Akon

Chairman & Co-Founder

Akoin

Of American-Senegalese descent, Akon is recognized as one of the most powerful voices across Africa and the Diaspora, named to the Forbes Celebrity 100 & 40 Most Powerful Celebrities in Africa lists. In addition to having two multi-platinum albums, 27 songs on the Billboard Hot 100, he is among the first artists to accomplish the feat of holding both the number one and two spots simultaneously on the Billboard Hot 100 charts twice. Through Akon Lighting Africa, he has already brought solar power to 18 countries in Africa, creating safety, health and well-being for over 100M of the 600M Africans who lack electricity today.

Changpeng Zhao

Founder & CEO

Binance

Changpeng Zhao, known as CZ, is a serial entrepreneur with an impressive track record of successful startups. He launched Binance in 2017 and within 180 days, grew it into the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world. An expert in blockchain and trading systems, CZ has built Binance into the leading blockchain ecosystem, comprised of Binance Exchange, Labs, Launchpad, Info, Academy, Research, Trust Wallet and Charity Foundation. In 2005, CZ quit his role as head of the Bloomberg Tradebook Futures Research & Development team and moved to Shanghai to start Fusion Systems. Soon thereafter, he learned about Bitcoin and joined Blockchain.info as Head of Technology.

Ciara Sun

Head of Global Markets/Business

Huobi Group

Worked across Boston Consulting Group, Deloitte Consulting and Ernst & Young in financial analysis, strategy consulting and corporate management. Advised Banking and Capital Markets groups for 15 major banks and performed investment analytics to support clients with billion of dollars of AUM.

Brock Pierce

Founder & Chairman

Integro Foundation

Entrepreneur and philanthropist Brock Pierce has been involved in the virtual currency business since 2001 when he founded Internet Gaming Entertainment. As a venture capitalist his eye for disruptive new tech has led to an impressive track record. Pierce is the Chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation and co-founder of EOS Alliance, Block.one, Blockchain Capital, Tether, and Mastercoin. Blockchain Capital founded in 2013 was the first sector-focused venture fund that invests solely in Blockchain technology companies.

Jed McCaleb

Co-Founder and Chief Architect

Stellar

Jed McCaleb is co-founder and Chief Architect of the Stellar Development Foundation, an open network that connects the world’s financial infrastructure. In 2014, Jed created Stellar, an open-source blockchain network built to democratize economic participation by making money more fluid, markets more open, and people more empowered.  An early pioneer in decentralized systems and blockchain technology, he created eDonkey2000 which became one of the largest file-sharing networks in its time. He later created Mt. Gox, the first bitcoin exchange, which was subsequently sold and re-coded by its current owners. He is also a co-founder of Ripple.Jed’s devoted his career to developing and leveraging technology that promotes inclusion and transparency

David Schwartz

Chief Technology Officer

Ripple

David Schwartz is Chief Technology Officer at Ripple. David is one of the original architects of the Ripple consensus network. Prior to joining Ripple, David Schwartz was Chief Technical Officer for WebMaster Incorporated, a Santa Clara software developer. He developed encrypted cloud storage and enterprise messaging systems for organizations like CNN and the National Security Agency (NSA). Known as “JoelKatz,” he is a respected voice in the digital currency community.

Rune Christensen

Co-Founder

MakerDAO

Rune Christensen is Chief Executive Officer of the Maker Foundation and Co-founder of MakerDAO. MakerDAO issues Dai, the world’s first decentralized, collateral-backed stablecoin on the Ethereum blockchain. Dai eliminates volatility through an autonomous system of smart contracts called the Maker Protocol, and through decentralized community governance.Since 2015, Christensen has focused on establishing the vision and structure of MakerDAO and the economic foundations of the Dai stablecoin. Previously, he served as co-founder of Try China, a company providing international recruiting. He studied Biochemistry at the University of Copenhagen and International Business at the Copenhagen Business School.

Denelle Dixon

CEO and Executive Director

Stellar Development Foundation

Denelle Dixon is the CEO and Executive Director of the Stellar Development Foundation, a non-profit organization using blockchain to unlock the world’s economic potential by making money more fluid, markets more open, and people more empowered.  Before joining Stellar, Dixon served as COO of Mozilla, one of the most successful mission-driven open-source organizations. During her tenure at Mozilla, she led the organization’s business, revenue and policy teams including the ongoing fight for Net Neutrality and the global effort to ensure that people can control their personal data. She also pushed Mozilla to understand how to partner with commercial entities while staying true to its core mission of openness, innovation, and opportunity on the web. A lawyer by trade, Denelle previously served as a general counsel and legal advisor in private equity and technology.Throughout her career, Denelle has been a vocal advocate for net neutrality, encryption, the disclosure of vulnerabilities by governments, and greater user choice and control.

