Pavel Durov: Free Speech Hero Against the State
The Telegram founder’s short stay in a French prison this summer was a free speech inflection point.
June 2025
Steve Yun: Driving Web3 Adoption Via Telegram
The president of the TON Foundation has millions tapping their phones to earn crypto.
David Tse: Bringing Staking to Bitcoin
It’s been a banner year for Babylon, the staking protocol co-founded by Tse.
Ray Chan: Bridging Web2 and Web3 With Memes
The CEO of Memeland turned memes into cultural currency with 9GAG. Now, he’s using crypto to transform them into tools for engagement and community.
Sergio Demian Lerner: Making Bitcoin More Programmable
The founder of Rootstock is working to create a framework for running programs on Bitcoin and enabling the development of more sidechains and Layer 2s.
Robin Linus: Scaling Crypto’s Premier Network
The developer behind BitVM is facilitating the building of more and more applications atop Bitcoin.
EigenLayer’s Sreeram Kannan: King of the Professor Coins
Kannan may have played a larger role than any other entrepreneur in revitalizing DeFi on Ethereum. But not everything went according to plan.
Eric Balchunas and James Seyffart: The Bloomberg ETF Bros
The two analysts had their fingers on the pulse of one of crypto’s biggest financial stories of 2024.
Mahesh Ramakrishnan: The DePIN Cheerleader
Decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePIN) took off bigtime this year, and EV3 Ventures’ Ramakrishnan was at the center of it all.
Michael Saylor: The Architect of MicroStrategy’s Huge Bitcoin Bet
Most companies were leery of Saylor’s strategy when he started amassing bitcoin back in 2020. Some are no longer skeptical.