Many people have a wrong though about the industry of the crypto start-ups and blockchain tech to assume that it’s a male-dominated field.

Of course, there has always seemed to be an apparent domination of the technology space in general by Asian and Caucasian males. Women hardly ever get a look-in. This assumption covers all organizational levels within the industry, from the boardroom all the way up to the tech developers huddled behind multiple monitors and processing units. A look at some of the major conferences, seminars, and sundry gathering of minds in the blockchain space will reveal a startling scarcity of womenfolk.

However, to say that there are no women who are making tangible contributions within the blockchain space would be a false assertion. There are a number of notable women who are actively involved in leading projects that are dominating the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry. These women aren’t just restricted to any specific sub-niche of the industry as they are scattered across many of the functional segments. Some of the biggest ICOs, digital currency payment platforms, and even blockchain tech development firms have been founded by women. Apart from being part of the evolution and development of the industry, many of them play active roles in improving the adoption of cryptocurrency in mainstream commerce. Here is a brief look at some of the notable women in the blockchain and crypto industry.

1. Galia Benartzi (Bancor)

Education and Early Career

Galia Benartzi graduated from the Johns Hopkins University in 2005. After college, she became heavily involved in software start-ups including Mytopia, Founders Fund, and Particle Code Inc. She was the co-founder and CEO of Particle Code until it was sold to Appcelerator in the year 2011.

Exploits in the Blockchain and Crypto Space

Galia has been something of a tech genius and also a consummate professional in the field of Business and Economics. She is the co-founder of Bancor as well as acting as the Head of Business Development for the crypto firm. The Bancor ICO is one of the highest grossing ICOs of all time. The campaign raised $153 Million in funding and has since gone into advanced development stages.

Bancor is focused on the cryptocurrency exchange market and is building a platform that significantly simplifies the process of cryptocurrency trading. The platform will also allow users to create their own tokens which can then be monetized and traded for other established tokens like BTC, ETH, and LTC just to name a few.

2. Meltem Demirors (DCG)

Education and Early Career

Meltem Demirors is an alum of the William Marsh Rice University where she graduated with a degree in Mathematical Economics. She went further after her first degree to get an MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Exploits in the Blockchain and Crypto Space
These days, Meltem Demirors is a top Director at the Digital Currency Group (DCG). The company specializes in creating and deploying blockchain tech protocols. The company also manages cryptocurrency investment portfolios. Many of her colleagues at the New York-based DCG describe Meltem in glowing words. On the team page of the company website, she is described as being the connection that forms the bridge between the core operating areas of the DCG.
In addition to her role as Director of Development at DCG, Meltem has also been an active voice against the trend of centralized cryptocurrency mining pools, especially in the Bitcoin network. As a believer in the equitable distribution of wealth within the crypto space, she uses her position at DCG to develop investment strategies that help spread the wealth of the crypto industry.

3. Elizabeth Stark (Lightning Labs)

Education and Early Career
Elizabeth Stark is a graduate of the prestigious Harvard Law School. She is also the founder of the Harvard Free Culture Group and an affiliate member of the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society. She spent a considerable portion of her professional career as a professor at both Stanford and Yale. During her time at Yale, she established a program to help students come up with projects that would improve the existing Internet technology.

Exploits in the Blockchain and Crypto Space

Together with Olaoluwa Osuntokun, Elizabeth is the co-founder of Lightning; a start-up that is developing protocols to significantly increase the speed of crypto transactions. She serves as the CEO of the company. The company’s focus is primarily on the Bitcoin network but contributors are welcome to develop protocol layers for other blockchains.
Apart from her involvement with Lightning, Elizabeth has been quite active in the blockchain space in general. She has contributed significantly to the Bitcoin community as is also a fellow at Coin Center.

4. Rhian Lewis (London Women in Bitcoin)

Education and Early Career

Rhian Lewis studied at the University College London. She graduated with Second Class Honors (Upper Division) in Economics. She is a consummate professional in the Engineering and Technology fields with a working career that spans across many different organizations. She has worked at firms like DigitasLBi, AKQA, and Beamly. She is currently a Director at Salvia Media Services where is a tech consultant for both SDET and Blockchain.
Exploits in the Blockchain and Crypto Space
Rhian has been actively involved in improving women participating in blockchain and cryptocurrency. She started the London chapter of the Women in Bitcoin organization along with a group of friends. The organization has grown to include 100 members, many of whom are CEOs and COOs of tech companies. Rhian continues to be an advocate for women participation in the Blockchain space regularly attending and speaking at conferences, meetings, workshops, and seminars.

5. Elizabeth McCauley (Bitcoin Foundation)

Education and Early Career

Elizabeth Ploshay McCauley graduated from Wheaton College in the year 2011. She holds a degree in Political Science. Her early career was spent in Washington where she served as both Intern and Staff Assistant to United States Congressmen.

