Presenting CoinDesk's Most Influential 2023

Fifty people who defined the year in crypto.

What to Know

CoinDesk's Most Influential recognizes the people, who, for the better, and sometimes the worse, defined the year in digital assets and Web3. There are 10 top honorees who made an outsized impact, and 40 more people who were only a little less influential. For 10 of the entrees, we asked select digital artists to create NFTs of the honorees.
The auction will begin on Monday, Dec. 4, at 12 p.m. ET (17:00 UTC) and ends 24 hours after the first bid is placed. Holders of a Most Influential NFT will receive a Pro Pass ticket to Consensus 2024 in Austin, Texas.

CoinDesk's Most Influential 2023: Top 10

The following ten names are recognized for their exceptional impact on the world of crypto in 2023.

Casey Rodarmor

His "Ordinals Theory," allowing data inscription on Bitcoin, generated a backlash from Bitcoiners who said it will ruin the network. But Rodarmor remains undeterred. Read more...

Ryan Selkis

Ryan Selkis built a political fundraising machine for crypto that's ready to sway elections in 2024. That's why the Messari founder is one of CoinDesk's Most Influential people of 2023.

Jenny Johnson

The $1.33 trillion asset manager was viewed as old-fashioned, but its CEO is at the forefront of Wall Street's embrace of bitcoin ETFs and crypto technology.

Lido DAO

Lido has become a victim of its own success, attracting criticism as its share of staked ether has grown to nearly one-third. That's why it's one of CoinDesk's Most Influential of 2023.

Paolo Ardoino

The newly promoted CEO of Tether is looking to diversify the firm's investments after a banner year where the stablecoin giant is on track to profit $4.5 billion.

Jose Fernandez da Ponte

The payments giant debuted its own Ethereum-based U.S. dollar stablecoin this year, offering serious competition to existing market leaders such as Tether's USDT and Circle's USDC.

Gary Gensler

No regulator or law enforcement official had as much influence on crypto this year. But is the SEC chair singled out too much by critics?

With CZ gone at Binance, and SBF set for prison, Brian Armstrong is the biggest big gun still in the hot seat. Having launched its own layer-2 blockchain and derivatives exchange this year, and ETFs looking poised to launch in 2024, Coinbase looks well positioned to ride crypto's next wave.

Sam Altman

From ChatGPT to Worldcoin, Sam Altman changed everything in 2023. Read more...

Brad Garlinghouse

Ripple's CEO emerged triumphant this year in legal cases with big implications for crypto's future. He couldn't have done it without the XRP Army. Read more...

CoinDesk's Most Influential 2023: Honorable 40

The “honorable 40″ (listed below the top 10) are recognized for their ongoing work. We’ll roll out more profiles and interviews over the course of this week.

Refik Anadol Digital artist Refik Anadol's creatively sculpted imaginations generated wonder and discussion as he brought his data-generated artwork from the blockchain to the world’s largest screens. Read more...

Rune Christensen The co-founder of MakerDAO says his biggest achievement this year was bringing real-world assets, like U.S. Treasuries, on-chain and at scale.

Larry Fink BlackRock reignited interest in bitcoin ETFs this year, in part driven by CEO Fink’s strong statements on the role of bitcoin as an international currency.

Jordi Baylina One of Ethereum's biggest scalability layers, Polygon, is at the forefront of a new tech trend with the launch of its zkEVM.

Avery Ching With hundreds of millions at stake, Avery Ching, co-founder of one of the year's most-talked-about new projects, has much to prove.

Stefan Berger He steered through the European Union's world-leading Markets in Crypto Assets Regulation (MiCA) this year in the aftermath of FTX and other scandals. He's now working on a digital euro.

Cuy Sheffield Perhaps more than at any other TradFi firm, Visa’s crypto unit under Sheffield has been running experiment after experiment. That's why he's one of CoinDesk's Most Influential of 2023.

Jesse Pollak Coinbase's layer-2 blockchain, which launched this year, helps the exchange to scale and reduce transaction fees. Rivals, like Kraken, are now said to be launching their own layer 2s. That's why Pollak is part of CoinDesk's Most Influential 2023 list. Read more...

Karl Floersch The CEO of OP Labs helped create a set of tools that let developers build their own layer-2 chains.

Lisa Neigut The Blockstream developer has been working on what she calls “Lightning v2” since 2019, and it’s poised to launch by year’s end.

Sergey Nazarov Chainlink is where digital assets meet the real world, and Nazarov is predicting TradFi and crypto will become intertwined.

Jeremy Allaire Circle continued to build out the USDC stablecoin network, spreading access and inclusion to new corners of the world.

