Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list of 2021: Crypto Entrepreneurs who made it

Forbes today issued its new 30 Under 30 version for 2021. It’s the list of America’s most successful entrepreneurs born after 1990 which Forbes publishes annually.

The 30 Under 30 catalog is not about individuals under 30 years old only, but also about teams in 20 categories, ending with over 600 awardees. This year we have 10 Crypto and Blockchain entrepreneurs who are displayed strong in Finance and Venture Capital.

Here are 3 crypto entrepreneurs sharing what being on the list means to them.

Joey Krug, co-founder of Augur

Joey Krug is 25 and literally had no idea he was awarded. He didn't apply like his peers, but Forbes journalist Michael Del Castillo made a profile on Joey this summer. Krug then accidentally ran into his achievement while scrolling Twitter.

“It's cool; it's exciting, I guess,” said Krug. “But the actual fun part is the day-to-day of actually doing that sort of stuff… it's great to be part of it. But it's not that I would try to use it for personal gain or anything like that.”

Augur is a betting market platform that is built on the Ethereum blockchain. The company aims to lower the high fees that sometimes ruin all the deals. Besides, Krug is one of the Chief Investment Officers at Pantera Capital and is an advisor, investor, and developer for a number of other projects.

His next goal is to make changes in the finance and healthcare industries which he considers to be currently broken.

Flori Marquez, Co-founder of BlockFi

Flori Marquez`s parents escaped from Argentina in the 80s right at the time of severe hyperinflation, thus Flori, co-founder of BlockFi, takes the award from Forbes as proof that she has left a mark on America.

“It's recognition,” she said, “and publicity for our products.”

Marquez is 29 and is a co-founder of BlockFi since 2017. But a real change for the crypto world she made a year ago when her company became one of the first to give users interest in their BTC and ETH holdings.

When Flori saw the news the first thing she did was calling her mother Cecilia who is a Spanish teacher in Boston:

“And this is the most ‘mom’ move of all time. She congratulated me, but I could tell she was kind of trying to hang up. And then I think she thought she had hung up the phone, but she hadn’t and I could hear her say to her entire class: ‘Guys, my daughter just won!’”

Brian Tubergen, Co-founder of Coinlist

Being already 29 years old, Brian Tubergen, founder of the crypto ICO platform CoinList, got awarded by Forbes 30 under 30.

Last few years Tubergen was only witnessing his peers to have been listed while he was still unnoticed. His co-founder, Andy Bromberg, was awarded in 2016 for opening a political news analysis application called Sidewire. Two of Tubergen’s close friends also were listed. Nader Al-Naji, got awarded in 2019 for a stablecoin company that raised $133 million called Basis, and Alex Pack, co-founder of cryptocurrency VC fund Dragonfly Capital, got it last year.

“Certainly my friends outside the tech community seem to think it's one of the most awesome things in the world,” said Tubergen.

“We got to keep working,” he said. The award is “a distraction from what matters most, which is continuing to build this company and deliver value to our customers.”

CoinList is a fundraising platform for cryptocurrency companies where Tubergen may help to raise more talented entrepreneurs for Forbes 30 under 30 to list.