Speakers
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Agne KazakauskaiteMember of the INATBA Finance Working Group, Member of the EUBOF Expert PanelExecutive in blockchain, fintech and government relations, advisor to crypto projects and VC funds. Active member of Finance committee at INATBA
BSc degree in Investment and Financial Risk Management and MSc in Digital Currencies. -
Donna RedelFordham Law and Business school, AAB member
Donna Redel was the managing director of The World Economic Forum, the foremost global organization combining business, political, academic and other leaders of society committed to improving the state of the world. Ms. Redel was the first woman to chair a USA exchange, The Commodity Exchange. Following her work in global organizations, Ms. Redel began a second career as a New York City-based advisor and investor focusing on Fintech, Blockchain and emerging technologies. She is an active participant in the startup community with New York Angels, serving as a board member, the co-founder of the Blockchain Committee, co-chair of the Israeli Investment Committee and chair of the Education Committee.
Ms. Redel developed and is teaching a course on Blockchain-Crypto-Digital Assets at Fordham Law school and Fordham Gabelli Business. She will also teach a newly designed course on Smart Securities. The focus of her public service efforts are the environment, the arts, health and promoting women’s leadership. -
Florian GlatzPresident of the German Blockchain Association, Co-Founder EUCI
Florian Glatz is President of the German Blockchain Association (Bundesblock) and co-founder of EUCI (European Crypto Initiative). Florian advises political decision-makers at the German and European level on blockchain regulation. Trained as a lawyer and software developer with many years of experience working full-time in the blockchain space, Florian is aware of the key issues at the intersection of crypto assets and regulation.
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Hart LamburCo-Founder of UMA
Hart is the co-founder of UMA, a decentralized financial contracts platform built to enable Universal Market Access. He studied computer science before working as an interest rate trader at Goldman Sachs through the financial crisis. In 2013 he co-founded Openfolio, a personal finance tracking platform that was acquired in 2017 by a financial planning firm. He now leads a team of financial contract and oracle design researchers at UMA.
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Itamar LesuisseCEO and Co-Founder of Argent
Itamar Lesuisse is the CEO & Co-Founder of Argent. He previously co-founded, led and successfully exited Peak, the leading mobile cognitive training service with over 50m users. Prior to Peak he worked at Visa, Amazon and BCG.
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Jack Du Rose
Jack du Rose is a former jeweler, current blockchain nerd, and founder of Colony. He is excited by the power shift our decentralized future brings. When not making $100m diamond skulls, or paradigm shifting social platforms, Jack enjoys a nice cup of tea and a sit down.
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Jack SuttonAssociate General Counsel for Product at Gemini
Jack is Associate General Counsel for Product at Gemini, focusing on securities law, listings, and custody. He has previously advised on digital asset initiatives at State Street Bank and Circle, including the launch of the USDC stablecoin. Jack attended Harvard Law School and began his career at Skadden Arps as a securities attorney.
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Jenny LeungAustralian Regulatory Expert, Blockchain and FinTech Attorney at Ketsal
Jenny is a New York and Australian attorney at Ketsal with a focus on blockchain, fintech, and privacy. She is also a Key Contributor to Australia’s National Blockchain Roadmap RegTech Working Group. She formerly worked as a lawyer at the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (“ASIC”). In her capacity there, she assisted in the oversight and supervision of financial market infrastructure and drafted ASIC guidance regarding distributed ledger technology. Prior to joining Ketsal, she consulted on GDPR, CCPA, and other data privacy issues at PwC. Jenny focuses on issues related to U.S. securities laws, state money transmitter laws and data privacy. Her writings can be found on jennyleung.io
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Jori ArmbrusterCEO and Co-Founder of EthicHub
Jori is co-founder and CEO of EthicHub, a Blockchain-based platform to connect small farmers to world-wide lenders and direct buyers. Before focusing on how to use blockchain for the SDGs, Jori was CEO of a wholesaler in Spain with over 100 salespoints and he also had prior experience on coffee production. EthicHub is a pioneer on connecting DeFi to the real-world economy. Ethix token ecosystem acts as collateral for unbanked farmers with no collateral.
