“Fortune” magazine selected the 50 most influential promoters or NFT projects in the NFT field, including famous singers and artists.
Original Title: ” The 50 Most Influential Tas in the NFT Field in the Eyes of Fortune “
Compilation: 0x13
Source: Fortune
In 2021, NFT went out of the circle in an unprecedented way, from NBA Top Shot to Beeple, to Axie Infinity and CryptoPunks, Bored Ape Yacht Club, blockchain games, crypto art, collectibles and other subdivisions of NFT. In the mainstream view.
At the same time, when we marveled that NFT has been dormant for many years and finally ushered in a big outbreak, we must not forget the promoters behind it. “Fortune” magazine selected the 50 most influential promoters or NFT projects in the NFT field.
1.Beeple
Picasso in the field of digital art. The South Carolina digital artist sold his “Everydays” collage at a Christie’s auction in March for $69 million, setting a record high for NFT turnover. He is known for his nasty portrayals of popular culture and political leaders, such as his painting of Joe Biden as a variant version of Buzz Lightyear.
2. CryptoPunks
This is the most extravagant collection of people in the crypto world. Larva Labs, based in New York City, distributed these 10,000 pixelated avatars to the community for free in 2017, and at the end of 2020, some of them have been sold for millions of dollars. These pixel avatars have a unique combination of features, such as aliens, wearing sunglasses, or smoking.
3. Roham Gharegozlou
The CEO of Dapper Labs developed the NBA Top Shot product to make NFT into the mainstream. According to reports, his startup company is raising funds at a valuation of $7.5 billion. Dapper Labs launched CryptoKitties in 2017 and became famous in one fell swoop.
4. Mark Cuban
The billionaire and investor said that if he were younger, he would start a blockchain company. As the owner of the NBA Dallas Mavericks team, Cuban even considered making game tickets as NFT. He is also a supporter of the NFT trading platform Mintable.
5. Pplpleasr
Emily Yang participated in the visual design of “Batman v Superman” and “Wonder Woman”, and helped some DeFi projects to produce dynamic images. One of his works was a video related to Uniswap, which promoted the establishment of the NFT fund PleaserDAO. In addition, she designed honey for the August/September 2021 issue of Fortune, which will be sold as a limited NFT.
6. Jay-Z
This HipHop master is one of the most famous celebrities who use CryptoPunk as a Twitter profile picture, and he is also a member of Square’s board of directors. With the help of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Square acquired Jay-Z business and music streaming service platform Tidal for US$300 million earlier this year.
7. Paris Hilton
The heir to the Hilton Hotel believes that NFT is “the future of the creator economy.” Her collaboration with Los Angeles artist Blake Kathryn sold for more than $1 million. She is also a strategic consultant for the blockchain project Origin Protocol.
8, 3LAU
This electronic music DJ made a fortune in the NFT boom early on. He sold the world’s first NFT album and earned $11.6 million in March. Kings of Leon, RAC, and Jay-Z followed in his footsteps.
9. Grimes
The 33-year-old Canadian singer-songwriter has sold more than $6 million worth of NFT artwork, and Grimes occasionally collaborates with her brother Mac Boucher. Of course, Elon Musk, the father of her own children, prefers Dogecoin.
10. Gary Vee
Marketing guru Gary Vee hand-painted 268 stick figures as the basis for 10255 VeeFriend NFTs. These sketches come with exclusive benefits such as gift boxes, mentor meetings and conference tickets.
11. Itzel Yard
Itzel Yard is one of the best-selling female NFT artists. Tor, who built a privacy-focused web browser, commissioned her to create “Dreaming at Dusk”, which was sold to PleasrDAO on the Foundation platform for approximately US$2 million. The work of Itzel Yard is usually generative art, that is, patterns and shapes formed by automation and calculation.
12. Pak
The true identity of this mysterious artist is a mystery. He has created many dynamic, ever-changing NFT artworks that even contain puzzles. Pak sold a gray pixel block to a Bay Area investor for nearly $1.4 million in April.
