Crypto Founders Dominate a Third of Forbes 30 Under 30 Finance List

Nine out of 30 spots in the “Finance” category of the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for 2025 were claimed by founders of cryptocurrency companies.

The ranking includes ten men and four women (some shared a spot).

One of the most notable participants is Shane Coplan, founder of Polymarket. On November 5, ahead of the U.S. presidential elections, the daily trading volume on the prediction platform soared to a record $371 million.

The Forbes list features developers of decentralized exchanges, including:

• Ostium Labs co-founders Caledor Kiernan-Linn and Marco Antonio Ribeiro;
• Osmosis founders Sunny Aggarwal and Dev Ojha;
• Drift Labs co-founder Cindy Leow.

The ranking also includes co-founders of the DeFi protocol Omni Network (Austin King and Tyler Tarsi), RWA platform Story (Jason Zhao), and ZK developer Succinct (Uma Roy).

Other participants include Soroush Godsi Bushehri, Stefan Stokic, and Jake Sylvester from Cortex Labs, and Tux Pacific from Entropy. The first startup aims to create a blockchain with AI support, while the second focuses on AI agents.

Cointelegraph noted that crypto firm founders maintained their representation — last year, there were also nine in this list.

Previously, the list included Uniswap founder Hayden Adams and Avalanche’s Kevin Sekniqi.