Exploits in the Blockchain and Crypto Space

During her time serving members of Congress, she contributed to the adoption of Bitcoin in the United States. Such was her enthusiasm that she has come to be known as the “Bitcoin Evangelist.” She utilized her considerable expertise in grassroots activism to bolster the adoption of Bitcoin within the United States.
She is currently a member of the Board of Directors at the Bitcoin Foundation. She is an adviser at both the BitGive Foundation and Coin Congress. Her previous roles include a stint with BitPay Inc. where she worked as an accounts manager.
This is by no means an exhaustive accounting of all the leading female figures in the blockchain space. There are also individuals like Kathleen Breitman (co-founder of Tezos), Maxine Ryan (co-founder and COO of Bitspark), Tavonia Evans (CEO of $Guap), and Elizabeth Rossiello (co-founder and CEO of BitPesa). These women are setting high standards in many areas of the blockchain space and are contributing immensely to the growth and development of the industry.

Nowadays crypto enthusiasts and businesspeople look for market analytics info, latest trends, hottest cryptocurrencies and new ICO or blockchain projects to invest in a lot of various sources.

The importance and popularity of the “traditional” media sources at large and its forecasts are not so high as it used to be. Many people and investors do, however, pay significant attention to opinions of independent researchers, which operate on such highly popular platforms as Youtube, Twitter, and personal blogs.

The widespread of the professional tips and forecasts cannot be exaggerated in the digital economy sector, which often suffers from high volatility. The tips regarding ICO conduction, crypto consulting and blockchain projects at large from independent analytics and respected figures in the blockchain industry are always in high demand.

Speaking about the Youtube, its presentation format allows making useful, short and easy-to-understand video guides, market analytics and crypto news settlers to give a more bright, transparent and understandable way to deliver information to users. Other means of providing insights, sharing opinions, crypto market & ICO guidance are Twitter and blogs.

Today we have outlined the most popular, hot and exciting channels & blogs, where everyone, from enthusiast to professional crypto trader or investor, can find useful tips, crypto news, professional ICO guides, different projects previews/reviews, and forecasts.

We start with Youtube channels first:

Altcoin Buzz

http://altcoinbuzz.io/

(https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGyqEtcGQQtXyUwvcy7Gmyg/search?query=ICO)

The Altcoin Buzz is one of the largest channels for the decent crypto investors. Its popularity grows quite fast as the total number of subscribers had now risen to the number of 200,000. Also, the total number of video content hits is now estimated at more than 13,5 million.

The top discussed subjects on this channel are altcoins investments and ICO projects. Right now, the channel is rapidly gaining popularity due to the considerable number of high-quality and regular content. Right here, one can find relevant content on such topics as “ICO investments guide,” “Safety measures during the ICO campaigns,” and so on.

Moreover, the previews on the upcoming ICO projects are often published here – such as “Telegram,” “Safe Haven,” “Remme,” “Play2Live” and even more. One of the most popular videos at the moment, “What it Will Take For Ethereum Price To Rise to $10,000 Per Coin” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNAC6xbEM7Q), scored more than 195,000 views and 350 comments at the moment.

The man and creator of this channel and the website is Jeff. He is known to be an economist, crypto and altcoins enthusiast, and an active ICO investor, willing to share his opinions and predictions with broad user audience. The platform is also run by two market analytics, Steve, and Shashwat, and Shailen works on the project’s marketing part. The channel has been created only a bit more than a year ago, but its community is developing rapidly.

Ian Balina

(https://www.youtube.com/user/Diaryofamademan)

http://ianbalina.com/blog/

This channel is named by the creator’s name – Ian Balina is one of the most popular crypto bloggers on Youtube nowadays and an influential blockchain and cryptocurrency investor as well.

Moreover, he is often seen as an advisor of some significant crypto projects and the blockchain Evangelist. His works in analytics, cryptocurrencies, and entrepreneurship had led him to an appearance in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Huffington Post, The Street, INC and Entrepreneur Magazine. Balina is a former Analytics Evangelist at IBM; he has brought a data-driven, “Moneyball” approach to investing in cryptocurrency token sales (ICOs), called “Token Metrics.”

Ian Balina leads a global cryptocurrency investor syndicate that invests up to $3 million in promising blockchain startup’s token sales. The main topics of the channel are previews and reviews of different projects, ICO campaign developers, and founders of companies, live-streams from meetups and conferences, investments guides.

At the moment, his video channel has more than 115,300 subscribers, and the total number of video content hits is likely 3,3 million. The most popular video is an hour-long “How to make millions with Initial Coin Offerings” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkzeJrdKDJk&t=1s), which has already scored more than 330,000 views and more than thousand comments. Beside this channel, Ian has an official blog – http://ianbalina.com/blog/.