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Lex SokolinGlobal Fintech Co-Head and CMO of ConsenSys
Lex is a futurist and entrepreneur focused on the next generation of financial services. He is the Global Fintech Co-Head and CMO at ConsenSys, a blockchain software company building the infrastructure, applications, and practices that enable a decentralized world. He focuses on strategy and product development across Fintech, Decentralized Finance and DAOs, public and private enterprise blockchain solutions, and emerging crypto asset classes.
Previously, Lex was the Global Director of Fintech Strategy at Autonomous Research, an equity research firm serving institutional investors (acquired by AllianceBernstein), where he covered artificial intelligence, blockchain, neobanks, digital lenders, roboadvisors, paytech and mixed reality. Before Autonomous, Lex was COO at AdvisorEngine, a digital wealth management technology platform (acquired by Franklin Templeton), and CEO of NestEgg Wealth, a roboadvisor that partnered with financial advisors. Prior to NestEgg, Lex held roles in investment management and banking at Barclays, Lehman Brothers, and Deutsche Bank. He earned a JD/MBA from Columbia University and a B.A. in Economics and Law from Amherst College.
Lex’s thought leadership has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Economist, Bloomberg, FT, Reuters, American Banker, ThinkAdvisor, and Investment News, among others. He is a regular speaker at industry conferences such as Money2020, LendIt, Schwab Impact, In|Vest, T3 Enterprise Edition, and Consensus. His writing is publicly available at https://lex.substack.com.
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Magnus JonesNordic Blockchain and Innovation Lead - EY Tax & Law
Magnus Jones is the Nordic Blockchain & Innovation Lead at EY Tax & Law. Within this area he works close together with key stakeholders such as authorities, banks and academia, and assist clients with everything from regulatory challenges to technical implementations. Magnus is an experienced international speaker within digital trends and technology, covering many different areas through some of his roles as founding board member of Oslo Blockchain Cluster and also the Norwegian Computer Society Group for Blockchain, AI and Robotics. He is a lecturer at EMBA classes at BI Norwegian Business School, and also the University of Oslo.
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Marina MarkezicCo-Founder, European Crypto Initiative
A professional experienced in legal and business advisory, Marina has worked in the blockchain industry since 2017, starting in one of the first European blockchain accelerators as a lead adviser. Currently mentoring and advising startups, she specialises in blockchain governance and token regulation. Marina is a board member of the Blockchain think thank Slovenia and co-founded the European Crypto Initiative (EUCI), impacting the future EU crypto regulation in favor of decentralised use cases and open blockchains.
Prior to 2017, she co-founded a crowdinvesting platform and worked in alternative financing for startups. Marina was selected as one of the 100 top women in Fintech by LATTICE80 in 2018 in collaboration with Miss Kaya. -
Mel GeldermanCEO and Co-Founder of Monolith
Motivated by transformative technologies, Mel has founded an algae biofuel company, traveled the world solely on Bitcoin, and introduced Ethereum to a Taiwanese geothermal power project.After meeting Ethereum’s creator Vitalik Buterin in Taiwan, he decided to pursue his vision of a tokenized world built on Ethereum and co-founded Monolith with David Hoggard. Monolith was one of the earliest Ethereum projects and has since built a team of 25 in London, temporarily registered with the UK’s FCA, and is currently in alpha in the UK and EEA.
