The crypto asset market in 2020 is impressive. Huge capital power and strong innovation are two-wheeled promotion, the industry is hot and restless, Bitcoin, DeFi, Ethereum 2.0, Polkadot, Filecoin are dazzling.
Among them, there are some key figures who can be called the “super spreaders” of the industry-in epidemiology, super spreaders refer to an extremely infectious organism, often 20% of infected persons can cause 80% The spread of cases-Xiaobian identified these 12 key figures, who played a huge role in pushing the encrypted digital asset market to its climax.
Jerome Powell, Chairman of the Federal Reserve
It’s hard to say that Powell is a key person in the industry, but the series of Fed releases under his rule eventually pushed up the price of Bitcoin and other assets-no one should object to this conclusion.
In order to prevent the U.S. economy from collapsing under the pressure of the new crown epidemic, this year, Powell asked the Fed to purchase a record amount of Treasury bonds, effectively printed and distributed more than $3 trillion in new currency, and almost doubled the Fed’s balance sheet. . Such a loose monetary policy environment has allowed previously skeptical investors (including Wall Street whales like Paul Tudor Jones and Stanley Druckenmiller) to take cryptocurrencies seriously.
Barry Silbert, founder and CEO of Digital Currency Group, founder of Grayscale
The most searched institution in the currency circle this year is probably Grayscale, and the boss behind Grayscale is Barry Silbert.
He started his personal investment in Bitcoin in 2012, and invested in today’s crypto giants such as Coinbase, Bitpay, and Ripple in 13 years. In the same year, he directly promoted the private equity trading platform SecondMarket he founded in 2004 to establish an encrypted asset trust company Gray Investment (Grayscale) and the prototype department of Genesis Trading, a Bitcoin OTC trading platform.
2020 is the year when Sibelt achieves the “Grand Slam”. For grayscale alone, as of December 29, its officially announced total scale of encrypted asset management reached US$18.8 billion, and any grayscale disturbances will affect the sentiment of the crypto market.
Now, people are speculating whether DCG will go to the capital market for IPO after Coinbase.
Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter and Square
In 2020, Jack Dorsey reiterated his love for Bitcoin: “I think the Bitcoin white paper is one of the most groundbreaking works of computer science in the past two to three decades. It is a poem.”
However, this is nothing new. As early as 2018, Jack Dorsey expressed his belief that Bitcoin will eventually become the world’s single currency in the next ten years. And stated on the 2018 conference call: “For us, Bitcoin will not stop trading. We really believe that this is a transformative technology for our industry, and we hope to learn as soon as possible.”
Under his impetus, not only Twitter has become a home base for Bitcoin and confidential asset evangelists, but Square has also launched crypto asset-related services. A report in August this year showed that its Cash APP’s Bitcoin transaction revenue increased by 600% over last year, reaching US$875 million. Cryptocurrencies also account for nearly half of Square’s total sales of $1.92 billion.
As of now, Square’s bitcoin holdings have reached 4709 bitcoins, ranking 11th on the Whale List.
Elon Musk
Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk have tremendous influence. Like Jack Dorsey, these influences have made him a super spreader of crypto assets. As we all know, Musk is the holder of Dogecoin.
On December 20th, he released a number of Bitcoin-related information. Not only did he write “Bitcoin is my security password”, but he also asked the CEO of MicroStrategy to change Tesla’s balance sheet. “Amount transaction” is the possibility of converting to Bitcoin, and said: “The structure of Bitcoin is perfect.” However, he rejected the proposal to allow Tesla to get involved in cryptocurrency.
On December 30, he again stated that Martian residents may use cryptocurrencies similar to Bitcoin.
Cathrine Wood, founder of ARK Invest
Recently, not just Wall Street, but the entire currency circle has been screened by a female fund manager Catherine Wood. ARK Invest, which she is in charge, has soared 170% in its product net value this year. It has never been seen before and reached the top in one fell swoop, becoming the number one fund among more than 2,400 funds in the United States.
And Katherine Wood also won the title of the female version of Buffett. Looking through the investment book of Ark Investment, Tesla and Bitcoin are the most successful investments this year. In 2015, when many people were still wondering what Bitcoin was, ARKW, a subsidiary of Ark Investment, entered the game in person and invested in GBTC issued by Grayscale Investment. At the time, the price of Bitcoin was only $250.
Today, Ark Investment is still a large holder of Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, holding a total of US$180 million in GBTC. More than 200 million US dollars at the peak. “We are all looking for the next big thing. Those who look back at the benchmark have nothing to do with the future.”
Paul Tudor Jones, legendary Wall Street trader
Paul Tudor Jones was once ranked second among living traders by CNBC, and the first was the famous George Soros. Jones started his financial career in the middle of 1970, starting from trading cotton, and has a remarkable record. Established his own Tudor Fund in 1984, starting from 1.5 million U.S. dollars, and by the end of 1992, the total fund increased to 6 billion U.S. dollars.
On the morning of May 8, Beijing time, Bitcoin broke through the $10,000 mark, setting a new high since February. Bloomberg revealed that a Jones fund is buying bitcoin derivatives as a hedge against inflation-because central banks around the world are printing money to ease the economy hit by the new crown virus.