Alex Mashinsky

CEO

Celsius Network

Alex is a serial entrepreneur and founder of seven New York City-based startups. Alex founded two of New York City’s top 10 venture-backed exits since 2000: Arbinet, with a 2004 IPO that had a market capitalization of over $750 million; and Transit Wireless, valued at $1.2 billion. 
Alex has received numerous awards for innovation, including being nominated twice by E&Y as ‘Entrepreneur of the Year’; Crain’s 2010 Top Entrepreneur and the prestigious 2000 Albert Einstein Technology medal.
As one of the pioneers of web-based exchanges, Alex authored patents that cover aspects of the Smart Grid, ad exchanges, Twitter, Skype, Netflix streaming concept and many other web companies.

Michael Casey

Chief Content Officer

CoinDesk

Michael is an author/journalist, public speaker, entrepreneur, blockchain technology advisor/consultant and the chairman of CoinDesk’s advisory board. As an advisor to the MIT Media Lab’s Digital Currency Initiative and senior lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management, he counsels students and faculty on research projects that harness blockchain technology to achieve resource efficiency and social impact. He is the author of five books including, with his co-author Paul Vigna, “The Truth Machine: The Blockchain and the Future of Everything”.

Antoni Trenchev

Nexo

Co-founder

Antoni has been a crypto enthusiast since 2011. As a Member of Parliament and a firm believer
in the decentralized approach, he ferociously advocated for and passed legislation for
blockchain solutions on a variety of e-government services, most notably e-voting. He has been
involved in the development of e-commerce platforms and served as Chief Innovations Officer
at Credissimo.

Nicholas Merten

Host & Founder

DataDash

Nicholas Merten is the founder of DataDash, the largest cryptocurrency YouTube channel with over 315,000 subscribers. Being an international speaker, thought-leader, and crypto analyst in the space, he’s utilized his over seven years of experience in traditional markets to understand the potential of cryptocurrencies.

Paolo Ardoino

CTO

Bitfinex

Paolo joined Bitfinex in early 2015 and now serves as CTO, developing and managing core parts of the Bitfinex backend architecture. Paolo has been building valuable tools and infrastructure for financial innovation for the past 15 years.

Joanna Ossinger

Markets Editor

Bloomberg

Journalist specializing in business and markets news including stocks, FX, macro, derivatives. Experienced with real-time/breaking news, features, curation, top stories, business planning/strategy, leadership and more. Skills in print, web, TV, radio as well as product planning and launches. I designed a news product with virtually 100% client takeup. Also skilled in presentations - panelist, moderator, host.

Jack Lu

Founder & CEO

WanChain

Jack majored in Enterprise Management at Peking University in China. He stayed in the financial industry for several years in China before moving to the U.S. to study Economics and Computer Science at The Ohio State University. Then, he transitioned into the internet world where he became a software engineer for about 20 years in the eCommerce industry. An early investor in Bitcoin and Ethereum. Jack co-founded Factom with David Johnston, and Paul Snow. After that, Jack went back to China to start a company called Wanglu to sell blockchain solutions to local enterprises and the government in 2016. It was at this time that he started incubating the idea of Wanchain. They did a proof-of-concept and built a platform with Ethereum as the base with privacy protections added in. Wanchain added cross-chain technology as well and launched it in 2017 with the main net launching in January 2018, with integrations to Ethereum, Bitcoin, EOS and a private-public interoperability framework.

Kevin Feng

COO

Vechain

Kevin Feng has 15 years experiences of consulting and assurance services in cybersecurity, privacy and emerging technology. After he joined PwC Shanghai in 2005, Kevin has been building an extensive network with clients in various industries in regions including Mainland China, US, Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan, and has been driving the development of blockchain services of PwC CN/HK region. He was one of the few blockchain evangelists in the profession service space, and played an important role in some of the early iconic blockchain projects. In January 2018, Kevin joined VeChain as COO.With a strong background in cybersecurity, business and emerging technology, Kevin advises his clients on their emerging technology strategy and associated cyber threats and risks, and he also helps enterprise form their strategic plan for adopting blockchain technology and enhancing digitalization process while complying to the regulations. 

Jon Karas

President, Co-Founder

Infinity Management

Finance, Entertainment and Technology industry entrepreneur, seasoned capital formation leader, film producer, and talent representative. With over 25 years in the entertainment and finance industries, Jon is a major force at the intersection of celebrity and social good. He is a founding Advisory Board member of Slate Entertainment Group, creator of disruptive crypto-driven streaming and ticketing platforms. As a veteran of the William Morris Agency, he founded Infinity Management International in 1990, which represents top record producers, film and television writers, directors, and producers. He began his career practicing transactional and securities law at two major law firms on Park Avenue in New York.

Lynn Liss

Chief Operating Officer & Co-Founder

Akoin

Social Impact entrepreneur, operating executive, driving financial revolutions and related technology, partnerships and business models. Lynn has over 10+ years in the social impact sector; advising, executing and operating innovating business models for world change. An early mover in the 'blockchain for good' space, Lynn was a founding partner at ICO Impact Group, providing advisement to blockchain companies and new cryptocurrencies with a social impact. Over 10+ years as an executive consultant with leading firms BearingPoint and CGI-AMS providing strategic advisement and deploying innovative technology with Fortune 500s, including negotiating a $20M+ deal signed by the COO of Microsoft. Combined with an MBA in Strategy/Finance from the University of Chicago, Lynn has deep networks and experience across the startup, venture capital, entertainment, finance, technology, and social good sectors.