13, XCOPY
XCOPY comes from London and is an artist. He is one of the early pioneers of crypto art because he believes that this is “the first and only way to actually sell my works of art”. The early pioneers of NFT seldom revealed personal information, but their works are very top-notch among all artists. Statically saturated graphics usually flicker frantically and are themed around death or utopia.
14. Fewocious
Victor Langlois is an 18-year-old transgender NFT artist whose stage name is FEWOCiOUS. His parents were Salvadoran immigrants. He first landed at Christie’s because too many people bidding and the website collapsed. Christie’s had to postpone the auction for two days.
15. Krista Kim
Krista Kim is the creator of “Mars House”. Mars House is an NFT digital house, which was sold in March for 288 ETH, at a price of approximately $663,000, even exceeding the current median house price in the United States. Krista Kim is the initiator of the Techism movement, a movement dedicated to bridging the gap between technology and art.
16.Josie Bellini
Josie Bellini is an encryption artist with a financial background. His works are often related to the internal operation of the digital asset world. Currently, CyberBrokers is working on the project. This project will include 10,001 encrypted art collections. A CyberBroker owner will have the opportunity to enter MirrorWave, which is “a meta-universe fashion brand” that Bellini is creating, as she wrote in her Substack newsletter.
17. Micah Johnson
After several years of playing in Major League Baseball, Micah Johnson transformed into a successful digital artist. He once sold art works worth $1 million in 60 seconds. Micah often uses black children as the theme in his works. He said that he wanted to inspire young people and let them know that they can do many things.
18. Metakovan
Earlier this year, Vignesh Sundaresan bought the most expensive NFT ever, Beeple’s “Everydays”. He and his partner “Twobadour” in Metapurse (an investment fund focused on NFT) spent US$69.3 million to purchase this work. “The point is to show Indians and people of color that they can also become patrons, and that cryptocurrency is an equal power between the West and other countries.” He wrote in an article about this auction.
19. Devin Finzer
Devin Finzer was an engineer at Pinterest and a co-founder of OpenSea. In July of this year, the startup raised $100 million in funding at a private valuation of $1.5 billion. Today, OpenSea is the largest NFT market in the industry, and its sales have reached a new high even when the revenue of competitors’ websites has declined.
20. Katie Haun
Former federal prosecutor Katie Haun and investor Chris Dixon co-lead venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz’s multi-billion dollar cryptocurrency fund. The fund is called a16z crypto and is the main supporter of top NFT-related startups. Portfolio companies include NBA Top Shot production team Dapper Labs, NFT market OpenSea and digital horse racing game ZedRun.
21, John Legere
The former CEO of T-Mobile is one of the world’s top NFT buyers. The former telecommunications giant smashed more than $2 million for DJ 3LAU and Steve Aoki’s psychedelic music videos. In March of this year, he joked that he might buy the NFT of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s first tweet (someone beat him at an auction and spent nearly $3 million).
22, Dylan Field
Dylan Field is the CEO of Figma, a $10 billion visual design software startup. As a long-time believer of NFT, he bought a pipe smoking alien CryptoPunk for US$15,000. He found this alien “super attractive”. This year, he sold this avatar, once considered “the Mona Lisa in the digital world”, for $7.5 million in ETH, which is only one of at least 10 CryptoPunks in his personal collection. Dylan Field is also an investor in the NFT market OpenSea.
23, Hackatao
Hackatao is a combination of Nadia Squarci and Sergio Scarlet, who live in the mountains outside Milan, where they have been producing digital art since 2018. Squarci told the Contemporary Digital Art Museum that they are “two opposite but complementary souls.” This pair often portrays little cartoon monsters in their surreal pop art.
24, Neda Whitney
Neda Whitney is the head of marketing for Christie’s Americas. She helped push this 254-year-old auction house into the digital world. Her most famous event is: helping to sell Beeple’s “Everydays”, which sold for nearly $70 million in March, attracting the attention of the art world.
