Brendan Blumer

CEO, BLOCK.ONE, 31 BUILDER Crypto net Worth: $600 million–$700 million Operating from Hong Kong, Blumer’s block.one developed EOS.IO, a blockchain platform challenging Ethereum. Blumer claims it will scale transaction speed, eliminate user fees and empower open-source communities. “If the internet was mass, scalable, insecure data transfer,” says Blumer, “then the blockchain represents mass, secure data transfer and everything that comes with it.”

The market is lapping up Blumer’s rhetoric. At more than $1 billion raised so far, EOS has become the world’s biggest token sale, even though the platform won’t launch until June, and it’s unclear whether the coin will benefit from it. And it’s gotten more euphoric from there— the EOS coin’s total market value reached as high as $10.9 billion last year and recently sat at $8.8 billion, with Blumer owning an estimated 15% of block.one.

An Iowa native, Blumer started his journey into virtual assets at the age of 14, selling avatars, magic weapons and houses in online game titles such as Everquest and World of Warcraft. His company, Gamecliff, was acquired by Brock Pierce’s Internet Gaming Entertainment (IGE) in 2005. Blumer, fresh out of high school, relocated to its Hong Kong headquarters to run operations. Next, in 2007, Blumer went on to found Accounts.net, which sold in-game avatars and reached more than $1 million a month in revenues. In 2010 he launched Okay.com, an enterprise data-sharing platform for real estate brokers in Asia.

In 2016, Blumer met Dan Larimer (see below), and the duo started working on block .one. Later Pierce got involved in EOS. In order to avoid regulatory oversight, EOS’ coin sale was not open to people in the U.S. or China.