Crystal Rose Pierce

CEO and Founder

Make Sense Labs

Crystal Rose Pierce is a prominent technologist, entrepreneur and investor and Forbes Top 10 Women in Blockchain. She is the CEO and Founder of Make Sense Labs, building communications tools and decentralized applications since 2014. Her company released the first provably secure and cryptocurrency enabled messenger leveraging blockchain technology, achieving innovation in encryption. Their flagship product Sense Chat is one of the first dApp partners in the Akoin network. She is a founder of shEOS, a female-run blockchain node operator and mining network. Her work in philanthropy has led to the discovery of the benefit of open data initiatives and the positive influence of digital currency on the evolution of distressed nations and states.

Loi Luu

CEO

Kyber Network

Loi has spent many years as an industry researcher working on cryptocurrencies, smart contract security and distributed consensus algorithms focusing on several problems of digital assets from improving the security to enhancing the scalability and usability of public cryptocurrencies. To date, his work benefits many blockchain companies and projects worldwide and collectively these companies are worth more than tens of billions of US dollars.

Vinny Lingham

CEO & Co-Founder

Civic

Vinny Lingham is the chief executive officer and co-founder of Civic, a visionary company enabling consumers to securely send and receive money, including cryptocurrencies, around the world. Previously, he was the co-founder and CEO of Gyft, a mobile gift card company, which was acquired by First Data Corporation for more than $50M. He is an active investor and as co-founder of Newton Partners in South Africa, he has led early stage investments into successful startups, including Sweep South and Augmentors. Vinny was a Shark on Shark Tank South Africa, a Dragon on Dragon’s Den South Africa, and an Angel in National Geographic's Undercover Angel. He is a co-author of “I’m In: Essential Advice for Entrepreneurs.”

Erhan Korhaliller

Founder EAK Digital & Istanbul Blockchain Week

Erhan Korhaliller is the Founder and CEO of EAK Digital, a specialist blockchain PR agency. Prior to launching EAK Digital, Erhan previously managed large scale project teams for blue-chip brands such as Nike, Rolls Royce, and Vodafone, successfully guiding his teams to multiple advertising awards, including a platinum award from Campaign Magazine. Erhan continues to lead from the front, giving PR a voice in the blockchain industry as a speaker at global events.

Bobby Ong

Co-Founder

CoinGecko

Bobby Ong is the co-founder of CoinGecko, an analytics platform for tracking cryptocurrencies and blockchain assets. CoinGecko was established in April 2014 and is the largest independent cryptoasset data aggregator in the world. Bobby is a contributing author in two digital currencies books - Handbook of Digital Currency, 1st Edition and Handbook of Blockchain, Digital Finance, and Inclusion, Volume 1. He was included in the Forbes 2019 30 Under 30 Asia list and holds a Bachelor of Science in Economics from University College London.

Chris Dawe

Co-Founder & CEO

Effect.AI

Chris is an athlete-turned-entrepreneur passionate about how blockchain and distributed ledger technology can create socio-economic change in global regions that need gateways to opportunity. As a Chief Executive Officer, he is responsible for guiding the vision of the crypto project Effect.AI, described as an Open,Democratic and Decentralized Network for Artificial Intelligence.Effect.AI, founded in 2016, builds blockchain software platforms which combine the intelligence of 1000’s of humans and cutting-edge algorithms to create automation pipelines for sophisticated digital processes.When he isn’t working, you’ll find Chris butchering Guns N’Roses tunes on his Gibson Les Paul or hunting down giant game fish with his spearguns in South East Asia.

Robert “Crypto” Beadles

Co-Founder

Monarch Wallet

Robert “Crypto” Beadles is a Christian, father, husband, seasoned business builder; investor, author, prominent Blockchain & Cryptocurrency educator on TV, YouTube, TradingView Sessions, and throughout the world. Robert is responsible for starting and growing one of the largest construction service businesses in CA, a software development, real estate investment firm, and many more. Beadles is also the builder and Co-Founder of the Monarch Wallet, MonarchPay and is a member of the C4 Crypto Consortium.

Nate Whitehill

CEO

CryptoSlate

Nate Whitehill is an experienced technology entrepreneur, programmer and web developer, with nearly two decades of experience building web applications. In August of 2017, he built and launched CryptoSlate, now one of the top destinations for crypto news, data and information about people, products and companies. Over the past 2 years, CryptoSlate has become one of the largest crypto news site in the world by Alexa ranking, serving over 250,000 visitors per month.

