Fortune's Most Impressive, Young Superstars List: Crypto Leaders Shine

Bitcoin Dominates Fortune's New Ledger 40 Under 40 List

Traditionally, Fortune's lists comprise go-getters from all sectors of commerce, be they CEOs or Academy Award winners. Indeed, the magazine just came out with their annual 40 Under 40 list, and for sure cryptocurrency luminaries such as Vitalik Buterin and Brian Armstrong were among them. However, for the first time, this year Fortune supplemented their usual list with a special emphasis on financial technology leaders.

Jihan Wu, 32, made the list. The magazine describes him as "the undisputed king of cryptocurrency mining hardware and crypto mining pools." Beijing, China-based Bitmain recently reached a double digit valuation in the billions. He, of course, "has been known as a big proponent of Bitcoin Cash, a controversial fork of Bitcoin. Earlier this year, his company led a $110 million financing round for Circle, the crypto startup with the highest valuation in the U.S. Wu told Fortune earlier this year that he's interested in 'stablecoins,' virtual coins that have a fixed price, and that he plans to diversify Bitmain by developing AI chips."

Amber Baldet, 35, is that rare, new breed of CEO who can comfortably, seamlessly make her way between Wall Street and more radical elements of the ecosystem. She cut her teeth professionally at "JPMorgan Chase," the magazine notes. She would eventually leave "America's biggest bank this year to found a blockchain startup, Clovyr. While on Wall Street, she brought the hoodies (hacker-coders) and the suits (bankers) together, and she led the team that built Quorum, an Ethereum-adapted blockchain built for business. Earlier this month, Baldet, who is an alum of the flagship Fortune 40 Under 40 list, was appointed to the board of the Zcash Foundation, a non-profit group that governs the privacy-centric cryptocurrency Zcash."

Arthur Hayes actually asked his age not be documented. He's known for thinking a bit different than his peers. The online magazine insists before Chicago Merc and Cboe entered the futures market, Mr Hayes' "Bitmex, a crypto derivatives marketplace that allows for leveraged bets of up to 100 times the principal on digital assets from Bitcoin to Cardano," mapped out a space for itself. It wished to be "the most liquid crypto futures exchange," and by the end of last year, it "handled an average $2.1 billion in trades," the magazine insists. That's "far more than the $50 million that changed hands with the Cboe on its first day of launch." Curiously, Mr. Hayes routinely offers he does not own any bitcoin.

Of note as well is our own Bitcoin.com CEO Roger Ver, 39. As is the case with fellow Lister, Mr. Wu, Mr. Ver is "an outspoken evangelist for Bitcoin Cash. The controversial fork," the magazine details, "of the Bitcoin network represents the 'big-block' version of the original Bitcoin blockchain, meaning [it's] designed to handle greater transaction throughput. Fluent in Japanese, Ver runs Bitcoin.com from Tokyo and remains the epicenter of a large cryptocurrency community there."

Read the rest of the Ledger 40 Under 40 List here.