Ivan on Tech

http://ivanontech.com

(https://www.youtube.com/user/LiljeqvistIvan )

Ivan Liljeqvist is the creator behind another favorite Youtube channel named Ivan On Tech. He is a software developer from Sweden. This channel had been created back in 2013 and now has nearly 150,000 subscribers and more than 6,000,000 views of video content. Author’s primary vision is creating content that covers the cryptocurrencies news and implementation of the blockchain technology applications in the financial sector.

The extreme popularity of the channel is no wonder because its founder is a professional programmer with project development experience and participation in ICO projects. Ivan could also be seen as the speaker of many crypto conferences, often participating in different meetups, publishes exclusive video interviews with the developers and the ICO investors.

One of the most exciting and relevant recent Ivan’s videos is the one regarding the ICO and is an analytical “Bitcoin and Crypto ICO Ban Bloodbath – Programmer explains” with more than 30,000 views.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6Ak2ulc9QY). Ivan also hosts the website http://ivanontech.com and is active in several in social networks.

Crush Crypto

(https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCu1-oBOM-DzJ89o02Bx3XYw/search?query=ICO)

The Crush Crypto channel is one of the engaging and most underrated channels in this segment. It is being hosted by an independent research group focused on blockchain technology and digital currencies analysis. The team’s behind the project goal is to provide high quality and objective fundamental analysis in cryptocurrency investment sector and ICOs.

The creators assure its viewers that they are not paid or mandated to do any reviews and that the content is based on private research, analysis and personal opinions only. Victoria Wong is the face and part of the Crush Crypto team, who has experience in financial analysis, investment research, investing and C++, JavaScript, and PHP-programming. Victoria has extensive professional experience in corporate finance, economic analysis, and modeling, investment research. She was previously Vice President at Morgan Stanley where she had spent more than six years as an equity analyst looking at companies in Asia and the US with coverage across the transportation, industrials, infrastructure and logistics sectors.

Project CEO is Victor Lai, who has an extensive background in finance and previously worked in investment banking at Investec and various hedge funds in Asia and North America. He is specialized in the fundamental analysis and investing. The market researchers of the projects are John Coburn, Richard Wang, and Kieren O’Day.

Crypto Daily

(https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC67AEEecqFEc92nVvcqKdhA)

This British news channel is covering financial sector aimed at cryptocurrency investors. This channel was created by the digital economy enthusiast nearly three years ago and during that time has gained over 100,000 subscribers and more than 5 million views of his content. The main feature of the channel is high-quality and regularly provided content, mostly related to the topics of ICO, innovations in the cryptocurrencies market, blockchain technologies, platforms and media persons of the industry.

Also, the most popular video at the moment is “Top 5 Undervalued Crypto-Currencies!” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwFJp9MEfCo –
with more than 220,000 hits and almost 700 comments.

Nevertheless, the leading industry media figures and the favorite blogs related to crypto market and digital analytics should also be outlined:

Mike Butcher https://twitter.com/mikebutcher

now holds the position of an editor-at-large at TechCrunch Europe.

The new trend in the field of crypto technology advancement developments allows creating the so-called “startup incubators.” Mike Butcher analyzes how this rising idea will affect the formation of a new global community, services, and platforms.

Besides, he is involved in a project to bring European technology entrepreneurs and investors together in a club environment called TechHub in London. A long-time journalist, Mike has written for UK national newspapers and magazines including The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The New Statesman. He is a former editor of New Media Age magazine, the leading new media weekly in the UK, and the European edition of The Industry Standard magazine.

Since 1996 he has launched or re-launched numerous media websites, and in 2000 he was nominated as NetMedia’s European Internet Journalist of the Year. In 2004 he was voted ‘One of the 100 Innovators of the UK Internet Decade’ by GfK NOP, the fourth-largest custom research business in the world. In July 2008 he was put at No. 47 out of the Top 100 people in London’s creative industry by The Independent newspaper and The Hospital Club.

In August 2008 TechCrunch Europe was awarded the best “Web 2.0 and business blog” in the UK, by the readers of Computer Weekly magazine. Also, in 2009 he was named one of the Top 10 bloggers on Twitter in the UK. In October 2009 he was named one of the Top 50 most influential Britons in technology by The Daily Telegraph. In April 2010 he was named as one of Britain’s Top 100 “digital power-brokers” by Wired UK magazine.

Mike is a regular commentator on technology business at Tech Crunch, his articles relate to the ambitious development and the largest ICO-projects of the industry, crypto world latest trends and the cryptocurrency market at large.

His articles had also appeared on BBC News, Sky News, Channel 4 and Bloomberg. Mike’s personal blog http://mbites.com and the channel on Twitter has almost 150,000 readers.

