the world. In 2011 Roger heard about Bitcoin for the first time. The price was still under one U.S. Dollar each, but he already knew that it was one of the most important inventions in the history of humankind. His company Memorydealers became the first established business in the world to start accepting Bitcoin for payments. Roger then went on to become the first person in the world to start investing in Bitcoin startups. He nearly single handedly funded the entire first generation of Bitcoin and Blockchain businesses including Bitcoin.com, Blockchain.com, Bitpay.com, Kraken.com, purse.io, and many many more. Those businesses have gone on to raise hundreds of millions of additional funding, and serve tens of millions of customers around the world. Subsequent investors in the companies that Roger helped provide the seed funding for have been people such as Sir Richard Branson, Virgin, Google Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Founders Fund, and many more. Roger has devoted his full time attention to Bitcoin and blockchains ever since.”

Francis Suarez of Miami was one of the first, if not the first Mayor to accept his salary in bitcoin. He is also one of the most ardent bitcoin advocates. In April 2022, Mayor Suarez unveiled the Miami bitcoin bull with laser eyes which coincided with the bitcoin conference in Miami. In February 2022, the city of Miami cashed out its MiamiCoin project and deposited $5.25 million into the city’s account. As of 2021; he was exploring how city workers could get paid a portion of their salary in bitcoin.

Bitcoin’s decentralized capabilities (worked on by thousands), the purpose for its true utility and the reason for its creation; wouldn’t have been on its success path, if its architects were, or are revealed. While Bitcoin is Digital Gold, Ethereum is the Digital Oil. Hence, Vitalik Buterin is an impressive character of epic proportions. Vitalik as one of the Co Founders of Ethereum created the infrastructure on which Web3 is being built. The future of the web, and its next iteration owe their fruition to Ethereum. Born in Kolomna, Russia, Vitalik’s father was a computer scientist. His family migrated to Canada when he was six. Co Founded Bitcoin Magazine in 2011. In 2014, Buterin launched Ethereum with Gavin Wood, Charles Hoskinson, Anthony Di Iorio and Joseph Lubin.

“Charlie Lee, the creator of Litecoin, one of the earliest Bitcoin derivatives, is best known as a highly successful entrepreneur in the emerging cryptocurrency industry. Under his leadership, Litecoin has remained one of the top cryptocurrencies in an exceptionally volatile market—unlike many other altcoins (cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin) that launched in the early 2010s and have since disappeared. Lee developed and launched Litecoin (LTC) in 2011 (two years after Bitcoin), while he was still a software engineer at Google. In 2013, he left Google to serve as Engineering Manager (2013-2015) and Director of Engineering (2015-2017) at Coinbase, a digital currency exchange start-up. In 2017, he left Coinbase to focus full-time on the Litecoin Foundation, a non-profit he founded in 2016. As of March 2022, he continues to serve as Managing Director at the Litecoin Foundation, where his primary focus is the promotion of the awareness and adoption of Litecoin.

In 2020 Russell Okung an NFL player playing for the Panthers, negotiated half of his $13 million salary in bitcoin. “He played college football for Oklahoma State University and was twice recognized as an All-American. He was drafted by the Seattle Seahawks with the sixth overall pick in the 2010 NFL Draft, and has also played for the Denver Broncos, Los Angeles Chargers and Carolina Panthers.”

In October 2021 the SEC with Gary Gensler as its Chairman approved Bitcoin Futures ETF. Although the entire industry was patiently waiting for a bitcoin spot ETF, the industry was granted a Futures ETF. Gary “Gensler was nominated by President Joseph Biden to Chair the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on February 3, 2021, confirmed by the U.S. Senate on April 14, 2021, and sworn into office on April 17, 2021. Before joining the SEC, Gensler was professor of the Practice of Global Economics and Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management, co-director of MIT’s Fintech@CSAIL, and senior advisor to the MIT Media Lab Digital Currency Initiative. From 2017-2019, he served as chair of the Maryland Financial Consumer Protection Commission. Gensler was formerly chair of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, leading the Obama Administration’s reform of the $400 trillion swaps market. He also was senior advisor to U.S. Senator Paul Sarbanes in writing the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (2002), and was undersecretary of the Treasury for Domestic Finance and assistant secretary of the Treasury from 1997-2001.”

“Nick Szabo is a computer scientist, and a cryptographer known for his research in digital contracts and digital currency. The phrase and concept of "smart contracts" was developed by Szabo with the goal of bringing what he calls the "highly evolved" practices of contract law and practice to the design of electronic commerce protocols between strangers on the Internet.” “In 1998, Szabo designed a mechanism for a decentralized digital currency he called "bit gold." You can watch his presentation titled “Pioneers of The Years Before Bitcoin” at Bitcoin 2022 Conference from Miami.

