Best Startup
At Best Startup UK we track over 130,000 UK startups and over 500,000 people who hold key positions in these companies. We use this directory of startups to highlight top employees, founders and board members we think deserve more appreciation than they are currently getting.
This list showcases the top United Kingdom based CEO’ operating in the Bitcoin space. If you think a CEO’ is missing from this list, feel free to contact our editor on editor@beststartup.co.uk.
The individuals on this list have been included because of exceptional performance in one of the following categories:
- Innovation – Operating as a key part in an extremely innovative business or startup.
- Growth – Operating as a key figure in the growth and upscale of a market leading business or startup.
- Management – Showing exceptional management skills.
- Societal impact – Putting their business on the map for their positive societal or environmental impact.
Our Data – We source our data from OSINT (open source intelligence) and public directories such as Companies House UK, Crunchbase, SemRush and many more. The data from these sources should be treated with a degree of caution and verified yourself.
Rune Christensen
Founder & CEO of MakerDAO
Rune Christensen is Chief Executive Officer and Cofounder of MakerDAO. MakerDAO issues Dai, the world’s first stablecoin on the Ethereum blockchain, that eliminates volatility through a system of smart contracts designed to respond to market dynamics. Since 2015, Christensen has focused on establishing the vision and organizational structure of the Maker Decentralized Autonomous Organization and the economic foundations of the Dai stable digital currency. Previously, he served as co-founder of Try China, a company providing international recruiting. He studied Biochemistry at the University of Copenhagen and studied International Business at the Copenhagen Business School.
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About MakerDAO: Maker is a decentralized autonomous organization on the Ethereum blockchain.
Kumar Gaurav
Founder and CEO of Cashaa
Kumar is the Founder & CEO of Cashaa, a UK based neo-bank providing businesses access to crucial banking infrastructure. Cashaa is a community of more than 250 crypto businesses including the industry leaders making it the biggest crypto-friendly banking platform. Kumar started his career as an engineer by building navigation systems for Ferrari before pivoting into the FinTech space in 2014 to begin working on blockchain-powered innovations. In recognition of his pioneering work on blockchain technology, he was awarded extraordinary (O-1) status by the United States government in 2017 and got listed among the Top 100 Most Influential People in Blockchain in 2016-2018 by Rise global. As a thought leader in the Fintech space, he has been invited to numerous global forums, including Money 2020, TechCrunch Disrupt, the European Parliament and Ivy League universities. In 2017, he was also nominated among the ‘World’s Top 50 Innovators from the industries of the future in the UK.
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About Cashaa: Next Generation Banking Platform
Mark Lamb
Co-Founder and CEO of CoinFLEX
Mark is CEO of CoinFLEX and a longtime advocate for physically delivered futures over cash settlement as a way to prevent manipulation. Mark’s vision for crypto derivatives is to grow the industry beyond speculation into real commercial use for lending, borrowing, hedging and payments. Mark Lamb has been in bitcoin since 2012 and previously co-founded Coinfloor, the UK’s first cryptocurrency exchange back in 2013.
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About CoinFLEX: CoinFLEX is the leading crypto derivatives exchange and yield platform.
Mark Hipperson
Founder and CEO of Ziglu
Mark has founded a UK retail bank and two financial technology businesses. He is a commentator and speaker on banking, FinTech, crypto, technology, PSD2 and open banking. Mark is the founder and CEO of Ziglu, the modern challenger. Previously, he founded Starling Bank where he was responsible for helping to secure the UK banking licence with regulators and obtaining the initial funding the Bank achieved in December 2015. He was also responsible for the design, build, implementation and support of the Bank’s IT platform, apps and infrastructure. He started his career at Barclays where he was Head of Technology.
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About Ziglu: Ziglu provides a digital platform that enables customers to exchange fiat currency for cryptocurrency.
Nejc Kodric
Co-Founder & CEO of Bitstamp
Nejc Kodric Since starting out in 2011 with little more than some basic computer equipment, €1,000 and a love of technology, Nejc has been instrumental in developing Bitstamp into one of the most trusted and highest volume bitcoin exchanges in the world. With offices in Luxembourg, London and New York, Bitstamp continues to grow from strength to strength, serving its customers’ bitcoin trading requirements. Among his many achievements as chief executive officer, Nejc spearheaded the approach to become the first fully licensed virtual currency exchange in EU, which was granted in 2016, setting the benchmark for the Bitcoin industry’s continued consolidation and strength. With a keen interest in promoting economic empowerment and technology, Nejc has spoken at several conferences including Techcrunch, Bitcoin Foundation, MoneyConf, Deloitte Conference: Future Challenges, ICT Spring Europe and FundForum International, and was awarded Best Virtual Currency Start-up at The Europas in June 2014. Nejc was born in Slovenia, where he studied Organization and Management of Information Systems and Economics, and currently splits his time between his home country and Luxembourg. Specialities: Bitcoin, blockchain, trading, virtual currencies, economic empowerment, education, science and technology
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About Bitstamp: Bitstamp allows companies and individuals from all around the world to buy and sell bitcoin, litecoin, ethereum, ripple, and bitcoin cash.