Mike Belshe BitGo was one of the few crypto companies to raise capital in a depressed market, and even did so at an elevated valuation. That's one reason why CEO Belshe is one of CoinDesk's Most Influential of 2023.

Ria Bhutoria A partner at Castle Island Ventures, Bhutoria has produced some of the smartest analysis in crypto over the last several years.

Balaji Srinivasan Srinivasan bet $1 million the U.S. dollar would collapse (and lost), and evangelized his ideas about startup societies, making him one of CoinDesk's Most Influential in 2023.

Yat Siu Web3 gaming powerhouse Animoca Brands isn’t playing around; it takes its work with governments and educating a skeptical audience seriously.

Paul Sztorc The developer’s proposal (BIP 300) for “Drive Chains” (sidechains) on Bitcoin – meant to allow greater collaboration with other chains – was met with fierce opposition from some Bitcoiners this year. Sztorc says the community hasn’t been innovating fast enough.

Racer Farcaster, Friend.tech and Lens showed how much can change in a year — but is Web3 networking ready for primetime? Read more...

Miguel Morel Arkham’s Intel Exchange, which pays people to help identify wallets, caused an uproar over its alleged "dox-to-earn" program.

Ogle Hacks happen a lot in crypto. So, Ogle has professionalized asset recovery for the victims. He's pretty good at it.

Caroline EllisonThe former Alameda Research CEO gave damning testimony in the fraud trial of her former boyfriend, Sam Bankman-Fried, making her one of CoinDesk's Most Influential in 2023. Read more...

Pascal Gauthier Crypto wallet company Ledger created a controversial seed recovery service, something newbies truly need, but suffered through a massive backlash. Read more...

Anatoly Yakovenko With a rocketing token and tech improvements on the horizon, the Solana community – rallied by industry champion Anatoly Yakovenko – defied the odds of defeat.

Judge Analisa Torres The U.S. District judge's partial ruling in favor of Ripple regarding XRP could create a precedent the crypto industry can come back to over and over.

Patrick McHenry The bowtied chairman of the House Financial Services Committee has shown persistence in the face of increasing partisanship on crypto issues.

Richard Teng With Binance founder Changpeng "CZ" Zhao gone, the new CEO has big shoes to fill as he's tasked with cleaning up the reputation of the world's largest crypto exchange.

Hayden Adams Uniswap, the first decentralized crypto exchange of its kind, was Adams’ first and greatest contribution to Ethereum. The latest V4, inviting praise and criticism, earns him a spot on the Most Influential 2023.

Pacman Blur upended OpenSea's NFT marketplace dominance by focusing on big traders. Its cofounder, Pacman, who doxxed himself to face its burgeoning community, earns a spot on CoinDesk's Most Influential 2023. Read more...

Ravi Menon Singapore's central bank head has steered a path between Hong Kong's embrace of crypto and India's stifling of it.

Luca Schnetzler While much of the NFT market was taking beatings, the Pudgy Penguins CEO (who's also known as Luca Netz) drove his brand forward, setting up shop with some of the largest retail stores in the country.

Shytoshi Kusama and the SHIB Community With the launch of Shibarium this year, Shytoshi Kusama and the SHIB community have established themselves as a force to be reckoned with in DeFi and Web3.

Antonio Juliano Juliano's dYdX switched from Ethereum to Cosmos in one of the year's biggest blockchain defections. The project has big plans for 2024.

Stani Kulechov With upgrades to the Aave lending/borrowing protocol and Lens, an open-source social media protocol, the Estonian native kept BUIDLing in a down-market.

Caroline Pham The CFTC commissioner, in a year marked by an aggressive, sometimes arbitrary regulatory enforcement, stood out as an accommodator of innovation in the crypto sector.

Ron Faris As many corporations shied away from blockchain-powered initiatives this year, Nike has been quietly building a model for how brands can use a Web3 backend to gain new audiences.

Barry Silbert The former owner of CoinDesk faced a slew of lawsuits and complications in 2023, but by year-end, his Digital Currency Group had put some issues behind it.

Elizabeth Warren The U.S. Senator from Massachusetts is skeptical of crypto. It's a position she leaned into in 2023. Read more...

Martin Köppelman In addition to building some of the biggest blockchain tools on Ethereum, Köppelmann is also ringing the alarm bell on how certain technology has caused the network to stray from its ideals.

Julie Leung A former journalist, Leung is the world’s most powerful female financial regulator in an increasingly important center for crypto.

Ian Allison The CoinDesk reporter belongs in the Journalism Hall of Fame since there's little, if any, precedent for the waves his story on Alameda Research and FTX stirred up.