Beautiful Virgin Islands

Monday, Oct 06, 2025

Forbes Cryptocurrency Awards 2020: The $3 Trillion Bitcoin Marketing Campaign

Forbes Cryptocurrency Awards 2020: The $3 Trillion Bitcoin Marketing Campaign

A slew of names bought bitcoin for the first time this year, and Jerome Powell's shopping spree at the Federal Reserve helped previously skeptical investors start taking cryptocurrency seriously. Here are our picks for the year's most intriguing people, companies and trends.

For the first time ever, Forbes are publishing the Forbes Crypto Awards.

Here are our picks for the best products, the most intriguing people and the most interesting trends in crypto this year.

Our inaugural Forbes Crypto Awards were selected in consultation with Anthony Pompliano, who helps manage two crypto funds at New York City-based Morgan Creek, which has $1.5 billion in assets under management, as well as his own recently launched endeavor, Pomp Investments.


The Forbes Person Of The Year In Crypto: Jerome Powell


In an attempt to prevent the U.S. economy from collapsing under pandemic pressure, Powell had the U.S. Federal Reserve buy up a record amount of treasuries, effectively printing more than $3 trillion in new money and nearly doubling the central bank’s balance sheet. Venture firm Pantera Capital called the infusion “two centuries of debt in one month,” creating an environment in which previously skeptical investors including Wall Street whales like Paul Tudor Jones and Stanley Druckenmiller started taking cryptocurrency seriously. “I think Jerome Powell did the things that he and his colleagues believed were the best things to do in the short term to mitigate pain from the pandemic and economic crisis,” says Pompliano. “But in the pursuit of mitigating short-term pain, they were highlighting for everyone, from retail investors to the largest institutions in the world, what was going to happen over the next decade or two.”


Best Product: Square’s Cash App


In August 2018, Jack Dorsey’s payments giant Square, now valued at $96 billion, was among the first mainstream enterprises to allow bitcoin purchases in all 50 states. Bitcoin has proved a real boon to the company, which generated $1.6 billion in revenue from the asset in the third quarter, an 11-fold increase year over year. “I tend to think that new users give a good signal for something that is usable,” says Pompliano. “Not just by the crypto enthusiasts but by the everyday person, the mainstream.”


Most Intriguing Newcomer: Michael Saylor


Among a slew of names that bought bitcoin for the first time this year, perhaps none were more surprising, or made a bigger impact, than the CEO of struggling MicroStrategy, a Tysons Corner, Virginia-based business software firm. Over the course of five months starting in August, Saylor revealed that his smallish outfit, which competes against giants like Oracle and SAP in data analytics, had bought $475 million worth of bitcoin. That made bitcoin the publicly traded company’s biggest treasury asset. While Citi recently downgraded MicroStrategy as a result of the extremely aggressive play, Pompliano thinks it’s exactly that audacity that makes Saylor so intriguing. “He came out of nowhere,” says Pompliano. “And he has not only lit the bitcoin and crypto world on fire, but he has very quickly ascended to be one of the top bulls in the way he talks about what he’s doing. There’s no hedging in the way he talks about it; there’s no surrender.”


Disruptive Innovator: Caitlin Long


This former head of Morgan Stanley’s pension advisory group was once a rising star in traditional finance. Then, after helping write cryptocurrency-friendly laws in her home state of Wyoming, she was unanimously approved for one of the state’s new bitcoin banking charters in October. “She is disrupting the traditional regulatory framework,” says Pompliano. “And obviously, she was very instrumental there. But then to go build a company, to leverage those rules? I look at that as disruptive in a unique way.”


