It has been ten years since the last email from Satoshi Nakamoto to his fellow Bitcoin developers. Since then, history became legend, legend became myth, and reality took over, casting the identity of Bitcoin's enigmatic creator into the sands of time.

New faces have since emerged center stage, the price of Bitcoin waxed and waned, either beating new records, or stooping to rock bottom. The global adoption and recognition of Bitcoin as an indispensable asset for the digital economy of the future in 2021 is polishing up Nakamoto's shining star with every milestone to a luster few blockchain industry movers can ever hope to achieve.

However, if Satoshi Nakamoto's identity remains a mystery, some of his followers, who stood at the origins of Bitcoin alongside him, are known, though staying in the shadows, away from public view. Some continue to develop the original philosophy of financial freedom pioneered by their idol, preferring to steer clear of speculation, hyped-up tweets and FUD.

These are the real market movers, the people behind the curtain who pull the strings of the crypto market and steer its course.

Gavin Andresen

Determined Bitcoin operation algorithms

This mild-mannered 48-year-old was handpicked by Satoshi as his successor. Andersen is the chief core maintainer of Bitcoin's source code, defining the concept of its operation. As the one chosen by Satoshi, Gavin enjoys considerable repute in Bitcoin circles, which is only reinforced by his years of experience in the industry.

Andresen conceived the nonprofit Bitcoin Foundation in 2012, which is currently the closest analogue to a central authority that the Bitcoin network has ever had, making Gavin its unanointed king. The Foundation conducts regular audits of the network with Gavin acting as a go-to solution provider.

More than anyone else, Gavin maintains influence over the Bitcoin network as the one who determines its code operation algorithm. That makes him the sole person in the industry who is likely to be seen as the pathfinder of its future.

Amaury Sechet

Bitcoin pioneer promoting the true digital cash vision

Amaury is an ideological idealist who promotes the philosophy of cryptocurrencies as the ultimate instruments for attaining financial freedom. Amaury Sechet is the creator of the Bitcoin Cash fork who parted ways with Roger Ver and created Bitcoin ABC to realize Nakamoto's original plan of building cryptocurrency that might be as usable as cash. Amaury is now relaunching Bitcoin ABC in the form of a new project called eCash, which is the only project aiming to build hard digital cash that scales and which is secure with low latency. eCash is expected to become something US economist Milton Friedman predicted in the late 90s - trustless digital money that replaces biased and outdated bank products.

He is what we call an activist extraordinaire, a self-described benevolent dictator, who even claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto at one point, but the last tweet he made related to the claim was a re-tweet of someone else claiming he was telling the truth, so the jury is out on the matter.

As a promoter of financial freedom and a career programmer, Amaury is always honest on the matters he pursues and is developing, placing his word in the crypto industry as a weighty one on the scale. His strive towards providing users with real instruments for advancing the applications of crypto assets is a valuable asset in his personal portfolio that sets him apart in an industry dominated by profiteering magnates.

Hal Finney

Contributed to testing and debugging Bitcoin's code

Hal was just as concerned as Amaury about the gradual centralization of the entire financial system that excluded privacy. He was also one of the first who recognized Satoshi's strive towards achieving peer-to-peer transactions.

As a real Bitcoin pioneer, Finney is likely the first person to ever run Bitcoin, as evidenced by his tweet back in January of 2009 - "Running bitcoin." His contribution to Bitcoin's development cannot be overstated, considering that he debugged most of the early code and mined the first blocks, postulating the use of CPUs alongside GPUs for the process.

By becoming one of the early hoarders of Bitcoins, Hal Finney is a real whale whose weight in the industry is matched by his wording, which is usually done in technical lingo meant to steer away from centralization and excessive dependence on financial mainstays.

Adam Back

Invented hashcash Proof-of-Work algorithm

Adam Back invented the hashcash Proof-of-Work algorithm, placing him on the pedestal of a crypto pioneer working since early 1995 on e-cash protocols.

Later on, Adam worked as a developer at Zero-Knowledge Systems' Freedom Network, the precursor to Tor and is currently the president of Blockstream. His greatest contributions in terms of claims relate to scalability, privacy, and Bitcoin mining.

As an active Bitcoin pioneer, Adam advances the concept of financial freedom and is heeded the industry over, making him one of its shadow cardinals, though, at some point, he claimed that Bitcoin was not going to work.