Jones likened the purchase of Bitcoin to “having the fastest horse” in the upcoming inflation race, and pointed out: “If I had to predict, I would bet that the fastest horse would be Bitcoin.” Jones’s Remarks and behavior are interpreted as a bullish indicator that can particularly resonate with conservative traditional investors.
Michael Saylor, CEO of MicroStrategy
Of all the news that promoted Bitcoin’s growth this year, MicroStrategy CEO Michael Thaler was the most confusing. But because of MicroStrategy’s behavior of buying and buying Bitcoin, he was completely on fire.
The US stock-listed company, whose business has been in trouble, ignored Citigroup’s warning to lower its stock rating and started buying bitcoin in August. In early December, it raised $650 million in debt to buy bitcoin. As of December 21, the number of bitcoins held by the company reached 70,470, ranking only behind Grayscale, Block.one, and Coinshares. During the same period, the company’s stock price has risen by more than 120%.
Michael Seller even claimed to hold 17,732 bitcoins, and the average purchase price was 9882 US dollars. Now, he has become one of the most powerful evangelists for Bitcoin.
“Bitcoin is a million times better than gold, and it takes 100 years to hold it.”
Vitalik Buterin, founder of Ethereum
This year is not a year for Vitalik to “operate” hard. Compared with previous years, Vitalik’s exposure is not much, and communication with the industry is limited. But this year, Ethereum 2.0 has finally taken an important step, and ETH has also set a new high in two and a half years-Vitalik’s results are not bad.
Vitalik said, “Blockchain has no killer applications, but the blockchain ecology is a killer network.” Ethereum is continuing to evolve, becoming a killer network, and various technological innovations (such as Layer 2 expansion) and application innovations are flourishing.
DeFi has made breakthroughs and new progress, which is remarkable, and once again welded ETH’s pivotal position in the crypto asset industry where new assets continue to rise. Almost 80% of new assets rely on the Ethereum network.
This is also an important reason why Vitalik has become a super communicator. We cannot do without Ethereum, and it is hard not to pay attention to V God.
Gavin Wood, founder of Polkadot
Unlike Vitalik’s relatively “low-key”, Gavin Wood appeared on the stage very frequently this year. In return, Polkadot’s progress in 2020 is breakthrough: launching the main network, rapid development of ecological projects, and preparing for parallel chain slots Pac, token splits, large increase in transaction volume, staking amount not to increase, and price hit a record high… The latest news is that by the end of 2020, 100+ chains are ready to connect to Polkadot, and 60+ The testnet is online.
The journey of Web3.0 is long and Polkadot has made a good start. But next, people care: Can Polkadot replicate the success of Ethereum? Will Polkadot become another EOS?
Andrew Cronje (Andre Cronje, AC for short), founder of YFI
For the crypto asset industry, Andrew Klogne is simply a genius who fell out of thin air. Without prominent qualifications and background, he is unknown. However, no one will deny his contribution in the DeFi field. From a YFI to a large number of AC-based encrypted assets, every step of Andrew Klogne is extraordinary, and he is also a super active “Twitter”. It seems that as long as there is the blessing of AC, this asset will have its own aura. He really doesn’t need to go into details.
Hayden Adam, founder of Uniswap
Compared with Uniswap’s huge influence, Hayden Adams is slightly low-key. But like Andrew Klogne, Adams was an airborne genius.
On November 2, 2018, when he announced the official launch of Uniswap on Twitter, Adams had only 200 followers on Twitter. His entry into DeFi was also entirely an unexpected development of interest.
On July 6, 2017, the first Siemens job as a mechanical engineer after graduating from Adams University did not go well. He was fired. Frustrated, he lost direction in life, so he sought comfort from his friend Karl Floersch. On Karl’s suggestion, Adams learned Ethereum, Solidy and Javascript, and then he decided to design an automated market maker (AMM) product-this is Uniswap.
DeFi is on fire, Uniswap is on fire, Adams is on fire. Uniswap v2 was launched in May of this year, and it was just right. It allows anyone with access to the Internet, Ethereum wallets and ETH/ERC20 tokens to seamlessly exchange assets in a permissionless manner. The automatic market maker model has attracted a large number of imitators and followers.
SBF, founder of FTX and Alameda
SBF is a controversial figure. He is talented and hardworking enough to be active enough on social networks or in front of the media-of course he is also successful enough this year. It is hard to imagine that around this 28-year-old former Wall Street trader, an influential crypto empire has been formed:
The digital currency trading platform FTX is on the rise, and Solana-based decentralized trading platform Serum has surfaced. Alameda Research has become one of the largest liquidity providers and market makers in the digital currency market. Its business covers trading, OTC, research and analysis ,investment.
In addition to the US$150 million acquisition of Blockfolio, a crypto asset management tool, numerous crypto startups invested in, and personally taking over the control of SushiSwap, a liquid mining project that has fallen into a crisis of trust among the founders (but SBF said that “taking over” is a misunderstanding, he Doesn’t hold control)-Some people say that a new “DeFi gang” has formed.