Kyn Chaturvedi

CBDO

TomoChain

Kyn Chaturvedi is an early cryptocurrency investor and the Chief Business Development Officer for TomoChain, South East Asia's largest public blockchain. His 15 year professional career spans 7 countries as a technology entrepreneur and management consultant for startups. Kyn also holds an MBA from the Wharton School of Business and Bachelor Degrees in both Industrial Engineering & Economics from Georgia Tech.

John DeVadoss

Head of Development

NEO Global Development

DeVadoss has more than 15 years of experience with Microsoft, and co-founded text11, a messaging service that integrates machine learning. While at Microsoft, deVadoss was responsible for driving the success of .NET with architects in Microsoft’s competitive efforts against Java/J2EE, and most recently built up Microsoft Digital from zero to $500 million in business worldwide.

Eden Dhaliwal

Global Managing Director

Conflux Network

Eden Dhaliwal is the Global Managing Director at Conflux Network. He’s currently leading the company’s expansion efforts in North America. Eden specializes in identifying web 3.0 opportunities, assessing the viability of business models involving decentralization and valuing crypto assets. He has developed the world’s first innovation methodology for creating token economies and received the Blockchain Research Institute’s award for New Frontier in Enterprise Blockchain Research for leveraging blockchain technology to push boundaries of new business models.  Previously, Eden was a Partner at Outlier Ventures and built the firm’s crypto economics practice.

Kevin Sekniqi

Co-founder and COO

AVA Labs

Kevin Sekniqi is a Co-founder and COO of AVA Labs. He is a computer science PhD candidate at Cornell University. Since 2011, he has researched distributed systems and blockchains. He also has a background in cryptography, including work in encrypted databases, homomorphic encryption, consensus, protocols, and economic.

Stani Kulechov

Founder & CEO

Aave

Stani Kulechov is the Founder and CEO of Aave, an open source and non-custodial money market protocol to earn interest on deposits and borrow assets. Stani was studying law at the University of Helsinki when he first got into Ethereum and he started exploring how it could impact the traditional financial system. In 2017, Stani released ETHLend, one of the first DeFi DApps ever. Since then, he has made it his mission to create tools for an open, transparent, and equitable financial ecosystem through Aave Protocol.

Lennix Lai

Director of Financial Markets

OKEx

Lennix brought with him with over a decade of experience in the financial industry, specialized on high-frequency trading, DMA (Direct Market Access), asset management, front-to-back trading operation, risk management, and compliance. He now plays a key role in product development, enhancing customer experience, and improving the platform.Before joining OKEx, Lennix served in JP Morgan and AIG and was the Responsible Officer of CASHFinancial Services Group (00510.HK) who held full accountability on supervising regulatory activities defined by SFC. He managed a team of DMA specialists servicing global hedge funds, HFT, and quantitative CTAs, while also handling the relationship with major global exchanges.

Erkan Öz

Journalist & Economist

Öz, known for his work about the effects of technology on the world economy. Erkan Öz worked for international news outlets including the Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones Newswires & Al Jazeera for more than 11 years. In 2013 and 2014, Öz penned two books respectively, 2020 New Economy (Big Crisis - Wonderful Opportunity) and the Great Financial Flood. Erkan Öz emphasized in his books that the international monetary system will undergo a great transformation and cryptocurrencies, especially Bitcoin, will have a very important role in the new global monetary system.

Amber Chook

Co-founder

Zebra Global

Amber Chook is the co-founder of Zebra Global, a highly selective blockchain PR & market entry consulting agency specializing in Asian markets. Inspired by the potential of Bitcoin to bring economic freedom to the world, Amber got into blockchain in 2018. In 2019, she founded Zebra Global. Committed to her passion for social impact and women empowerment, she is also the founder of TEDxRoppongi, SheShaped, and the Japan Advisor for Girls20. Amber has dedicated herself to not only bridging International blockchain markets but also including more women in the global phenomenon of blockchain.

Sinan Koç

Founder and CEO

BiLira

Sinan is the Founder and CEO of BiLira, the first stable cryptocurrency to be pegged to the Turkish Lira. He is a seasoned entrepreneur and venture builder who has been working in the blockchain ecosystem for multiple years. Before BiLira, Sinan co-founded Geld, a peer to peer payment app and licensed it to Akbank in 2018. He then joined ConsenSys Token Foundry as Head of Sourcing in NY and specialized in Initial Coin Offerings. The BiLira team strongly believes that every currency will have a representation on the blockchain. His mission is to offer a bridge for everyone to connect to the decentralized world of tomorrow.

Jesus Rodriguez

CTO

IntoTheBlock

Jesus Rodriguez is a technology expert, serial entrepreneur, angel investor, and internationally recognized speaker and author. A computer scientist by background, Jesus is the Chief Technology Officer at IntoTheBlock, a platform that leverages advanced machine learning to understand and predict crypto-asset markets. Jesus is also the Chief Scientist and Managing Partner at Invector Labs, a development studio focused on leveraging artificial intelligence in real world applications. Prior to Invector Labs, Jesus founded Tellago, an award-winning software development agency focused on the latest technology trends. Jesus’ technical career includes tenures building cloud systems at Microsoft and quantitative trading platforms for several Wall Street hedge funds. Jesus has been the recipient of several industry awards including the Inc. 500 and Stevie Awards for American and international business. He serves as a board member in several enterprise software companies and is an investor in over a dozen of startups.