Hossein Kakavand
Founder and CEO of Luther Systems
Hossein is an entrepreneur with a diverse background in the enterprise technology industry. He did his Ph.D at Stanford in Information Systems and Statistics, and subsequently Stanford Business School. He was a fund manager at Soliton Capital, a quantitative hedge fund. He was at Funding Circle (LON: FCH), a leading Fintech platform focused on Peer to Peer (P2P) financing. He has also advised startups, with highly successful exits including, a distributed computation platform for automation of portfolio risk modelling, a specialized platform for large scale statistical computation, and a big data analytics recommendation engine.
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About Luther Systems: Luther Systems streamlines enterprise processes leveraging blockchain technology.
Subhranil Banerjee
CEO & Founder of YOcoin
Subhranil Banejree is a qualified, highly sought after expert in financial and investment strategy. He understands the structure of the commercial world and is ambitious to revolutionise the industry. Subhranil Banerjee has been exploring the best crypto currencies to achieve information and value communication within different decentralized ledger systems for years to solve real world problems. He is also the host of a television show called “Dollars with Sense”, educating people about current financial and legal matters. Indeed, his entrepreneurship and vision will lead Yocoin to another level.
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About YOcoin: YoCoin is a decentralized, peer-to-peer digital currency that enables you to easily send money online.
Tristan D’Agosta
Founder/CEO of Poloniex
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About Poloniex: Poloniex is a cryptocurrency exchange with advanced trading features.
Buchi Okoro
CEO and founder of Quidax
Buchi is the CEO and Co founder of Quidax, one of the world’s simplest digital assets exchange that enables users on ramp and off ramp from digital assets in a seamless way.
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About Quidax: Quidax is a digital assets exchange that allows users seamlessly buy and sell cryptocurrency with their local currency.
Vytautas Karalevicius
CEO & Co-Founder of SpectroCoin
Serial fintech enterpreneur, founder of SpectroCoin (all in one solution for cryptocurrency) and Bankera (banking for the blockchain era) companies.
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About Bankera, SpectroCoin, UAB Pervesk: All in one solution for cryptocurrencies
Giacomo Bugini
CEO of BTCMiner Cloud EU
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About BTCMiner Cloud EU: BTCMiner is Bitcoin miner with fully automatic process
DANIAL DAYCHOPAN
CEO & Founder of Plutus
A fintech entrepreneur within the payments industry. His vision is to create the next generation payment system and has been active in the groundbreaking blockchain and bitcoin ecosystem since 2013.
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About Plutus: Plutus combines the ease of modern banking with access to crypto currencies.
Jez San
CEO & founder of FunFair Technologies
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About FunFair Technologies, Ninja Theory: FunFair provides blockchain powered solutions to the online gaming industry.
Hammad Kayani
CEO, Founder of BitFutr
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About BitFutr: BitFutr is the home of your Crypto. The BitFutr app helps you spend your crypto, get up to 8% in saving and invest your crypto 24/7.
Charles Hayter
CEO and Co-Founder of CryptoCompare.com
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About CryptoCompare.com: We bring you all the data in the world of cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin and Blockchain in an easily digestible value added format.
James Smith
CEO & Co-Founder of Elliptic
James sets and communicates the strategy to lead Elliptic to success. James has a Computer Science PhD from the University of Oxford in Natural Language Processing, as well as a Computer Science MPhil and BA from the University of Cambridge.
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About Elliptic, Seedcamp: Elliptic makes cryptocurrency transaction activity more transparent and accountable.
Dmitry Gunyashov
Co-Founder & CEO of Cryptopay
Dmitry is a long-term bitcoin supporter and has been involved with the bitcoin community for more than 3 years. Moreover, he has an extensive experience in e-commerce and payment systems.
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About Cryptopay, LTC.Miner: Cryptopay is a digital currency firms, offering crypto-wallets, debit cards, B2B payments, & investments.
Obi Nwosu
Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder of Coinfloor
Obi leads commercial strategy and our team of finance and cryptocurrency experts. Since 2014, Coinfloor’s market share has grown over 5 times and now handles the majority of GBP exchange volume. Previously, Obi was Founder and CEO of Supalocal and held senior roles at ebookers.com and WeeWorld, overseeing the development of a virtual currency, used by 30 million users.
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About Coinfloor: Coinfloor is an established group of cryptocurrency exchanges for institutional or sophisticated investors and traders.
Emmanuel Goh
CEO of skew
Emmanuel Goh is a co-founder and CEO of skew.
