Top 50 Women Leading the Crypto &
Blockchain Revolution

Since shepherding Franklin Templeton’s spot-BTC ETF EZBC to a top-five AUM slot, Johnson has blurred the old line between Wall Street and on-chain finance. Her tokenised U.S-Treasury fund now settles on Polygon + Stellar, giving mid-tier banks real-time sweep accounts and freeing US$1 B of intraday liquidity. 2025 also saw her digital-assets council ink a joint-custody MoU with Coinbase; the custody rails underpin Franklin’s new Asia-Pacific Bitcoin and Ether funds approved under Hong Kong’s SFC rules. Behind the scenes, Johnson’s push for GAAP guidance on staking revenue helped FASB Issue 633—crucial for U.S. corporates weighing ETH. With US$4.1 B net ETF inflows YTD and a Fortune-500 perch, she remains the most powerful bridge-builder in crypto.

Lightning Labs’ CEO shipped LND v0.19 (async payments, 40 % throughput gain) and turned “Taproot Assets” from dev-net toy into live main-net rails; within three months, Tether had provisioned 100 M USDT of liquidity. Stark also closed an US$80 M Series C to harden El Salvador remittance corridors and announced “light-clients-as-a-service,” letting any Android wallet run Lightning over cellular-only connections. With 5,800 nodes now on the new release, Lightning’s payment layer finally feels production-ready—and Stark’s advocacy keeps Bitcoin in the global-payments conversation.

Breitman’s 2025 masterstroke is Etherlink, Tezos’ enshrined optimistic roll-up that settles every 30 s and lifts throughput to 200 TPS. Two EU CBDC prototypes plus Ubisoft’s Quartz-powered in-game assets already run on Etherlink, while Tezos’ six-month upgrade cadence (Oxford, Paris, Quito) has become the gold-standard for on-chain governance. Gas ниже ₵1 keeps devs flocking, and Breitman’s public fights for self-amending L1s influence the modular-blockchain debate far beyond the XTZ ecosystem.

CoinShares’ CSO turned a rocky market into opportunity, steering delta-neutral ETF strategies that left Q1 2025 earnings US$11.9 M in the black. Demirors’ weekly CoinSharesTV macro brief (60 k pros) shapes MiCA-driven narratives, and her lobbying blitz ahead of Europe’s spot-BTC ETF launch framed industry talking-points for Brussels. Few voices move EU regulators and retail alike with equal credibility—Demirors remains one of them.

Wyoming’s crypto-bank champion lost Custodia’s Fed master-account suit but won clarity: district-court dicta now say the Fed may grant SPDIs access. Long parlayed that into a state-level pilot—Custodia’s Dollar Digital Account—which crossed US$500 M deposits by letting energy companies hedge BTC-denominated revenues 24/7. Her white-papers on Basel capital treatment keep pressure on D.C. while providing a template for state-chartered crypto banking.

Bitget’s CEO pushed the exchange into derivatives big leagues: institutionals now drive 80 % of spot volume, proof-of-reserves audits show 1.25× collateral, and PoolX, Bitget’s regulated staking arm, onboarded UBS Asset Management. A US$10 M Women-in-Web3 grant initiative and Bitget’s SAFU expansion to US$500 M reinforce Chen’s dual identity as operator and ecosystem benefactor.

Under Dixon, the Stellar Dev Foundation shipped Soroban smart-contracts to main-net, attracting MoneyGram settlements and two African CBDC pilots. Her negotiation with USAID turned Stellar rails into real-time disbursement pipes for Ukraine aid, an on-chain humanitarian first. Active accounts are up 88 % YoY, validating Stellar’s pivot from remittances to programmable payments.

The a16z General Partner closed Crypto Fund IV (US$4.5 B) in March—no small feat amid a VC winter. Her restaking-middleware, ZK-AI, and DePIN theses now shape Sand-Hill allocation, while portfolio wins (EigenLayer, Wayfinder, Light-Link) showcase her eye for infra bets that accrue “crypto toll-booth” value. Simpson’s LP memos are required reading for pension funds weighing their first digital-asset tickets.

