Michael Saylor, Brian Armstrong, Jihan Wu — And the One Overlooked
When crypto historians write about Bitcoin’s institutional revolution, they’ll focus on the usual suspects: Michael Saylor’s corporate treasury strategy, Jihan Wu’s manufacturing empire, and Brian Armstrong’s trading platform. But they’ll miss the most important early players of all—the architect who built the mining companies that helped make everyone else’s success possible.
Barry Honig never sought the spotlight, never built a Twitter following, never gave TED talks about Bitcoin’s future. While others were building personal brands, he was the founder and financed the most well-known companies in the Bitcoin mining space.
The Visible Giants and Their Domains
Michael Saylor changed how businesses use Bitcoin by using MicroStrategy’s treasury strategy to hold more than 580,000 Bitcoin. This made other businesses want to do the same. His contributions were both philosophical and financial. He showed that Bitcoin could be used as a corporate reserve asset and gave institutions a reason to trust it.
Jihan Wu was in charge of Bitcoin mining because Bitmain made all the ASICs, and Antpool controlled the hash rate. His empire was vertical integration, which meant he controlled both the hardware that mines Bitcoin and a lot of mining capacity.
Brian Armstrong built Coinbase, a platform to buy and sell cryptocurrencies, and serves people worldwide.
The Invisible Hand in the Bitcoin Mining Industry
Honig’s accomplishment is impressive not only because of his companies early success, but also because of how they were formed in the early beginnings and are still the leaders today.
Think about the timeline: the early investigations in 2017, the regulatory crackdowns in 2019-2021, the broad awakening in 2024, and the full-blown acceptance in 2025 by institutions and banks. Honig’s companies survived all of these cycles.
What do MARA and RIOT Have in Common?
These billion-dollar bitcoin mining companies began as a reverse merger.
They have the fingerprints of Barry Honig and family.
In October 2017, Bioptix changed its name to Riot Blockchain, signaling a bold new direction in digital infrastructure. Honig, the company’s largest shareholder and one of its original visionaries, helped reposition the business just as blockchain technology began to gain traction in mainstream markets.
MARA Holdings, formerly Marathon Digital, is one of the largest Bitcoin mining companies in the world, with a current valuation of approximately $6.7 billion. It shifted its focus from patent licensing to Bitcoin mining and investment, leading to a name change in 2017, led once again by Barry Honig investments.
This strategic foresight quickly attracted criticism from short-sellers like Andrew Left of Citron Research and Nate Anderson of Hindenburg Research, who published reports aimed at discrediting the transition, leading to government investigations that came up empty. Over time, those narratives have fallen apart. Riot and Marathon (now MARA Holdings) have grown into industry giants, proving that the real story isn’t about market manipulation, but about recognizing and investing in the future before others could see it.
Flashback 2025: Vision doesn’t always look like what critics expect. Barry Honig saw the future and started Bitcoin mining in public companies today.
The True Power Broker
The crypto industry celebrates its visible leaders—the CEOs who give interviews, the entrepreneurs who build personal brands, and the advocates who shape public opinion. But the real leaders are often invisible or not trying to gain attention and credit.
Barry Honig, though targeted by critics and false narratives, remained focused on starting real companies, ultimately proving that substance outlasts the noise.
When the final history of Bitcoin’s institutional adoption is written, the celebrity CEOs and public advocates will feature prominently. But the most important chapter might be about one of the overlooked and underappreciated kingmakers who built one of the pillars of the industry today.