Edward Moncada

CEO & Co-founder

Blockfolio

Ed is co-founder and CEO of Blockfolio, the worlds #1 mobile crypto portfolio tracker. He is passionate about bringing cryptocurrency adoption to the mainstream, DAOs and decentralized governance, and future of cryptographic networks. In addition, Ed previously served as a founding board member of the Dash Foundation (2014 - 2018) where he helped conceptualize Dash's decentralized governance and treasury, as well as drive the first protocol M&A in the crypto ecosystem.

Sam Bankman-Fried

Founder and CEO

FTX

Before founding Alameda and then FTX, Sam was a trader on Jane Street Capital’s international ETF desk. He traded a variety of ETFs, futures, currencies, and equities, and designed their automated OTC trading system. He graduated from MIT with a degree in physics.

Olga Feldmeier

CEO and Co-founder

SMART VALOR

Olga Feldmeier is an entrepreneur and a thought leader focusing on the intersection between financial technology and blockchain. She is the CEO and co-founder of SMART VALOR, which has been nominated among the 10 most exciting European startups by Forbes.  Prior to founding SMART VALOR, Olga held the position of the Commercial Managing Partner at Xapo, one of the first global Bitcoin custodians. In 2015 she enabled the first Bitcoin license in Switzerland and with that started to write the history of the Swiss Crypto Valley, today one of the largest blockchain hubs worldwide.

Charles Bovaird

Vice President of Content

Quantum Economics

I am a financial writer and editor with strong knowledge of asset markets and investing concepts. Currently, I serve as VP of Content for financial services firm Quantum Economics. I have worked for financial institutions including State Street, Moody's Analytics and Citizens Commercial Banking. An author of more than 500 publications, my work has appeared in mediums such as New York Post, Washington Post, Fortune, CoinDesk and Investopedia. Previously, I created all the industrial finance training for a company with more than 300 people. I have spoken at industry events across the world and delivered speeches on financial literacy for Mensa and Boston Rotaract.

Maximilian Marenbach

Head of Banking and Payments

Kraken

Maximilian is the Head of Banking and Payments for the EMEA region at Kraken. His job is to make sure FIAT funds and transactions are as safe, customer friendly and reliable as possible. Before joining Kraken he was working for Dutch bank bunq.

Jose Macedo

Partner

Amazix Capital

Kevin Kelly

Principal & Co-Founder

Delphi Digital

Kevin is a principal and co-founder at Delphi Digital. Previously, he was an equity analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence.

Hose Mitamura

CEO

Cointelegraph Japan

Bruno Macchialli

Executive Head of Operations

Delchain Limited

Bruno is Executive Head of Operations at Delchain Limited, a licensed Financial Digital Asset institution that provides Capital Markets, Custody and Advisory services. He is an experienced and knowledgeable Financial and Blockchain advisor. Over the last years, he has worked with numerous clients to help them grow their business from early stage. Bruno has been involved with a number of successful IEO’s and has quarterbacked projects from beginning to end.

Nicolás Arqueros

CTO

EMURGO

As CTO at EMURGO - a global blockchain solutions company & a founding entity of Cardano, Nicolás leads EMURGO’s Enterprise unit to build tailored solutions for developers, startups, enterprises, and governments. Prior to EMURGO, Nicolás was CEO and co-founder of Moblox.io, a software development firm which built 40+ mobile solutions for some of the biggest companies in Chile, as well as Cotalker, a suite of solutions for the digitalization of companies. Additionally, Nicolás also holds an active position as Council Member of the Cardano Foundation.

YuanJie Zhang

Co Founder

Conflux Foundation

Yuanjie Zhang holds a bachelor's degree from Fudan University, and a master's degree from Brandeis University. Before joining the Conflux team, Yuanjie worked at Huatai Private Fund of Funds, UNC Endowment Management Company and Novus (Fin-tech Start-up) in Wall Street. He has expertise in investments, capital markets and business operations. He helped the fundraising of Conflux, and he is in charge of daily operation.

Travin Keith

Cryptocurrency, Freedom, and Open Source Advocate

BitStory | Consortio Group | STOKR

Travin Keith is a professional around cryptocurrency, blockchain, and open source, working with various companies and organizations around the space in a range of roles such as business strategy, technical solutions architecture, and other various consulting roles, on top of running a design agency with specialization in cryptocurrency and blockchain called BitStory. In addition, he is a CTO of Consortio Group, an innovation consulting firm, a Co-Founder and Advisor of STOKR, an STO platform, and an advisor of Soramitsu, a blockchain solutions development company, among many others. He also speaks frequently around the topics of cryptocurrency, open source, and freedom at various events around the world. In the past, he co-authored the Hyperledger white paper and participated in the Blockchain4EU initiative by the European Commission.