MIT-DCI’s director hasn’t let the U.S. digital-dollar backlash slow her down. In 2025 she open-sourced MiniMint, a privacy-preserving CBDC sandbox already co-piloted by the ECB and the Monetary Authority of Singapore. Narula’s February Senate testimony reframed CBDCs as opt-in, bearer-asset cash—arguments echoed in EU and Japan draft bills even as the U.S. remains stalled.

The Defiant crossed 500 k subscribers before BanklessHQ bought a strategic stake; Russo now serves as Editor-at-Large while hosting the daily gm Defiers pod. Her 2025 scoops—like CZ’s “dark-pools” revival plan—rocked DEX governance markets overnight. A forthcoming sequel to The Infinite Machine keeps “crypto’s historian” firmly in the public-intellectual role.

Post-CZ, Binance’s co-founder rebranded herself Chief Customer Officer and executed a user-trust makeover: SAFU fund to US$2.5 B, Merkle-tree liabilities for 180 assets, and a fiat-proof-of-reserves dashboard audited quarterly. Yi’s brand campaigns kept Binance’s global retail share above 49 % despite regulatory headwinds.

21Shares’ co-founder oversees US$14 B AUM across 40 ETPs; in June her ARK-21Shares BTC fund executes a 3-for-1 split to court Robinhood-size tickets. Snyder also launched Europe’s first Ether-staking ETP compliant with MiCA. Her explainers on ETF plumbing make her the media’s no-nonsense oracle on regulated crypto exposure.

AMD’s CEO unveiled the MI350 accelerator, a chip already sampled by mining pools for ZK-proof generation—marrying GPU throughput with FPGA-grade flexibility. By bundling cryptography-friendly hardware into mainstream AI roadmaps, Su positions AMD as the stealth infrastructure player for scalable on-chain compute.

Signal’s president rolled out Payments 2.0, a self-custodial wallet on an Axolotl-fork chain, letting 40 M users send end-to-end-encrypted stablecoins. Whittaker’s policy crusades against back-doors keep encryption a Brussels priority and frame AI-surveillance debates worldwide.

Cathie Wood is the charismatic founder and CIO of ARK Invest, famous for high-conviction bets on Tesla, gene editing, and Bitcoin. ARK bought its first BTC at $250 in 2015 and filed, alongside 21Shares, the first U.S. spot-Bitcoin ETF application rejected in 2021. Wood persisted, and the ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF finally launched in January 2024, climbing to $18 billion AUM by mid-2025. She next pivoted to Ether, filing the earliest spot-ETH ETF—now widely expected for Q4 2025 approval. Wood broadcasts weekly macro streams that link blockchain diffusion curves to Wright’s Law of cost declines, and her open-source valuation models are downloaded by 70,000 CFA charter-holders. She funds ARK Venture Fellows, placing underrepresented MBAs into token-native start-ups, and sponsors Catholic Charities’ BTC endowment pilot.

From Celsius leaks to inside audio with SBF, Fong’s YouTube and X feeds have become crypto’s investigative ticker-tape (150 k YT subs; 340 k X followers). Her daily exposés pressured the Celsius estate into transparent claw-back schedules, proving indy journalists can shape multi-billion-dollar bankruptcies.

Polygon Labs’ Chief Legal & Policy Officer co-architected the AggLayer compliance kit and delivered House testimony that now underpins MiCA technical standards. Rettig also co-chairs the Crypto Council’s AML task force, making her Capitol Hill’s most-quoted DeFi lawyer.

Through DappCamp, Kasireddy trained 1,200 devs since 2024; Cohort 7 was 45 % female. Her blogs demystify roll-ups and restaking for 120 k newsletter readers, and her fertility-health startup Ferta proves founders can straddle Web3 and real-world biotech.