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About skew: skew is a platform that builds cutting-edge financial infrastructure for the digital assets space.
Eduardo Martínez Garcia
Chief Executive Officer of GoMadrid
Eduardo is Co-Founder of GENIAC. In addition, Eduardo is joint managing director of Olivo, a company focused on creating innovative businesses, with Michael Galvin. He is also a non-Executive Director of PetroCorner. Eduardo and Michael have worked together for many years since they met at Accenture and it is the challenges they faced in starting up businesses that led to the creation of GENIAC. The frustrations they experienced in managing the day-to-day essential business services such as contracts, accounts, compliance issues and insurance made them want to solve this issue with GENIAC. Earlier in his career, Eduardo spent many years in various senior positions at management consultancy, Accenture. He worked across multiple industries and in the UK, US, Spain, India, East Asia and Latin America giving him a truly global approach to business. Eduardo was born and educated in Madrid and holds an MBA from IE Business School and an MSc in IT Engineering with a major in Business Administration and Finance. He has lived in London for more than 10 years.
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About GoMadrid, Toqio: GoMadrid is a technological ecosystem and innovation hub focused on venture building projects in fintech and blockchain areas.
Joe Lee
Chief Executive Officer of Magnr
Founder of Btc.sx
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About Magnr: The world’s most trusted Bitcoin Bank
Dean Nolan
CEO of BetKing
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About BetKing: BetKing is the popular online cryptocurrency casino.
Benjamin Gedeon
CEO and Founder of MatchPlace Limited
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About MatchPlace Limited: New generation Fintech platform. Integrating Financial Services solutions, bridging the gap between Financial Institutions and SMEs
Helen Disney
CEO and Founder of Unblocked Events
Helen Disney is the CEO and Founder of Unblocked, a hub for Blockchain events, education and information. She was listed in Innovate Finance’s 2016 Women in Fintech Powerlist and has been referred to by Barclays as a “Blockchain guru”. She is co-chair of the British Blockchain Association’s committee for Policy, Governance and Public Good, sits on the Advisory Board of the Distributed Ledger Foundation, and is also a member of techUK’s DLT working group. In March, she gave evidence to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Blockchain and she was recently listed in BCB Engage’s Women to Watch in Crypto and Blockchain. Unblocked Events makes Blockchain technology accessible for a non-technical audience, allowing business leaders, philanthropists, investors and those in public life to harness the potential of Distributed systems and understand the emerging trends surrounding Blockchain. Previously, Helen set up Blockchain Intelligence, a global platform for news, networking and conferences about Blockchain and Distributed Ledgers and worked on outreach at the Bitcoin Foundation, leading/organising a programme of strategic events to communicate the innovative potential of Bitcoin and Blockchain technology to innovators, entrepreneurs, policymakers and thought leaders. Bitcoin2014, held in Amsterdam was the first major flagship 3-day event to launch the concept of cryptocurrency into the mainstream of European debate.
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About Unblocked Events: Unblocked Events makes blockchain technology accessible for a non-technical business audience.
Nic Niedermowwe
Co-founder & CEO of Prime Factor Capital
Nic Niedermowwe is the co-founder and CEO of Prime Factor Capital.
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About Prime Factor Capital: Prime Factor Capital is a crypto asset manager.
Adam Wilson
CEO of Splash Technologies
After 8 years in the industry at the likes of 888 & Initial Rewards, in 2015 Adam co-founded Bookee, the award winning sports betting app. Adam has a passion for product and spends most of his life with his eyes glued to his phone.
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About Bookee, Splash Technologies: Splash brings cryptocurrency into everyday life, for everyday transactions, for everyone.
Areseny Zarechnev
Co-Founder & CEO of Mothership
Arseny Zarechnev Prior to founding Mothership, Arseny co-founded Sabaka, a DevOps, mobile and web consultancy. He is a full stack developer, entrepreneur and solution architect and has worked at leading technology companies including Atlassian, Enki, and Ostrovok. He is a digital nomad, Estonian e-Resident and remote advocate. Arseny studied Business Administration at the Russian University of Economics.
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About Mothership: Mothership A state-of-the-art digital asset exchange, EU token marketplace and wallet with powerful security features.
Mantas Malukas
Founder & CEO of Dapp Life
Mantas Malukas is an entrepreneur, journalist & blogger. As an entrepreneur his main focus is in the development of high level concepts mainly in the editorial news projects and journalism.
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About Dapp Life: Dapp Life is an online platform that features cryptocurrency news, crypto app reviews and incisive commentary on blockchain and dApps.
Alexander Peterman
CEO & Co-founder of Bpay.io
Internet entrepreneur, initiator of a number of successful projects in the niches of online marketing and mobile commerce. The last project attained $10 million of annual return without a single dollar of loan capital.
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About Bpay.io: Bpay.io is a payment processing company for cryptocurrency and blockchain payments.
