Song ChiHyung

CEO, DUNAMU; FOUNDER, UPBIT 38 INFRASTRUCTURE Crypto net Worth: $350 million–$500 million In just four months since its launch, Song Chi-Hyung’s Upbit has become the largest cryptocurrency exchange in South Korea, a market that ranks among the top in Bitcoin trading. By December it boasted an average daily trading volume of $4.7 billion.

A computer science and economics graduate from the prestigious Seoul National University, Song founded Dunamu, which means “two trees,” in 2012. He started as a news aggregator but quickly pivoted to fintech. The following year, internet giant Kakao Corp. started a series of investments in the company, which eventually led to the creation of KakaoStock, a mobile stock trading app which now has more than 300,000 users and leverages Kakao’s instant-messaging base of 50 million, according to Statista.