Joyce Kim, a Harvard Law alumna and former media start-up founder, co-created Stellar with Jed McCaleb in 2014 to facilitate low-cost remittances. She directed Stellar Development Foundation’s inclusion strategy, piloting United Nations cash-aid programs that paid Syrian refugees in Stellar USDC redeemable at Lebanese grocers. Kim left the foundation in 2019 but remains on its board, focusing on policy; she was appointed to the IMF’s 2025 advisory panel on cross-border CBDC interoperability. Kim mentors female founders via SparkLabs Korea and writes extensively on human-rights tech.

Electric Capital’s GP authored the 2025 Developer Report—the industry’s Bible on open-source metrics. Her data showing Asia overtaking North America in active devs (23 % YoY growth) quelled “crypto-is-dead” takes and informed VC allocation eastward.

CoinDesk’s Exec-Editor for Global Macro steered coverage of the U.S. digital-dollar ban and BRICS settlement rails, shaping Beltway narratives. Parker’s long-reads on Asia’s crypto renaissance balance the Western regulatory doom-scroll.

Tina previously led the operational teams at Coinbase and was focused on scaling the support and IT teams to manage customer demand. Prior to Coinbase, Tina was also VP of Operations and User Services at Twitter. Additionally, Tina spent eight years at IBM helping companies build and scale their operations.

Her Coin Stories podcast hit 10 M downloads, and Brunell joined Semler Scientific’s board to guide its BTC-treasury strategy. Onstage moderation at Bitcoin 2025 keeps her the go-to voice for mainstream Bitcoin education.

Delta Blockchain Fund’s founder closed Fund II (US$250 M) with an ESG-AI tilt and launched Delta Scholars fellowships in Nairobi/Bangalore. Early seed hits (Mantle, Worldcoin infra) returned 5×, cementing her reputation for spotting infra plays.

The former Crypto Council for Innovation CEO led a 12-person delegation ahead of the FIT21 vote, opened Brasília & Canberra offices, and remains crypto’s point-person on bipartisan staking policy.

A Wall-Street-trained deal-maker, Ta pivoted from CoinLinked to become co-founder & chair of HODL Assets, the NFT-infra firm that now mints >45 % of all BRC-20 ordinals on Bitcoin. 2025 saw her close an eight-figure strategic round that brought in OKX Ventures and Avalanche Blizzard; a concurrent token-buy-back pushed HODL’s FDV past US$450 m. She launched Women Who HODL, a mentoring DAO that has matched 600 female founders with angel capital since January. Ta’s frank X threads about Asian-American representation in crypto rack up seven-figure impressions, and her “On-Chain Merch” pilot lets NFT owners redeem physical drops at New York Fashion Week. As both operator and narrative shaper, Ta earns the #26 slot.

UNESCO’s Assistant Director-General for Social & Human Sciences led the 3rd Global Forum on AI Ethics (Bangkok, Jun 2025), where 42 governments signed the Bangkok Communiqué pledging “algorithmic dignity” for blockchain-AI systems. Ramos has steered UNESCO’s AI-Ethics Recommendation into domestic law in seven G20 nations, a leap from two a year ago. Working groups she convened published model rules for zero-knowledge attestations—a blueprint regulators now cite in DeFi AML guidance. Her ability to turn lofty principles into concrete policy keeps her crypto-adjacent influence soaring.

As Chair of ESMA, Ross is MiCA’s chief traffic-cop. In 2025 the agency released its final technical standards—1 200 pages covering reserve-asset audits, DeFi liquidity warnings, and a “crypto suitability” test for retail. Ross personally fronted ESMA’s press blitz, warning platforms they have till 30 Dec 2025 to comply. Her office also issued “fast-track” guidelines letting ETP issuers passport across the EU with a single filing—pressure that nudged Coinbase and Bitpanda into Frankfurt listings. Ross is the linchpin turning MiCA text into day-to-day rule-books.

