On Thursday afternoon, Twitter announced that it would be rolling out iOS support for nonfungible token, or NFT, hexagonal avatars. As of now, only paid subscribers of Twitter Blue using iOS, which costs $2.99 per month, can access the feature. According to a tutorial video, users can connect their wallet, including Coinbase Wallet, Rainbow, MetaMask, Trust Wallet, Argent, or Ledger Live, and set it as their profile pic, with the process taking a few seconds. Users can also learn more about each other's NFT avatars, such as their owners, creators, description of the series, as well as verification of authenticity …

Some call him the Bill Gates of the crypto industry, but I personally think he is not just pushing forward our industry but transforming deeply rooted economic and social culture. He fills concert halls talking about the importance of decentralization and the freedom of money. He finds time to organize dinners for journalists, introducing them to the empire he built before briskly leaving for another meeting with his team. He is idolized by his colleagues, respected by his competitors, and radiates positive energy when you meet him. In the 2019 bear market, he managed to keep Binance’s position as one …

David Marcus was born in France, grew up in Paris and Geneva, and had shown interest in tech from his early years. At 23, he founded his first company — internet provider GTN — and later sold it. Related: Who Is David Marcus: Bitcoin Believer Turned Facebook Libra Co-Creator Marcus is currently the head of Calibra, a subsidiary of Facebook and the official wallet provider for the Libra cryptocurrency. He is a former head of messaging products at Facebook and was a board member of Coinbase in 2018. Prior to that, Marcus served as the president at PayPal after the …

Since the 2017 mania, every year in the crypto and blockchain space has been increasingly eventful. 2019 was no exception: Along with Facebook’s Libra project and China’s digital yuan endeavors, Intercontinental Exchange’s digital assets platform Bakkt was finally launched. Its CEO, Kelly Loeffler, ensured a smooth start for the exchange, then swiftly left her business to pursue a political career by the end of the year. She now represents the state of Georgia in the United States Senate, and as one of the most influential people affiliated with the crypto industry, she could potentially pave the way for Bitcoin and …

2019 was one hell of a year for Pavel Durov. The serial entrepreneur announced and made moves to release the Telegram Open Network, or TON — the blockchain associated with his Telegram messaging app. The idea of TON is to allow users to go beyond simply sending messages and emojis to each other, by using the app’s underlying infrastructure to transact a cryptocurrency called Gram in a completely trustless and secure manner. But the United States Securities and Exchange Commission had other plans for the launch of Telegram’s new blockchain product, filing an emergency restraining order in October in an …

Cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology were meant to liberate the oppressed, bank the unbanked and democratize countries with opaque authoritarian governments. Whether or not the crypto sector has actually achieved these goals remains a topic of debate, but it is fair to say that a surprising number of crypto startups, initial coin offerings and blockchain companies have either missed the mark or proven to be outright scams. But Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has been unassailable in his mission to build the “World Computer.” Since piecing together a revolutionary white paper in 2013, the soft-spoken genius behind the Ethereum project and Ether …

At the helm of Coinbase since founding it with Fred Ehrsam in 2012, Brian Armstrong has weathered rough storms of compliance law to operate the largest crypto exchange active in the United States. Both Coinbase’s stature within the industry and Armstrong’s extracurricular activities moving adoption and regulation forward — particularly within the U.S. — have ensured his position in Cointelegraph’s top 10. Major changes at Coinbase in 2019 set the stage for 2020 As the exchange is not publicly traded, evaluating it is tricky. At the end of October 2018, Coinbase announced a massive $300 million funding round that put …

Canadian entrepreneur and software engineer Joseph Lubin helped spearhead the development of the open-source smart contract blockchain platform that came to be known as Ethereum. Lubin has long believed that this technology could serve “as an organizing principle for earth, the world, the planet.” As one of the wealthiest and most influential public figures in the industry, Lubin founded ConsenSys, a company that develops Ethereum-based products and tools to increase adoption of Ethereum applications around the world, taking the view that the decentralized future is already here — just unevenly distributed. Early life and career Joe Lubin was born in …

After more than a decade of Bitcoin’s existence, Satoshi Nakamoto, author of Bitcoin’s white paper back in 2008, remains the most mysterious person within the crypto community. Despite who he, she or they might be, Satoshi’s brainchild — the first decentralized currency — is still thriving, and it has changed the world as we knew it. The past 10 years were not a straight path: We have been witness to a lot of criticism of crypto, which was claimed to be “the mother and father of all bubbles”; Bitcoin’s record price hitting around $20,000 per coin and the subsequent collapse …

Earlier this year, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse responded to controversy surrounding XRP movements by saying that Ripple cannot control the price of its associated token any more than Bitcoin (BTC) whales control the price of the seminal cryptocurrency. Regarding Ripple’s relationship with XRP, he said, “In the XRP community, Ripple is the largest owner, and the point I have made is we’re the most interested party in the success of the XRP ecosystem.” He added that Ripple would never dump its XRP holdings into the market, as doing so is not in the firm’s best interests. Since taking the helm …

Born in China’s Qinghai Province, 29-year-old Justin Sun is the founder and CEO of Tron, one of the largest blockchain networks in the world. Sun, who holds a master’s degree in East Asian studies from the University of Pennsylvania and a bachelor of arts in history from Peking University, launched the Tron Foundation in Singapore in September 2017. Later that year, Tron released its open-source protocol, followed by its mainnet launch in May 2018. Tron’s cryptocurrency, Tronix (TRX), currently ranks as the 14th-highest-performing cryptocurrency in the world. According to the Tron website, TRX is capable of handling 2,000 transactions per …

David Marcus, the man spearheading Facebook’s blockchain effort, has gotten a tremendous amount of spotlight lately. The rapid emergence of Libra has dominated the coverage of other crypto-related developments, as it became apparent that the social media giant’s inroad into the realm of digital assets will have most serious consequences for both the blockchain sector and the global financial system in general. While previously the crypto industry has hardly ever had one key spokesperson — which is perhaps a natural and welcome state of affairs for a domain wherein decentralization is the most cherished of values — Libra’s newfound position …