25, Cuy Sheffield
The head of cryptocurrency at Visa is an NFT collector who has been optimistic about the technology’s prospects for many years. Cuy Sheffield believes that cryptocurrency art, in particular, can help under-recognized creators make a living; in 2020, he wrote in a blog post that it can help promote the “black digital renaissance.”
26. Ben Nolan
Ben Nolan is the founder of CryptoVoxels, a virtual world full of digital art galleries. The website is a key part of the thriving blockchain meta-universe in the NFT world, where people can buy digital land and display their collections.
27, FlamingoDAO
FlamingoDAO is an organization of wealthy cryptocurrency investors. They pooled funds to bid for NFT works. In less than a year after its launch, they have accumulated a considerable amount of collectibles. FlamingoDAO also has a collection of a rare alien CryptoPunk, which was purchased in January for more than $750,000 worth of ETH. The sponsors of the fund include Aaron Wright, a professor at Cardoso Law School, co-founder of the legal protocol blockchain protocol OpenLaw, and Priyanka Desai, who leads OpenLaw operations.
28, John Crain
John Crain is the CEO of SuperRare, an encrypted art market. SuperRare was launched on the Ethereum network in 2018, and users can make and trade NFT artworks.
29, Duncan & Griffin Cock Foster
Former rowers, the Cock Foster brothers are the co-founders of Nifty Gateway, one of the top NFT art sales platforms. The brothers sold their website to cryptocurrency company Gemini in 2019. Now they are employees of the other twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss.
30, Marguerite DeCourcelle
Marguerite DeCourcelle is the CEO of Blockade Games, a blockchain game studio, and an avid NFT collector. The first game “Neon District” developed by Marguerite DeCourcelle studio allows players to earn and purchase NFT items. She even tokenized herself to measure how influencers create ownership of their brand.
31. Lindsay Howard
Lindsay Howard is the community leader of Foundation, which is an NFT market launched earlier this year. Lindsay Howard planned Phillips’ first ever digital art auction in 2013. She has curated exhibitions for museums including the Museum of Moving Image in New York City.
32, Jen Stark
The “Multiverse” NFT of the artist from Los Angeles was auctioned for up to 150 ETH ($343,071) in March. Its sale made Jen Stark the first female artist among Foundation’s top 10 best-selling creators.
33, Diana Sinclair
It didn’t take long for the 17-year-old artist to emerge in the crypto art world. On June 1st, Diana Sinclair curated “The Digital Diaspora”, an NFT exhibition and auction event dedicated to celebrating the works of black artists. Its proceeds are used for Herstory DAO, a group she co-founded to collect the works of marginalized creators (such as homosexuals).
34, Jimmy McNelis
Jimmy McNelis is an avid NFT collector and the CEO and co-founder of NFT 42. His company is known for creating AvaStars, a digital collectible project that sells quirky science fiction generated avatars. McNelis is also the co-founder of Nameless, a project to launch NFT in collaboration with the brand.
35, Colborn Bell
Bell used to be an investment banker and trader, and now serves as the director and co-founder of Museum of Crypto Art, collecting and curating cryptocurrency art. The agency helped consolidate the NFT art market last year, and in 2020 bought “Picasso’s Bull” on Nifty Gateway for $55,555.55 worth of ETH.
36, Gisel Florez
Gisel Florez is a photographer and co-founder of Women of Crypto Art, a community of women who love the crypto world. Gisel Florez sells his own digital art works and participated in traditional and crypto-centric exhibitions, including NFTNYC, ETH Denver, and PROOFOFART museums.
37, Denis Nazarov
The former partner of Andreessen Horowitz is working hard to build an encrypted publishing platform, unlike Medium or Substack. In the new model, readers help fund writers in exchange for NFT. According to The Information, Mirror.xyz recently raised $10 million from Union Square Ventures, Andresseen Horowitz and others at a valuation of $100 million.
