Coming up with a list of the 100 most influential people in crypto and blockchain is hard in any year. But doing it in 2021 is particularly difficult as the industry advanced from moving into the mainstream to actually being in it.

The same applies to Blockchain, which went from being a technology a few big corporations were testing into one that the likes of Walmart, Dole, Maersk and Nestlé are actually using on the ground. Banks like Citi, HSBC and even JPMorgan are getting into the business.

Politically, cryptocurrencies have gone far beyond the “Bitcoin is for Silk Road” and “Libra is bad” narratives. Questions about bitcoin and crypto were raised at the confirmation hearing of the U.S. Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen. The incoming head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Gary Gensler, spent the last few years teaching digital assets and blockchain at MIT. The chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, went from pooh-poohing a central bank digital currency to promising that a digital dollar will be a “high priority project” for 2021. China, meanwhile seems ready to launch one this year, but it won’t be first—The Bahamas took that honor with its Sand Dollar.

And inside the industry, Anchorage won a federal banking trust charter. Coinbase filed with the SEC to go public—the first for a pure crypto company—with a direct offering. The rush into decentralized finance became a stampede, with the total value locked in DeFi projects having grown from about $500 million a year ago to $44.9 billion now, according to DeFi Pulse. Bitcoin itself, which plunged below $4,000 in early 2020, just broke through the $60,000 ceiling.

Which is to say, there’s a whole lot of change in the air. So how do you go about defining—and ranking—influence?

One answer, of course, is follow the money. That means venture capital, to be sure, but there are now a lot more streams feeding the river.

Bitcoin is now being called “digital gold”—a store of value that can overtake the yellow metal. And not just by crypto insiders such as the Winklevoss twins, but by the likes of Rick Rieder, chief investment officer at the world’s biggest asset manager, BlackRock, which controls $7.8 trillion. The head of digital assets at investment banking giant Goldman Sachs recently said 40% of the nearly 300 Goldman Sachs institutional customers already have exposure to crypto assets.

Mainstream companies like Tesla, Square, and insurer Mass Mutual have followed MicroStrategy in pouring hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars from their corporate treasuries into Bitcoin. Investing legends like Stanley Druckenmiller and Paul Tudor Jones are public boosters.

Another answer is that you have to do a lot of research, gather a lot of names, and come up with a process that looks at things like assets under management, the potential impact and reach of projects, the way solutions are actually solving problems or disrupting industries, and the impact that thought leaders can have on determining whether an industry that claims it can change the world actually does it.

We also found time to look at some of the highlights and lowlights members of the crypto industry and community have found themselves in over the past year. You can find that look at who got it right and who got it wrong over the past year here.

A list of this kind is by its very nature fairly subjective, particularly when change is coming at this speed and growth at this size. That means that on this third annual list of the Modern Consensus 100 Most Influential People in Crypto you’ll find a lot of familiar names missing, new ones added, and positions changed. And you’ll disagree with some.

The list

No. 1 Vitalik Buterin, Co-founder, Ethereum
No. 2 Mu Changchun, head, People’s Bank of China Digital Currency Research Institute
No. 3 Gary Gensler, nominee for Chairman, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
No. 4 Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, CEO, Binance
No. 5 Brad Garlinghouse, CEO, Ripple
No. 6 Brian Armstrong, CEO, Coinbase
No. 7 Dan Schulman, CEO, PayPal
No. 8 Mike Novogratz, founder, chairman and CEO, Galaxy Digital
No. 9 Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.)
No. 10 Barry Silbert, Founder and CEO, Digital Currency Group