Alex Blagirev

Deputy CEO of IR, Blockchain and Tech Sensorium

Sensorium Corporation

Received award as the most innovative bank in Central and Eastern Europe according to the Global Finance Magazine, 2017.He managed the development of R3 in CIS region, including initial launch of R3 pressence and later launch on several projects on Corda.
He collaborated and formed with partners the FinTech Association (over 20major banks participants, including Central Bank as a co-founder) and designed the Masterchain - the first financial infrastructure for banking operations on blockchain in Russia, including the first banking transaction for digital identity on the blockchain between 5 russian banks. Alex had several roles on the edge of Innovations, Data and finance functions for other large financial institutions such as Alfa-Bank, Rosbank Societe Generale Group, VneshEconomBank (VEB).

Justin O'Connell

Founder

GoldSilverBitcoin

Justin O'Connell owns GoldSilverBitcoin, which has since 2012 provided a two way market for precious metals and Bitcoin. His written work about Bitcoin, blockchain, and related topics has appeared in Forbes.com, VICE, Cointelegraph, CoinDesk, and Bitcoin Magazine. He has spoken at conferences such as Inside Bitcoins in Berlin and Las Vegas, and the Bitcoin Conference in San Francisco. Feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. 

Chris Thomas

Head of Digital Assets

Swissquote Bank

Chris brings to Swissquote Bank a deep experience from across the financial markets and entrepreneurial worlds. Having started his career in Fixed Income and FX Sales and Trading at leading European Investment Banks, Chris moved onto creating and building his own businesses. More recently, Chris was Head of European Innovation for Fidelity Investments before leaving to build a crypto-assets custodian giving him deep exposure and understanding of the crypto-assets markets. Chris joined Swissquote Bank at an exciting time and is building the institutional crypto-asset trading and custody offering.

Naveed Ihsanullah

Head of Engineering Research

Algorand

Naveed is a senior engineering leader and technologist fascinated by distributed systems and performance. Most recently of Mozilla, Naveed was instrumental in designing and leading the Quantum Flow program that focused 400 engineers to double Firefox’s performance in just one year. Naveed also lead the adoption of new technologies across all browsers to close the performance gap with native applications. These technologies include WebAssembly, SIMD.js, Shared Array Buffer and the still experimental Binary AST for JS (BinJS). Naveed is also previously of Bit9 (now Carbon Black) where he served as Principal Engineer of an enterprise application whitelisting product and then took over the Global Software Repository, a massive cloud-based application reputation system.

Amrit Kumar

President, Chief Scientific Officer and Co-Founder

Zilliqa

Amrit Kumar is the President, Chief Scientific Officer and Co-Founder of Zilliqa. Focusing predominantly on areas of security, privacy and applied cryptography, Amrit’s research has been widely published at conferences such as IEEE/IFIP and IFIP TC-11 SEC. Amrit received his PhD from Université Grenoble-Alpes, France and was hosted at Inria's Grenoble center. Prior to his PhD, Amrit obtained a Master’s Degree in Security, Cryptology and Coding of Information Systems from École Nationale Supérieure d’Informatique et Mathématiques Apliquées de Grenoble, France.

Dr. Sanjeev Kaila

Managing Director & CEO

Jeev Network LLC

Dr. Sanjeev Kaila is  one of the potential young entrepreneurs of North America . He is the Managing Director & CEO Jeev Network LLC and Body Esthetics LLC an international health IT company a Surgical Center Business based in Atlanta GA USA, he sits on the Board of  USA based Public trading Drug Company called Praxsyn Corp, and is the founder of Real estate  Company Nazar Properties LLC.  He is successful in Managing both Companies and Maintaining a health care based Entrepreneurial Profile, and a large successful Real estate  Company.

Diana Aguilar

Host

The Block Code

Former CoinDesk and CriptoNoticias wiriter, Venezuelan Journalist Diana Aguilar (@criptodiana) tracks and record the best stories in the crypto field straight from their protagonists and brings them up to you in her podcast The Block CodeWith over 4 years of covering the area of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies for the Spanish and English speaking public, both in the media and corporate, she is an advocate of technology as an alternative for unbanked and opressed masses.

Héctor Cárdenas

CEO

CriptoNoticias

Venezuelan. Engineer and MBA. Creator and director of CriptoNoticias, the most important portal of news about Bitcoin in Spanish. Psychology fanatic and builder of the distributed digital society of the future. Bitcoiner.

Mauricio Tovar

Co-director

InTIColombia Research Group

Electronic Engineer from the National University of Colombia with aMaster's degree in Creation and Management of Innovative and Technologically Based Companies From the University of Barcelona. He leads the Blockchain line of the Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution of Colombia. He has been Director of Extension of the Bogotá headquarters of the National University of Colombia, and Co-director of the InTI Colombia research group of the National University, a research group that studies the disruptive technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Franco Amati

Member

Bitcoin Iberoamerica

Since 2011 Franco was part of the formation of the Bitcoin community in Argentina, one of the most active and with greater use of the technology. He is co-founder of the NGO Bitcoin Argentina and of EspacioBitcoin, a workspace through which a large part of the local enterprises of the sector have passed. Co-organizer of the Latin American Bitcoin & Blockchain Conference held annually since 2013, today he is part of Signatura, the first digital signature platform using blockchain technology.  