The MIT CSAIL director bagged the 2025 IEEE Edison Medal for robotics, but her crypto footprint comes via Liquid AI, a research consortium she co-chairs that uses programmable ZK-proofs to let LLMs run on encrypted patient data. Liquid AI’s first hospital pilot (Mass General) logs 7 000 privacy-safe queries daily, settling attestations on Ethereum. Rus’ lab also released an open-source “zkML” toolkit in April—GitHub stars jumped from 0 → 4 000 in six weeks. By bridging AI, privacy tech and blockchain, she shapes the stack that Web3 devs will use next decade.

Neuralink’s operations czar became a tabloid fixture after welcoming her fourth child with Elon Musk, yet 2025’s real headline is her Neuralink IP-Under-Glass framework—a tokenized rights system for neuro-data that anchors licensing to a Cosmos SDK chain. The pilot lets academic labs stream anonymized brain-signal datasets while embedding rev-share logic in the token. Zilis also joined a White-House task force on AI-safety funding and testified on “open-source bio-AI.” Despite media noise, she keeps shipping tech that could make medical data an on-chain asset class.

Co-CIO of Galaxy Digital Trading since late-2024, Zeng chairs the firm’s new APAC Liquidity Hub—a desk that now clears US$700 m daily in BTC & ETH perps for Asian banks. She spearheaded Galaxy’s first DeFi options product, delta-one ETH stakes hedged with Lido stETH. Off-desk, Zeng’s #CodeGirlsChina initiative funded 20 Solidity bootcamps in 10 provinces, putting 2 000 women through dev training. Her mix of institution-scale capital markets expertise and grassroots talent-building secures #31.

Widely known in the crypto ecosystem as ‘Cryptomama’, Chisom is a passionate and dedicated Key Opinion Leader (KOL), DeFi researcher, and blockchain educator. With a multidisciplinary background in Medical Laboratory Science and Environmental Technology, she brings a unique, research-driven approach to demystifying blockchain, cryptocurrency, and DeFi. Over the years, she has played an integral role in the growth and visibility of numerous Web3 projects, acting as both a strategic content creator and community educator. From promoting projects through engaging content and campaigns to conducting market research and facilitating user education, Chisom consistently bridges the gap between innovative blockchain solutions and the global community.

A former Vega Protocol BD lead, Simmonds became Managing Executive of Walrus Foundation, the decentralized-storage nonprofit whose node count jumped from 400 to 1 100 in 2025. She closed anchor deals with Unchained Crypto and Decrypt to store 7 Pb of archival media on-chain, paid in WAL token. Her “Data Equity Fund” funnels 5 % inflation to under-resourced newsrooms, making Walrus the first storage DAO with a public-interest charter.

As a member of the G20, Christine Lagarde was involved in the Group’s management of financial crises, helping to foster international policies related to financial supervision and regulation which also included crypocurrencies. As Chair of the G20 when France took over its presidency for the year 2011, she launched a wide-ranging work agenda on the reform of the international monetary system. In 2018, Christine Lagarde was ranked the third most influential woman in the world by Forbes magazine. She has often been named by TIME magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Uwaje, ex-SWIFT blockchain lead, co-founded MANSA to route African FX flows through USDC rails. February’s Tether-led US$10 m seed funds MANSA’s LatAm expansion; its liquidity network now settles US$60 m monthly, shrinking remittance fees by 60 %. Uwaje’s push to whitelist naira-pegged MN₦S stablecoin under Nigeria’s sandbox could set a continental template.

The DeepMind principal scientist brought data-viz flair to cryptography by co-authoring ProofScope, an open-source interface that turns raw ZK-proofs into interactive visual maps. ProofScope is already integrated into Polygon’s Plonky2 explorer, helping devs debug circuits faster. Viégas also chairs DeepMind’s “AI-for-Impact” grants; the 2025 cohort funds two blockchain-verified climate-data pilots.

