- Crypto founders and executives make the cut despite a bleak year for crypto.
- Uniswap and Avalanche creators are included.
- Around a third were connected to crypto.
Even though 2022 has been a bad year for the cryptocurrency industry as a whole, some executives and founders are still being honored for their immense contributions.
Several crypto CEOs and company entrepreneurs have made it onto Forbes’s newly announced 30 under 30 list for the fintech industry.
Ham Serunjogi, the creator of an African money transfer app, was featured on the 2023 cover. Additionally, Forbes celebrated the contributions of numerous pioneers in the crypto community.
Sponsored
The companies on the list span the gamut of the financial sector, from the most conventional to the most innovative technologies like cryptocurrency and distributed ledgers. There were over a thousand nominees, but only 30 were selected. And no, Sam Bankman-Fried did not make the cut this time!
David Vélez, CEO of the Brazilian online bank Nubank and co-founder of the company, was among the judges. The top 30 were selected in part by Alex Atallah, co-founder of the nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace OpenSea.
NOW ANNOUNCING: #ForbesUnder30 2023
— Forbes (@Forbes) November 29, 2022
Meet the young leaders and entrepreneurs on our 12th annual Forbes 30 Under 30 list who provide plenty of reason to believe that tomorrow will be brighter than today.
FULL LIST: https://t.co/HAsugTmmxO pic.twitter.com/ONmMmmfpYK
Crypto Founders Never Stop to BUIDL
Over the past year, Forbes reported that the value of cryptocurrencies had dropped by 70 percent. Still, it paid tribute to the pioneers and top brass of the industry for their efforts throughout the year.
Hayden Adams, founder of Uniswap, made the list at the age of 28. His 2018 launch of a decentralized platform for trading and exchanging tokens was a huge success. Since its inception, Uniswap has handled more than $1 trillion in trade volume.
Kevin Sekniqi, the co-founder of Avalanche, is also on this elusive list. Despite the debilitating bear market, the high-throughput blockchain has also seen tremendous success.
Eva Beylin, director of The Graph Foundation, and Ria Bhutoria, partner at Castle Island Ventures, were two other notable women in the crypto space to make the list. Arjun Bhuptani and Layne Haber, who founded Connext Labs, were also named, as was Kanav Kariya of Jump Crypto.Â
The list also includes Sam Kazemian, founder of Frax Finance, Victor Faramond, founder of MoonPay, as well as Kinjal Shah of Blockchain Capital.Â
On the Flipside
- During the 2022 crypto crash, major digital assets lost almost all of their gains. This is because of a string of high-profile crashes.
- The FTX and FTX.US exchanges submitted a Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition on November 11, 2022. BlockFi filed for bankruptcy on November 28 as part of the ongoing effects of the FTX contagion.
- When TerraUSD and LUNA both crashed in May 2022, many crypto platforms went down.
- Falling prices can also be attributed to the impact of rising interest rates.
Why You Should Care
Three out of ten of the financial technology companies mentioned are involved in cryptocurrency. Despite the dismal year, this has lent greater credibility to the cryptocurrency sector. Most of the names on the list come from the investment banking or VC industries.
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