Outstanding Firm: Ark Invest


After experimenting with many different crypto strategies over the years, Ark’s CEO and chief investment officer Catherine Wood has shuffled most of her ETF firm’s direct bitcoin exposure into a single fund dedicated to “innovative” assets. But a number of other Ark ETFs have indirect exposure in the form of stakes in Silvergate Bank, which banks cryptocurrency businesses; Square and PayPal, which let their customers use bitcoin; and Nvidia, the Santa Clara, California-based computer chip manufacturer whose hardware has long been favored by many bitcoin miners. It’s working: Wood’s flagship fund is up 150% this year, and Ark’s assets under management have skyrocketed to $15 billion. “Cathie is one of those people who she's not known just for bitcoin, so we kind of dilute her impact,” says Pompliano. “But she believed early; she was the first institution to really kind of go after the GBTC trade. She’s been right. She’s been right about a lot of stuff.”


Catherine Wood


Annus Horribilis: Libra


Libra exploded onto the cryptocurrency scene in June 2019 when Facebook announced the project would use the blockchain to create a single asset backed by a number of global currencies, including the dollar, the euro and the yen. The original idea was that the Libra would be managed by payments giants like Visa, PayPal, Mastercard and Stripe. But U.S. lawmakers pretty much immediately freaked out, calling Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to Capitol Hill to explain his work. Most of Facebook’s best-known payment partners quickly backed out.

After many compromises to the original vision, a watered-down—although possibly still successful—version of the currency, now called Diem and backed one-to-one by the U.S. dollar, is scheduled to launch next year. “They, me and everyone else underestimated how swiftly and how powerful regulators and governments can be when they decide to attack,” says Pompliano, who worked at Facebook 15 years ago. “In terms of the absolute height of promise, possibility, etc. to the current state, that delta, I don’t think that we’ve seen anything fall as hard as Libra.”



Forbes Forecast: Bitcoin corporate treasuries


MicroStrategy purchased $475 million worth of bitcoin this year and now has plans to raise another $650 million to purchase more; Square invested about $50 million into the cryptocurrency; and New York City-based asset manager Stone Ridge revealed it owned $115 million worth of the asset. Now that financial giants like Northern Trust, managing $1 trillion worth of assets, have revealed plans to help institutional investors safely custody crypto, it’s a trend that is likely only going to continue. “I think that we will see very, very, very large companies—Fortune 100-, Fortune 500-type companies—putting bitcoin on their balance sheet in 2021,” says Pompliano.

Newsletter

Related Articles

Beautiful Virgin Islands
0:00
0:00
Close
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
Speed Takes Over: How Drive-Through Coffee Chains Are Rewriting U.S. Coffee Culture
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Ringo Starr Champions Enduring Beatles Legacy While Debuting Las Vegas Art Show
Private Equity’s Fundraising Surge Triggers Concern of European Market Shake-Out
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
FBI Removes Agents Who Kneeled at 2020 Protest, Citing Breach of Professional Conduct
Trump Alleges ‘Triple Sabotage’ at United Nations After Escalator and Teleprompter Failures
Shock in France: 5 Years in Prison for Former President Nicolas Sarkozy
Tokyo’s Jimbōchō Named World’s Coolest Neighbourhood for 2025
European Officials Fear Trump May Shift Blame for Ukraine War onto EU
BNP Paribas Abandons Ban on 'Controversial Weapons' Financing Amid Europe’s Defence Push
Typhoon Ragasa Leaves Trail of Destruction Across East Asia Before Making Landfall in China
The Personality Rights Challenge in India’s AI Era
Big Banks Rebuild in Hong Kong as Deal Volume Surges
Italy Considers Freezing Retirement Age at 67 to Avert Scheduled Hike
Italian City to Impose Tax on Visiting Dogs Starting in 2026
Arnault Denounces Proposed Wealth Tax as Threat to French Economy
Study Finds No Safe Level of Alcohol for Dementia Risk
Denmark Investigates Drone Incursion, Does Not Rule Out Russian Involvement
Lilly CEO Warns UK Is ‘Worst Country in Europe’ for Drug Prices, Pulls Back Investment
Nigel Farage Emerges as Central Force in British Politics with Reform UK Surge
Disney Reinstates ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ after Six-Day Suspension over Charlie Kirk Comments
U.S. Prosecutors Move to Break Up Google’s Advertising Monopoly
×