Spotify’s Regional Head of Podcasts launched “Token-Tiers,” letting creators gate bonus episodes behind NFT passes. Early-access data show 180 k wallets linked to Spotify IDs. She’s partnered with Base to mint gas-efficient ERC-6551 podcast membership tokens, and a June pilot with The Daily hit US$1 m in one week.

Google Cloud’s Web3 director delivered “Assured Sequencer,” a managed OP-Stack rollup service with SOC2 reports—already used by CME Group’s tokenised Treasury pilot. Cloud’s Web3 ARR crossed US$350 m; Bolec’s keynote at Consensus Asia teased MPC key-custody baked into Google IAM.

Founder of Women in DeFi, Idahosa scaled her mentorship DAO from 300 to 1 800 members in 2025, pairing African undergrads with DeFi startups for paid externships. Her “DeFi Literacy” MOOC, co-produced with Binance Academy, has 50 k graduates.

The ex-asset-allocation CIO now co-heads Rosetta Analytics, whose tokenised SMA platform hit US$2 bn AUM. Bonafede piloted ONDO-backed U.S. Treasury vaults tokenised under Reg D; early data show 12 bps cost savings vs. legacy custodians.

Marquis’ non-profit Women in Crypto France ran 32 regional workshops preparing SMEs for MiCA stablecoin rules; attendee count tripled YoY. She secured an EU-funded €2 m grant to build a French-language DeFi audit curriculum, due Q4 2025.

As OKX Group’s Chief Compliance Officer, Wei shepherded the exchange through ESMA’s MiCA fast-entry corridor—OKX Europe went live with proof-of-reserves and instant-settle euro rails in March. She also chairs a FATF working sub-group on travel-rule messaging.

LMAX Digital’s Chief Growth Officer led the launch of X-Match, a crypto derivatives venue matching TradFi latency (30 µs). The venue cleared US$25 bn notional in its first month, a record for an FCA-regulated platform. Pozdorovkina also secured a Bank of England account for sterling settlements, a first for a crypto exchange.

Polygon’s ESG lead inked a deal with Verra to tokenise 20 m tCO₂ of forward carbon credits on Polygon CDK chains, each transaction authenticated by Hyperledger FireFly. Her Carbon Market sandbox is cited in EU climate-tech RFPs, positioning Polygon as green-blockchain default.

The artist-activist behind WomenRise rebooted her NFT DAO with “RiseVerse,” a Roblox-powered metaverse for girls in STEM. An April mint of 5 000 avatars raised US$2.1 m for Afghan women’s education, verified on-chain via GiveDirectly feeds.

Benartzi’s GoodDollar UBI-on-chain project now has 700 k claimants and rolled out a Sub-Saharan mobile-money bridge, paying out 4 G$ per claimant daily. She’s lobbying to embed GoodDollar smart-wallets into UN cash-transfer pilots.

Founder of Aspirational Futures, Eaves launched a blockchain-verified climate-talent registry adopted by 12 UNDP projects. Her keynote at COP30 previewed an ESG-oracle powered by Hyperledger Sawtooth to monitor carbon-reduction pledges.

Amber Baldet served as the co-founder of Clovyr – a decentralized network which aim to offer a complete ecosystem of blockchain applications and services. Amber was named as one of the people leading the blockchain revolution by New York Times. Prior to Clovyr she was a blockchain program lead at JP Morgan.

Now Director of AI & Crypto Engineering at Anthropic, Rinearson leads Dynamo, a ZK-proof micro-kernel that lets Claude models verify computation on-chain. Early benchmarks show 8× faster proofs vs. SNARK DSLs, and Polygon is already piloting Dynamo for its Data Avail layer.

The 83North partner, an early Coinbase and Ledger backer, closed Fund XI (US$1.8 bn) with a 20 % allocation to privacy-preserving fintech—including Zama’s FHE wallet SDK. Bowden’s board seat at StarkWare influences its enterprise SaaS push, tying traditional VCs deeper into L2 economics.