Dr. Steven Waterhouse

Co-Founder & CEO

Orchid Labs

Dr. Steven Waterhouse (Seven) is the CEO and Co-founder of Orchid Labs. Waterhouse previously served as a partner at blockchain-focused venture Pantera Capital from its inception in 2013 through July 2016 and worked at Fortress Investment Group, where he founded the Digital Currency Fund with Mike Novogratz and Pete Briger. Seven was a Co-founder and CTO of RPX (Nasdaq: RPXC) and served as Director of the Honeycomb product group at Sun Microsystems, one of the first computer and software technology companies to evolve during the dot com era. He holds a PhD in Engineering from the University of Cambridge.

Gregory Klumov

CEO

Stasis

Kristina Lucrezia Cornèr

Managing Editor & Head of Features

CoinTelegraph

Kristina Lucrezia Cornèr is managing editor and head of features at Cointelegraph. M.A. in political science and classical philology she is a passionate communicator promoting innovations, translating them into simple languages and helping visionaries to be heard.

Artem Kalikhov

Chief Product Officer

Waves Enterprise

He has implemented more than 15 projects in the field of development and implementation of corporate management systems of various classes and complexity, including at the federal level over the past 12 years. He has been a system engineer, system architect, and development manager in these projects. He has deep expertise in the areas of system and business analytics, designing information systems architecture, system integration, and management of development teams and technologically complex products. He has been developing applications and products using distributed ledger technology since 2017. He began developing the Waves Enterprise blockchain platform for public and private networks as a new Waves product line in 2017.

Julian Sevillano

Senior Advisor

Promontory Financial Group

Julian leads Promontory’s west coast client relations, which includes its Fintech and Digital Assets practice.
He has over 20 years of international banking and payments experience. Prior to working with Promontory,
Julian worked at VISA where he held various leadership positions in Risk Management, Finance, Strategy,
and Treasury. Most recently, as Global Head of Enterprise Risk Management, Julian was responsible for
VISA’s risk governance and risk management framework, and he led risk due diligence for over $3 Billion in
closed M&A transactions. He also led Risk Strategy formulation during VISA’s merger and IPO process.
Julian has extensive experience with US and international regulators.

Peter Marton

Senior Advisor

Promontory Financial Group

Peter advises financial institutions, FinTech firms, and regulatory bodies on financial crimes and digital assets compliance. In his time at Promontory, Peter has helped develop global sanctions programs, including through the development of policies, programs, and underlying procedures for foreign banking organizations (FBOs). He has managed enterprise-wide AML and sanctions risk assessments in Mexico, the United States, and Canada; designed a transaction monitoring programs; and
drafted regulatory responses responsive to consent orders. Prior to joining Promontory, Peter conducted polling and opinion research across the United States, Iraq, Thailand, and the Republic of Georgia to inform campaign strategy and advise corporations on emerging industry trends.

Lizzie Clitheroe

Director of Product Marketing

Arkose Labs

Lizzie Clitheroe is a cybersecurity specialist, heading up Arkose Labs’ product marketing team. In this role she delivers data-driven insights into fraud and authentication trends. Lizzie has 10 years’ experience working for fast-growth security vendors spanning fraud prevention, network security, and application security.

Benji Taylor

Senior Director, Solution Delivery

Arkose Labs

Benji Taylor is the Senior Director of Solution Delivery for Arkose Labs. He has been working in the Online Fraud and Abuse space for the past six years. Benji loves exploring the constantly changing fraud attack landscape and seeing new verbose ways companies are finding to quickly and effectively mitigate and reduce the attack service for their customers

Mark Rakhmilevich

Senior Director, Blockchain Product Management

Oracle

Christina Comben

Journalist

Cointelegraph

Christina Comben is a cryptocurrency journalist and content creator who’s passionate about continued learning, emerging tech, and starting important conversations. She has written for many publications in the space including CCN, CryptoSlate, and Bitcoinist, and is currently a feature writer for Cointelegraph Magazine.

Soravis Srinawakoon

CEO & Co-founder

Band Protocol

Soravis Srinawakoon is the CEO and co-founder of Band Protocol, a decentralized data oracle that connects real-world data and APIs to smart contracts. He received a Forbes 30 under 30 award for his work at Band Protocol. Previously, Soravis was a management consultant at Boston Consulting Group, advising c-level executives of top enterprises around the world. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science and a Master’s Degree in Management Science and Engineering, both from Stanford University.

Tracy Hutson

Co-Founder

ViRSE

Tracy Hutson is an actress, interior designer, author and philanthropist. Known for being the style consultant and designer of the Emmy Award-Winning TV show "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition". Alongside being an interior designer, Tracy Hutson is launching an innovative VR and Social-Commerce platform ViRSE.

