Thanks for the mention, but I'm certainly not an "influential" person in Bitcoin.  I ran a good pool, kept things running smoothly for 4 and a half years, and decided to gracefully shut down the service (and give people 6 months to clear old accounts) to make sure it ended on a positive note and under my own terms, not as the result of legal action or even worse, malicious actions.

When I hear influential, I think of people that are actually "doing something" for Bitcoin.  Either by pushing adoption, working on improving usability, working on improvements, or trying to inform/direct legal authorities into making decisions that will do the least damage if they insist on doing anything at all.  All BTC Guild really did that fits into any of that would be BIP32 support and then voicing opinions on BIP 100/101 and my agreement that block size should be increased.  But that's the real limits of influence:  Suggestion/confirmation.  I don't make myself an advocate and preach the benefits of them.  Oh, and my continued assault on  SPV mining done by pools like AntPool, BTC China, and F2Pool, meaning over 50% of the hashpower on the network isn't even doing their damn job properly.