After two decades of political and economic turmoil, CIS has emerged as a dynamic and ambitious region – and a crypto industry hotspot. Low taxes, affordable workforce, relaxed state regulations, cheap energy – all this creates a perfect environment for blockchain businesses. In this post, we'll look at ten entrepreneurs shaping the new, crypto-friendly image of the region
1) Nikolay Udianskyi
Nikolay Udianskyi is a visionary Ukrainian blockchain entrepreneur who founded Eastern Europe's largest crypto exchange, Coinsbit.io, named the best exchange at Asian Blockchain Life in 2019. Coinsbit also made it onto the list of Asia's Top 10 blockchain companies and became the first exchange to integrate a network of 200,000 POS terminals across the globe. Mr. Udianskyi also leads the way in launching exchanges: Thanks to his assistance, five of the top 50 exchanges have seen the light of day. Mr. Udianskyi's competencies stretch far beyond exchanges, however. He’s also working on various other projects, including ASSUR, the world's first insurance company focusing on crypto exchanges; Ukraine's first blockchain investment fund; and an upcoming residential complex for IT developers near Kharkiv.
2) Sergei Khitrov
Founder of Listing.help, the largest listing company that helped add more than 500 projects to crypto exchanges, founder of one of the largest Blockchain Life world blockchain and cryptocurrency forum, founder of the Jets Capital investment fund and IDEO crypto and digital associations. He was repeatedly recognized as one of the most promising young entrepreneurs in Russia and CIS.
3) Roman Nekrasov
Roman Nekrasov is the founder of ENCRY Foundation - a multidisciplinary international holding company specializing in high-tech telecommunications products and decentralized services. The foundation currently focuses on the development of a decentralized public key infrastructure (DPKI), designed to increase the level of privacy and reliability of network interactions.
In addition to ENCRY, Nekrasov manages the Russian-language version of NewsBTC - a popular blockchain and cryptocurrency news resource - as well as a number of other projects in related fields. Nekrasov sees his mission in changing the society's current view on network interaction, increasing the level of confidentiality of digital communication, and developing distributed and decentralized services.
4) Vasily Kuznetsov
Vasily Kuznetsov is one of the persons who created the blockchain community in Russia. In the year of 2017 he hosted over 40 weekly meetups with his newly formed company IBCG (International Blockchain Consulting Group). Almost 5000 people were inspired by the new trendy topic and quickly started forming teams for ICOs and other types of blockchain organizations. Vasily was also an adviser for some of the crypto startups, traveling around the globe and meeting new partners. He is currently deeply involved with investments strategies and would be happy to cooperate with anyone willing to make the world a better place.
5) Dmitry Zuev
Dmitry Zuev is the co-founder and CBDO of Natural Gas Energy (NGE). The project that aims to provide electric energy for miners and data processing centers at an unprecedented price of $0.02 per kWh, hedged for the next 25 years. In the past, Dmitry held executive positions in leading banks and has a vast expertise in creating and promoting banking and investment products. Dmitry also heads the Committee for Public Contracts and Digital Economy in the Irkutsk branch of the SME-centered NGO Opora Rossii. He’s been involved in the blockchain industry since 2017.
6) Gee (Evgheny) Turvinenko
Gee (Evgheny) Turvinenko worked with startups and VC back in 2014. He came to Blockchain after 3 years of structuring deals for Venture capital. He started with IR and fundraising for projects. In 2017 he created the Agency ICOboost, which helped projects to raise funds and provide marketing services. Acts as an Advisor and consultant for dozens of ICO projects. Being known, including in the development environment (as product owner), in mid-2018 he with two partners focused on creating his own Blockchain Protocol for Enterpise (Kratos Protocol). In 2019, focuses on Asian markets (Korea, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong), exploring combinations of traditional investments and Blockchain investments. Joined to FinwhaleX as a Head of Strategy and Sales, the firsts p2p lending platform for Gaming Assets. Constantly present in Asia and helps projects to find investments, partners and advisers. Truly believes that blockchain could change our future to the best.
7) David Lolaev
Founder of business development company SalAd lab.
David has impeccable sales and business development skills, and his team provides more than 300 crypto startups with excellent services from A to Z. With his experience, David has fostered a lot of startups as a growth hacker and marketing advisor. He has created his own strategy and tactics for sales and fundraising tasks to help young companies around the world become successful. He maintains strong partnerships with top exchanges and international funds.
8) Nikita Brudnov
Nikita Brudnov is a well-known serial entrepreneur and the CEO at Easy Listing. In the past, he worked as Head of Relations at ICO Brothers. With 6 years in sales management, 4 years in marketing, and 3 years as an active cryptocurrency expert, he personally worked with over 120 projects and exchanges in the blockchain space. Nikita has helped launch over 10 IEOs and facilitated exchange listing for dozens of projects.
Nikita is currently focused on fundraising, top exchange listing, and marketing & PR services for crypto exchanges.
9) Alexey Andryunin
Alexey Andryunin is the founder of GOTBIT Market Solutions and an advisor at Kuverit. A Moscow State University graduate with a strong math background, Alexey has 5 years of experience in algo trading. He is a market making provider for 50+ tokens and has developed a liquidity transfer system for new exchanges.
Alexey designed the only market-making system able to create a real market for tokens traded on decentralized exchanges. He also created a new method of project financing, based on early token listings and additional funding through market-making. In just 3 months, Alexey's clients successfully raised $3+ mln using this system.
Alexey's current projects include a strategy of financing tokens through market-making and an innovative B2B crypto financial platform.
10) Dmitriy Budorin
Since 2017 Dmitriy Budorin is founder and CEO of Hacken, leading Eastern European blockchain cybersecurity consulting company with more than 200 clients all over the world. Hacken is also a trusted brand in traditional enterprise cybersecurity. Among clients there are such huge companies like Vechain, Fenbushi Capital and AirAsia etc. Hacken professional achievements are highly regarded by industry leaders like CZ, CEO of Binance. Moreover, Hacken is the only one cybersecurity partner of Coinmarketcap. This year Hacken became a partner of Cream and Vechain and prepares a unique cybersecurity lifetime app HackenAI