Despite an extremely bleak year for the bitcoin and altcoin industry, some executives and founders are still gaining recognition. Forbes recently released its “30 under 30” list, which includes “30 people under 30” in the fintech space. A surprising number of crypto executives and founders are included in the list.
2022 has been a turbulent year for the Bitcoin and altcoin market
Ham Serunjogi, founder of African money transfer app, was on the cover of the 2023 update for young entrepreneurs. It also included several prominent crypto leaders on the list. The list covers traditional financial services, fintech, crypto and blockchain. There were more than a thousand candidates, but only 30 made it to the list. Among the jury members was David Vélez, co-founder and CEO of Brazilian crypto bank Nubank. Alex Atallah, co-founder of the nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace OpenSea, was also among the judges who helped select the top 30.
Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, which crashed at the beginning of November, was not on the list this year. Forbes acknowledged the 70 percent drop in crypto prices last year. He also highlighted the importance of the work of industry founders and managers during a turbulent year. Forbes featured the following statements:
Despite the sharp decline in cryptocurrency prices over the past year, crypto-asset entrepreneurs continue to gain rapid interest and have wide influence, and have performed strongly on this year’s list.
Who were the pioneers on the list?
Also on the list was Hayden Adams, 28, the founder of Uniswap. It launched its decentralized exchange and token exchange platform in 2018 and has been quite successful. Uniswap has processed more than $1 trillion in trade volume since its launch, as we reported as Kriptokoin.com. Kevin Sekniqi, co-founder of Avalanche, also made it to the hard list. High-yield Blockchain has been extremely successful despite the bear market.
2) @evabeylin at The Graph pic.twitter.com/bUSkA6av7i
— Frank Chaparro (@fintechfrank) November 29, 2022
Other notable crypto figures on the list include The Graph Foundation director Eva Beylin and Castle Island Ventures partner Ria Bhutoria. Connext Labs co-founders Arjun Bhuptani and Layne Haber were also mentioned, as were Jump Crypto president Kanav Kariya. Included are Blockchain Capital partner Kinjal Shah, Frax Finance founder Sam Kazemian and MoonPay founder Victor Faramond.
30 percent of those on the list are interested in crypto
About a third of the list of 30 people in the fintech space have ties to the crypto industry. This marks an increasing weight given to crypto despite the gloomy year. Most of those listed are associated with investment banking or venture capital. Names such as Vitalik Buterin, Polychain Capital founder Olaf Carlson-Wee entered the prestigious list in 2018. The “30 under 30” list for 2021 featured FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried. Also, nine crypto companies made it to the Forbes “Fintech 50” list earlier this year.
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