Lucian Todea

Co-Founder & COO

Elrond

Lucian Todea is a technology entrepreneur and angel investor, with more than 15 years of experience in Internet and tech-related businesses. He is the co-founder & COO of Elrond, a blockchain that brings 1000x efficiency improvements over existing implementations via its proprietary Adaptive State Sharding & Secure Proof of Stake innovations. He is a founder, advisor & angel investor for multiple successful startups, such as Soft32, TypingDNA & Smartbill.

Elisaveta Kisyova

CFO

Tomya

Ray Youssef

CEO & Co-founder

Paxful

Ray is the CEO and co-founder of Paxful, people-powered marketplace for money transfers with anyone, anywhere, at any time. Their mission is to empower the forgotten four billion unbanked and underbanked around the world to have control of their money using peer-to-peer transactions. The company, founded in 2015, has over 3 million customers globally who you can instantly buy and sell bitcoin with—using over 300 different payment methods. Aside from making bitcoin accessible, Ray also launched the #BuiltWithBitcoin charitable initiative that aims to show the humanitarian capabilities of bitcoin. He’s an NYC native and has been a serial entrepreneur since 2001.

Kai Sedgwick

Reporter

Bitcoin.com

Kai has been working full-time in the cryptocurrency space for the past two years. Since purchasing his first bitcoins in 2013, he’s immersed himself in the industry, composing hundreds of articles for bitcoin.com. He’s also authoring technical whitepapers and designed token models for blockchain projects.

William Foxley

CoinDesk

tech reporter

William Foxley is a tech reporter for CoinDesk. He previously worked for Messari and the American Spectator. He holds investments in bitcoin.

Jane King

CEO

LilaMax Media

Jane Kingseed, better known as Jane King, is an American Journalist. King is the founder and CEO of LilaMax Media, which provides daily TV broadcast reports from the NASDAQ Marketsite. LilaMax Media launched January 21, 2014.

Kazim Atilla

CEO

IQONIQ

Carmelle Cadet

Founder & CEO

EMTECH

In her last role after a 10 year career at IBM, Carmelle led the Global Business Development efforts in IBM Blockchain for Payments. She is now the Founder and CEO of EMTECH, a fintech company helping Central Banks in Emerging Markets modernize their Financial Market Infrastructure with Blockchain, AI and Data Analytics. Her and the team are on a clear mission to build inclusive, safe and resilient financial infrastructures with digital currencies to unleash new markets and opportunities for everyone.

Liam Kelly

Editorial Manager

Crypto Briefing

Liam is a writer focused on emerging technologies, digital weirdness, and the decentralized web. He is also skilled at seeking out Internet-based subcultures, communicating between niche communities, and unearthing incoming trends in technology, culture, and politics. Based out of Berlin, Germany, he enjoys playing soccer or visiting his local Kneipe.

Nikola Pavesic

Head of Partnerships

Nikkei

Teaching myself many things but mostly trying with AI and writing - please don’t ask the why. Also a feminist - you shouldn't be asking why on that either. Grew up on westerns, local radio and, later-on, countless Seinfeld and Law & Order re-runs. Used to write long description about earlier positions on LinkedIn but realized there is not much point to it (proof below). Once got 106 likes on an instagram post. Based in Tokyo (which is the best city) but spending half of the time on the road.

Tyson Henly

Chief Commercial Officer

AS Monaco

I bring over 23 years of Global Sports Marketing & Sales experience from all sides of the business. This includes delivering over £1.7 Billion of sales revenue generated across Rights Owner, Media Agency, Brand, Agency & Player IP rights. As a Chief Commercial Officer at a major club I bring the sales and marketing skills necessary for the '360 perspective' in the sports marketing environment.

Misha Sher

Worldwide Vice President

Mediacom for Sport & Entertainment

Senior commercial & marketing executive with more than 15 years international experience developing some of the most iconic brands, rights holders and talent. Having operated at the cross section of sport, media, tech, talent and advertising, have an intrinsic understanding of how to unlock growth to drive commercial and strategic objectives.

Arnaud Le Hors

Senior Technical Staff Member

IBM

Arnaud Le Hors is Senior Technical Staff Member of Blockchain & Web Open Technologies at IBM. Arnaud has been working on standards and open source for over 25 years. He was editor of several key web specifications including HTML and DOM and was a pioneer of open source with the release of libXpm in 1990. Arnaud currently is the main representative for IBM at W3C, the chair of the Hyperledger Technical Steering Committee, a contributor to Hyperledger Fabric, and a member of the European Blockchain Observatory.

Andrey Shevchenko

Reporter

Cointelegraph

Based in Italy with Russian roots, Andrey discovered the world of crypto by hunting for cybersecurity bounties. He worked at several blockchain startups before turning to journalism, almost by chance. He’s passionate about technology and business in equal measure, and sees blockchain as a potential driver of deep societal change.