Author: David

David Schwartz is the Chief Technology Officer of Ripple and one of the original architects of the XRP Ledger. A self-taught cryptographer and software engineer, Schwartz has shaped Ripple’s technology from its earliest days and remains one of the most influential—and approachable—voices in the cryptocurrency industry. There are names in crypto that command immediate recognition: Satoshi Nakamoto, Vitalik Buterin, Charles Hoskinson. But David Schwartz occupies a different kind of space. He’s not a headline-chaser or a conference keynote fixture. He’s a builder—the kind who spends decades solving problems most people don’t even know exist. And yet, his fingerprints are all…

Small business loans in 2026 offer more options than ever—from SBA loans and microloans to revenue-based financing and AI-matched lending platforms. The right loan depends on your business age, credit profile, and how quickly you need capital. This guide breaks down your best options, eligibility requirements, and how to apply successfully. Funding a small business has never been straightforward. But in 2026, the landscape looks meaningfully different from what it did even three years ago. Interest rates have shifted, alternative lenders have matured, and AI-powered platforms now match borrowers with capital faster than a traditional bank ever could. For small…

Michael Saylor is the co-founder and executive chairman of MicroStrategy, best known for pioneering the corporate Bitcoin treasury strategy. Since 2020, Saylor has transformed MicroStrategy into the world’s largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, accumulated over 500,000 BTC, and become one of the most influential voices in the cryptocurrency space. Few figures in modern finance have made a more dramatic pivot than Michael Saylor. A software entrepreneur who built one of the most successful business intelligence companies of the 1990s, Saylor nearly lost everything during the dot-com crash—then spent the next two decades quietly rebuilding. When Bitcoin entered his life, it…

Mihailo Bjelic is a Serbian software engineer and entrepreneur best known as the co-founder of Polygon (formerly Matic Network), one of the most widely used Ethereum scaling solutions in the blockchain industry. Bjelic has played a central role in shaping Polygon’s technical direction, strategic growth, and its mission to make Web3 accessible at scale. Few names in blockchain carry as much weight as Mihailo Bjelic. Yet, unlike many of his peers in the crypto world, Bjelic has largely let his work speak for itself—favoring technical rigor and long-term vision over the kind of social media noise that tends to dominate…

Fred Ehrsam is a co-founder of Coinbase, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, and Paradigm, a leading crypto-focused investment firm. A former Goldman Sachs trader turned blockchain pioneer, Ehrsam has played a central role in shaping how the world buys, sells, and thinks about digital assets since 2012. Fred Ehrsam doesn’t often dominate headlines the way some of his crypto-world contemporaries do. He doesn’t post controversial tweets at midnight or make bold price predictions on cable television. Instead, he builds—quietly, methodically, and with an eye toward infrastructure that lasts. Yet his fingerprints are on two of the most consequential…

Barry Silbert is an American entrepreneur and investor widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the cryptocurrency industry. As the founder and CEO of Digital Currency Group (DCG), Silbert built a sprawling crypto empire that includes Grayscale Investments, Genesis Trading, and CoinDesk—shaping the institutional adoption of Bitcoin and digital assets over the past decade. Barry Silbert doesn’t fit the archetype of the flashy, Twitter-addicted crypto personality. He doesn’t court controversy for sport or promise moon-bound returns in all-caps tweets. Instead, Silbert built his influence quietly and systematically—piece by piece, investment by investment—until the company he founded became…

Cameron Winklevoss is an American entrepreneur, Olympic rower, and co-founder of the Gemini cryptocurrency exchange. Alongside his twin brother Tyler, Cameron transformed a $65 million Facebook settlement into a multi-billion-dollar crypto empire—making the Winklevoss twins among the world’s first publicly known Bitcoin billionaires. Few stories in modern finance are as dramatic as Cameron Winklevoss’s. He started as a Harvard student with a disputed claim to the origins of Facebook. He ended up as one of the most influential figures in the history of cryptocurrency. The journey between those two points is a masterclass in reinvention, conviction, and timing. Most people…