Social media is used by billions of people, and it has a big impact on how people view the world. It gives anyone anywhere the ability to follow pretty much anyone they wish (provided they have an online presence).

People who have a big audience in this day and age can easily cause a kind of a butterfly effect based on any statement they make — however outrageous the statement may be. Those are the people we like to call influencers. In that sense, the word “influencer” has become a vital part of market sentiment across all business segments.

Cryptocurrency is no different. A number of influencers shape the opinion of investors and traders.

Someone important in Korea may tweet something positive about crypto and immediately cause a spike in prices on the other side of the world.

Influencers are great advertisers even if that’s not their intention. They influence people’s opinions due to their authority, knowledge, position, or relationship with their audience.

The biggest crypto influencers

In the cryptocurrency space, many of these influencers are managers, leaders, or developers of major crypto-related businesses, bloggers, vloggers, creators, and so on.

They have established themselves as prominent figures and now their voices are heard by millions.

Here are seven of the crypto world’s biggest influencers.

Vitalik Buterin

He is a co-founder of Ethereum (ETH), the blockchain platform that acts as a world computer used for running smart contracts and decentralized applications (dApps). Vitalik also co-founded the popular Bitcoin Magazine, but his main preoccupation is working on upgrades to the Ethereum protocol. He is also very active on his Twitter account where he often shares his ideas and thoughts.

Prediction

He often refrains from making Bitcoin price predictions as he rather focuses on the development of the various blockchain protocols. However, in 2017 he did voice his belief that 90% of current ICO projects will eventually crash. In that sense, he was somewhat accurate in his assessment due to the subsequent crypto bear market that started in early 2018.

I officially predict a financial crisis some time between now and 2021.

Not because I have any special knowledge or even actually think that, but so that I can have a ~25% (or whatever) chance of later being publicly acclaimed as “a guru who predicted the last financial crisis.”

— Vitalik Non-giver of Ether (@VitalikButerin) October 10, 2018

Charlie Lee

“In the future, the price will reflect the success of cryptocurrencies.”

Lee is the creator of Litecoin (LTC) and the former director of engineering for Coinbase. In December 2017, Lee earned some notoriety and criticism in the crypto community because he sold almost all of his LTC holdings. He remains focused on a number of Bitcoin-specific projects.

Prediction

In May 2017, Lee confirmed in a Twitter conversation that it was he who predicted $50 per LTC in an online chat room. At the time, LTC was trading at $15, and it reached $50 about six weeks later, on 20 June 2017.

He was correct in his prediction, but he brought down a lot of hate onto himself when he sold his LTC stash later that year in December. In retrospect, it was a fantastic trader’s move because he sold at an all-time high, but many people saw it as a betrayal of trust in the technology.

When it comes to Bitcoin, he believes that it is still in its early stages of growth and that new highs are still to come.

Brian Armstrong

“One billion people will be in the crypto ecosystem in the next 5 years.”

The co-founder & CEO of Coinbase, Armstrong frequently appears in mainstream media as one of the biggest proponents of crypto adoption.

Prediction

He was asked on a number of occasions on where he sees the prices of cryptocurrencies in a decade. There are some reports from late 2017 of him anticipating that Bitcoin was heading towards $40,000 and $100,000 in 2018. In a recent interview with TechCrunch from September 2018, Armstrong projected that the crypto ecosystem will grow substantially.

He predicts that the number of people in the cryptocurrency world will to grow from the current 40 million to 1 billion in the next five years.

Roger Ver

“Bitcoin is cash for the world.”

He is an early investor in Bitcoin startups and a supporter of Bitcoin Cash (BCH), a hard fork of Bitcoin. Roger’s computer parts business, MemoryDealers, was one of the first online retailers to accept BTC payments, and he is now a regular speaker at Bitcoin events worldwide.

Prediction

In late 2017 he predicted that there was a pretty good chance of Bitcoin going beyond $10,000. It wasn’t really a Nostradamus-like prediction because the price was already beyond $9,000 at that point, but Roger has always been optimistic even before that. In mid-2018 he predicted that Bitcoin Cash will double its value by the end of the year, stating: “The economic path over Bitcoin Cash is what led to Bitcoin’s original success. If I wait for the rise in Bitcoin in 2011, I am expecting to double the value of Bitcoin Cash for the same reason.”

Andreas M. Antonopoulos

He is a blockchain expert, educator, and the bestselling author of Mastering Bitcoin and The Internet of Money, seminal books about Bitcoin and why it matters on a global scale. Andreas is also a public speaker and an expert witness in trials relating to the security and technical details of cryptocurrencies. He is generally seen as one of the most popular figures in the crypto community due to his openness to discuss the burning matters of this emerging technology.

Prediction

He isn’t fond of making price predictions because he is so dedicated to his pursuit of advancing the technology and helping people understand it. But he is almost religious in his belief that Bitcoin (or some other variant that is an improvement of the protocol) will find its way into every pore of our daily lives. One of his famous statements was: “in order to ban crypto, you’d have to ban or shut down the internet.”

The following quote is from one of his talks about the blockchain.

“What I can tell you without any uncertainty, is that the world of finance will forever be dominated, within less than two decades, by open, global, transnational, censorship-resistant, largely anonymous, privacy-protected payment networks based on the exact model of Bitcoin.”

Craig Wright

He is an Australian businessman and computer scientist. Controversially, he is rumored to be behind the pseudonym of Satoshi Nakamoto. Craig is the founder of Australian cryptocurrency company called DeMorgan Inc. He is also the Chief Scientist at nChain.

Prediction

Craig’s vision for the coming years is that billions of people will use Bitcoin SV.

In one of the latest interviews for the CCN, Wright claimed that Bitcoin SV, the latest fork of the Bitcoin Cash, will process 1TB blocks in two years. 

John David McAfee

“Bitcoin will continue to grow and the U.S. dollar and other fiat currencies will devalue.”

He is a British-American computer programmer and known as a serial entrepreneur. He is the founder of the widely known McAfee Associates, a software company that created the first antivirus in the world.

Predictions

McAfee became famous (or notorious) in the crypto community when he claimed, back in July 2017, that he will “eat his own dick on national television if Bitcoin doesn’t reach $500.000 by 2020”. In July 2017 he tweeted “I have a doctorate in point-set-topology. It predicts Bitcoin at 2 Mio USD in 3 years.”

When I predicted Bitcoin at $500,000 by the end of 2020, it used a model that predicted $5,000 at the end of 2017. BTC has accelerated much faster than my model assumptions. I now predict Bircoin at $1 million by the end of 2020. I will still eat my dick if wrong. pic.twitter.com/WVx3E71nyD

— John McAfee (@officialmcafee) November 29, 2017

Conclusion

Crypto influencers may have interesting opinions and thoughts about the technology, but their price predictions should never be taken as Gospel. Even the brightest of minds cannot accurately predict the future.

As such, it is important to reiterate the old wisdom of always doing your own research and coming to your own conclusions.

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PS: Check out this infographic about the richest people in the crypto world.

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Disclaimer: Our blog posts do not represent an investment advice and nothing in them should be construed as investment advice. Blogs merely provide information and education for the interested public.