38, Paris Rouzati
According to IDEO CoLab Ventures, the company’s new partners focus on the company’s investments in “Metacosm, NFT, social tokens and DeFi”. Paris Rouzati has also invested in companies such as Fei and Showtime.
39, Jeff Zirlin
Jeff Zirlin, nicknamed “Jiho”, is the co-founder of Axie Infinity. In this NFT-based game, people fight with chubby fantasy beasts. The gameplay is a bit like encrypted Pokemon, and its market allows players to earn tokens in the game. Jeff Zirlin has loved collecting insects and fossils since he was a child.
40, Gabby Dizon
Gabby Dizon is the co-founder of Yield Guild Games. The company invests and cooperates with people who play games, such as blockchain-based Axie Infinity, to obtain NFT rewards. Dizon thinks this is a way to narrow the gap between rich and poor, because in his hometown, players can earn three times the local minimum wage through games. Dizon also co-founded Altitude Games, a Southeast Asian mobile game studio in 2014.
41. Bored Ape Yacht Club
Bored Ape Yacht Club consists of 10,000 collectible NFTs. The benefits of holding these “boring apes” avatars include entering a digital graffiti wall called the “bathroom wall” or adopting a virtual puppy.
42 Maria Shen
The 30-year-old partner of Electric Capital has a soft spot for metaverses. Neil Stephenson’s “Avalanche” is one of Maria Shen’s favorite science fiction books, so when the crypto-based metaverse appeared on her radar, she said she was “very excited”. Now, Maria Shen helps oversee the investment portfolio of different crypto companies and believes that art only represents the “tip of the iceberg” of NFTs.
43, Gmoney
The Puerto Rico-based investor who loves karaoke paid 140 ETH (approximately $170,000) for a CryptoPunk profile picture in January, and the influential NFT helper used a screen name “Gmoney.” Gmoney is also the general partner of Delphi INFINFT, a fund established by Delphi Digital, a cryptocurrency research and investment company, dedicated to investing in NFT projects.
44. Pranksy
Pranksy is a pioneer of anonymous NFT investors, has a large following and collectibles, and is one of the top hoarders of NBA Top Shot.
45. Erick Calderon
Erick Calderon is the founder and CEO of Art Blocks, a generative art platform. Since its launch a year ago, Art Blocks has attracted the attention of many people, including Sotheby’s auction house, which recently sold 19 works on the platform in a transaction totaling $81,000. Erick Calderon is a native of Houston. He uses the name Snowfro on the Internet, which stems from an ice cream stand he once owned.
46 Cooper Turley
Cooper Turley helped launch “Friends with Benefits”, an exclusive token threshold community on the chat application Discord. Only people with FWB tokens can join this club. Cooper Turley is also a strategic advisor to Audius, a decentralized music streaming alternative to Spotify and Pandora. He also advises on Variant Fund, a cryptocurrency investment company founded by former Andreessen Horowitz partner Jesse Walden .
47. Artchick
In the NFT collection world, “Artchick” is a powerful and rising voice known for calling attention to female creators, collectors, and homosexuals in the crypto world. According to its Twitter profile, this pseudonymous account has a requirement. “Never give me a private message.”
48. Andrew Steinwold
Andrew Steinwold is a crypto analyst and the founder of Sfermion, an investment company focused on digital asset projects. Steinwold’s influential newsletter and podcast series, named Zima Red, is an important part of the spiritual food for meta-universe lovers. Steinwold explores the virtual world with people through these and discusses all NFTs.
49, CHerie Hu
Cherie Hu has written an influential newsletter “Water & Music”, covering the intersection of music and technological innovation. In addition to assessing the future use of NFTs in the industry, she also published research that quantifies the income that musicians earn in the NFT economy.
50. Nicole Buffett
Nicole Buffett, the granddaughter of well-known investor Warren Buffett, and her fiance Justin Aversano are top NFT photographers who donate most of the proceeds of their work to charity.
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