The co-founder of cryptocurrency news website Cointelegraph acknowledged as the ‘Joan of Arc of blockchain’, Toni Lane Casserly, has died at the age of 29.

Ms Casserly’s father announced on Tuesday that the cryptocurrency entrepreneur had died last week.

The Cointelegraph co-founder was a prominent public speaker and a staunch advocate of the blockchain technology that backs the bitcoin market.

“Toni saw how technologies was a device to unleash human consciousness,” said Lucian Tarnowski, an ambassador and founder at technological innovation company Civana.

In a tribute on Thursday, Mr Tarnowski added that “She was a good pioneer in the role blockchains would give in the return to local community.”

According to the cryptocurrency blog Coinfomania, Ms Casserly had not been well ‘for some time’ before passing away in Texas last week.

Her father, Nick Casserly, announced “with profound sadness and grief” that she had died writing in a Facebook post on April 14. He added that she had not been well since returning from a trip to California in August.

He said: “[I] remember her fondly as I know a lot of you had been reaching out to her with little success.”

Ms Casserly founded Cointelegraph in 2013 as a media platform dedicated to blockchain technology, crypto assets, and emerging fintech trends.

According to the blockchain encyclopaedia Everipedia, she later founded a bitcoin-based charity in 2015 that provided on-the-ground aid in Sierra Leone during the Ebola outbreak in Africa.

She also served as an advisor to several notable companies, funds and family offices, such as The United Nations, HSBC, Bosch, Cicso, P&G and the Institute for the Future.