Cathie Wood possesses over 40 years of experience in the financial industry. She founded ARK Investment in 2014. ARK focuses solely on disruptive innovation while adding new dimensions to research. As of 2021, ARK’s Asset Under Management (AUM) was $50 billion. Cathie can be seen at premier crypto conferences and she’s invited by major news outlets to give her opinion. ARK invest was the first public fund manager to buy bitcoin in 2015. In July 2021; Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey and Cathie Wood appeared on The B Word live streamed discussion, talking about crypto and bitcoin. “Prior to ARK, Cathie spent twelve years at AllianceBernstein as CIO of Global Thematic Strategies where she managed over $5 billion. Cathie joined Alliance Capital from Tupelo Capital Management, a hedge fund she co-founded, which in 2000, managed approximately $800 million in global thematic strategies. Prior to her tenure at Tupelo Capital, she worked for 18 years with Jennison Associates LLC as Chief Economist, Equity Research Analyst, Portfolio Manager and Director. She started her career in Los Angeles, California at The Capital Group as an Assistant Economist. Cathie received her Bachelor of Science, summa cum laude, in Finance and Economics from the University of Southern California in 1981.” “Cathie has been recognized as an influential fund manager across various outlets. In 2018, editors at Bloomberg acknowledged Cathie by selecting her to its second annual Bloomberg 50 list of people across business, entertainment, finance, politics, technology, and science who have defined global business. Additionally, Fortune named Cathie to its exclusive roundtable of experts in the annual Fortune Investors Guide: The Best Investing Advice for 2019 From Fortune’s Experts. In 2016, Cathie received the “Women in Finance – Outstanding Contribution Award” from Market Media. Cathie also has been a featured speaker at the World Economic Forum (China) in 2016 & 2017, the World Strategic Forum (Miami) in 2017, The Sohn Hearts and Minds Investment Leaders Conference (Australia) in 2018 and 2019, and Singularity University’s Exponential Finance in 2017 and Global Summit in 2019.

Didi Taihuttu is famous for betting it all on Bitcoin. Didi took the term sweat equity to a whole new level. Didi’s bold move is probably one of the most aggressive. Attachment to personal belongings prevents most of us from parting with non productive items, however Didi went all in. The risk he took is commensurate with his current and future net worth. In 2017, CNBC covered his story with this article captioned “This family bet it all on bitcoin.” Didi, his wife and their three children sold everything and moved out of their 2,500 square feet home. It takes what Warren Buffet calls testicular fortitude aka balls of steel to put yourself and entire professional reputation in the public space to represent and stand by an unpopular doctrine or nascent idea. Here is a follow up 2020 article by CNBC titled “This family bet everything on bitcoin when it was $900 and bought more when it crashed in 2018”

a16z the Venture Capital firm founded by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz was one of the first VC firms that invested and continues to invest in crypto. As of May 2022, a16z had three Crypto Funds. Fund III raised in June 2021 was $2.2 billion. As of January 2022; the Financial Times reported a16z is seeking $3.5 for its fourth Crypto Fund. As of May 21, 2022, the number of the firms crypto team stood at 68 employees. For the uninitiated, a16z s one of the biggest VC firms in the world, they usually get it right early with some of the biggest companies globally.

“Grammy-nominated, multi-platinum selling artist, producer, entrepreneur and philanthropist. Akon is recognized as one of the most powerful voices across the continent of Africa and the Diaspora, named to the Forbes Celebrity 100 & 40 Most Powerful Celebrities in Africa list. Through Akon Lighting Africa, he has already brought solar power to 18 countries in Africa, creating safety, health and well-being for millions of the 600M+ Africans who lack electricity. Akon is the visionary behind Akon City; a sustainable and eco-tourism smart city in development in Senegal, where Akoin will be the central currency.”

One of the most prolific stories and prescient acts in bitcoin’s lifecycle can be attributed to Davinci Jeremie. In 2013; Davinci Jeremie, a programmer practically begged people to buy bitcoin, in his now famous YouTube video which has garnered over 3.8 million views. The video is titled “Bitcoin Update – just buy $1 worth of bitcoin please.” Davinci is probably a bitcoin shark, that means someone with (500 to 1000 BTC), whale is someone with (1,000 BTC) or a humpback holder, that is someone with (5,000 BTC). Davinci can be seen at premier crypto conferences sharing his opinions. It takes what Warren Buffet calls testicular fortitude aka balls of steel to put yourself and entire professional reputation in the public space to represent and stand by an unpopular doctrine or nascent idea.

On the 7th of September 2021, EL Salvador was the first country in the world to adopt bitcoin as legal tender.  Its promulgation into law was championed by by President Nayib Bukele.  The decision thrust El Salvador and President Bukele into the global conversation overnight.  El Salvador up the ante by announcing the issuance   of the world’s first bitcoin-backed bond.  El Salvador’s volcano bonds were initially a sovereign bond.  “These bonds started as a sovereign bond,” Marshik said. “Now, it is a securitized corporate bond, which [raises] the question of success.”          President Nayib Bukele is a pioneer; both in his endeavors to transform his country with nascent technology and getting rid of the dependence on IMF’s unfavorable loans.  President Bukele announced the confluence of 32 central banks and 12 financial authorities in El Salvador to discuss bitcoin.    The meeting was held on May 16, 2022.  As of May 2022, El Salvador had amassed a total of 2,301 bitcoin.       He really gets Bitcoin, listen to his What Bitcoin Did interview and part II What Bitcoin Did