Andreas M. Antonopoulos

https://antonopoulos.com/

Another well-known person on our list is Andreas M. Antonopoulos – a technologist and serial entrepreneur who has become one of the most famous and well-respected figures in Bitcoin industry. He is the author of two books: “Mastering Bitcoin,” published by O’Reilly Media and considered the best technical guide to bitcoin and “The Internet of Money,” a book about why Bitcoin matters.

As an engaging public speaker, teacher, and writer, Andreas makes complex subjects accessible and easy to understand. As an advisor, he helps startups recognize, evaluate, and navigate security and business risks. Andreas was also one of the first to use the phrase “The Internet of Money,” as early as 2013, to describe Bitcoin as a part of his speaking business.
Meanwhile, as a Bitcoin entrepreneur, Andreas had founded many bitcoin businesses and launched several community open-source projects. He is a widely published author of articles and blog posts on bitcoin, is a permanent host on the famous “Let’s Talk Bitcoin” podcast, and a frequent speaker at technology and security conferences worldwide.
Andreas offers strategic consulting to a small number of cryptocurrency companies that are aligned with his interests. He also provides expert witness testimony as an expert in the security, technical details and use of crypto-currencies, worldwide. A lot of analytics and tips can be found on his website and official blog, which has nearly 200,000 readers per month now.

Brian Armstrong

https://blog.coinbase.com/@barmstrong

Brian Armstrong is the co-founder and CEO of the famous digital assets exchange Coinbase. Armstrong had founded this company, which has now become one of the largest in the crypto space, back in June 2012.

Before founding Coinbase, Armstrong had worked as a Software Engineer at Airbnb in 2011-2012. Previously, he founded UniversityTutory.com and worked as a software engineer at CarWoo.com.

Coinbase, which received total funding of more than $107 million, perhaps, remains one the best-known startup in the bitcoin industry. Armstrong holds three degrees from Rice University: a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Bachelor’s Degree in Economics as well as a Master’s Degree in Computer Science.

Brian is known for his loud and brave statements, is an expert in the blockchain industry, takes an active part in various conferences devoted to the development of new projects and ICOs investment.

Armstrong’s blog is quite popular. He actively publishes articles on Medium as well – https://medium.com/@barmstrong.

John McAfee

http://www.whoismcafee.com/

McAfee is a famous American millionaire with Scottish roots, an eccentric media figure, a programmer, a real pioneer of many technological developments – he is one of the few people who first created antivirus software and developed a decent working virus scanner.

Talking a little bit about the biography of this extraordinary and famous person, it is worth mentioning that John worked at NASA from 1968 to 1970 in New York City. He then moved to work as a software developer and later worked in ‘Xerox’ as the architect of the operating system. In 1978 – joined Computer Sciences Corporation’ as a software consultant. Later, while working in ‘Lockheed’ 80-is, McAfee managed to obtain a copy of a computer virus ‘Pakistani Brain,’ and he began developing software to combat viruses.

In 1997 with the merger of ‘McAfee Associates’ and ‘Network General’ came to light the company ‘Network Associates,’ but later the company returned to its former name. ‘McAfee Associates,’ which over the last 20 years acquired and absorbed a huge number of American and European anti-virus developers, and today remains one of the largest global leaders in its industry. Another company founded by McAfee that has become the ‘Tribal Voice,’ developing a ‘PowWow,’ one of the first programs for instant messaging.

On December 21, 2017, a 72-old John McAfee, posted on Twitter that each day will assess any cryptocurrency. His position can be regarded as a kind of invitation. The businessmen, according to him, ready to share opinions about what cryptocurrencies are useless, and which deserve support.

It is worth mentioning that the most recent forecasts became successful – his data analytics about the Verge and DigiByte cryptocurrencies, made on December 13 and 23 respectively were entirely correct.

McAfee’s blog has an audience of more than 150,000 readers per month, and nearly 750,000 read his Twitter. Many people call an eccentric MacAfee the real incarnation of the favorite Marvel character – billionaire and tech genius Tony Stark.

Erik Voorhees

https://twitter.com/ErikVoorhees

http://moneyandstate.com/

Voorhees is a young, American-Panamanian founder of startups, currently living in Zug, Switzerland – like many well-known developers and project teams these days.

During his career, Erik has created projects such as BitInstant and Coinapult, he had founded and became CEO of the ShapeShift.io company and participated in the KryptoKit development.

Eric is a well-known supporter of Bitcoin, which is strongly emphasized in his speeches at various conferences and during interviews. He is actively involved in the creation of the regulator for cryptocurrency markets.

In his blogs, Voorhees explains not only the personal benefits of using the digital assets instead of traditional fiat money, the desire to improve the current financial systems, new ICOs and much more. Voorhees, also strongly supports the ideas and benefits of smart contracts. He has an official blog at http://moneyandstate.com/ and a Twitter account with more than 250,000 readers.