Mel Gelderman is the CEO and co-founder of Monolith. Monolith is the world’s first Ethereum-based DeFi wallet with an accompanying Visa debit card for spending crypto assets anywhere. Motivated by transformative technologies, Mel has founded an algae biofuel company, traveled the world solely on Bitcoin, and introduced Ethereum to a Taiwanese geothermal power project. After meeting Ethereum’s creator Vitalik Buterin in Taiwan, he decided to pursue his vision of a tokenized world built on Ethereum and co-founded Monolith with David Hoggard. Monolith was one of the earliest Ethereum projects and has since built a team of 25 in London, temporarily registered with the UK’s FCA, and is currently in alpha in the UK and EEA. -
Michael EgorovCEO at Curve Finance
Micahel Egorov is the Founder and CEO of Curve Finance (curve.fi), and previous Co-founder and CTO of NuCypher, a cutting edge encryption company. Curve is an exchange liquidity pool on Ethereum designed for extremely efficient stablecoin trading, low risk, supplemental fee income for liquidity providers, without an opportunity cost.
Curve is a pioneer in yield farming space, and has garnered a ton of attention as one of the earliest successful projects in DeFi. -
Mona El IsaFounder of Enzyme Finance
Mona El Isa is the Co-founder and CEO of Avantgarde Finance Ltd. Ex-CoFounder and CEO of Melonport AG, the creator of Melon Platform (now Enzyme Finance and decentralized in governance) and the President of the Board of MAMA, the Multichain Asset Managers Association. She is a former VP of Equities Trading at Goldman Sachs and a Forbes “30 under 30”. She also a Portfolio Manager at Jabre Capital Managers.
Enzyme Protocol is an Ethereum-based protocol for decentralized on-chain asset management. It is a protocol for people or entities to manage their wealth & the wealth of others within a customizable and safe environment. Enzyme empowers anyone to set up, manage and invest in customized on-chain investment vehicles. -
Mounir BenchemledFounder of ParaSwap.io
Mounir Benchemled is the founder of ParaSwap, a co-organizer at DeFi France, and previously CTO at Captain Dash.
ParaSwap is a middleware that introduces a connectivity tissue between protocols, dApps and trading venues. ParaSwap beats the market price by splitting orders across multiple DEXs into one optimized and secure transaction -
Pat RawsonCo-Founder, Curve Labs
Pat is a decentralized governance advocate and designer. He previously worked as the head of communications at DAOstack, an open-source project developing blockchain governance software, and writes about decentralized governance design patterns.
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Pawel KuskowskiCEO of Coinfirm
Paweł is a recognized authority on compliance issues in the cryptocurrency and block-chain space. He is an ex-Global Head of AML of Royal Bank of Scotland, having earlier held a similar role at UBS. Pawel’s an expert in compliance and anti-money laundering (AML), with extensive experience conducting global projects for international financial institutions and working with supervisory authorities.
A sought-after speaker who has appeared at top industry conferences including COMPLY2018 in New York, TokenMarket Gibraltar and Startup Grind Europe; his views are regularly featured in media such as Bloomberg, City AM and the Financial Times and has been profiled by Forbes in addition to being a regular contributor to the outlet. Chairman of the Compliance Association of Poland and a member of the advisory board of the International Compliance Association. -
Priyanka DesaiVP of Operations at OpenLaw
Priyanka Desai is currently leading operations for OpenLaw, the project behind Flamingo and The LAO. Prior to this, Priyanka graduated from Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. During law school, she spent time at blockchain FinTech consortium R3. In addition, she worked for the New York State Department of Financial Services assisting the Capital Markets division on cryptocurrency enforcement and “Bit Licensing.” Prior to this, Priyanka worked for the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee. Priyanka is a graduate of Wake Forest University.
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Rebecca RettigModerator, Partner at Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP
Rebecca Rettig is a partner in Manatt’s financial services group based in the New York office. An accomplished litigator and regulatory advisor, Rebecca has a practice that encompasses a broad range of complex commercial disputes as well as regulatory enforcement work, with a special focus on the blockchain and digital asset sector. Rebecca has significant experience litigating securities class actions, shareholder derivative suits, intellectual property matters and contract disputes.
Rebecca’s unique experience in the blockchain and cryptocurrency space includes advising clients on the breadth of U.S. regulations applicable to blockchain projects, as well as counseling clients on process and compliance matters relating to, among other things, New York’s BitLicense regulations. Rebecca handles lawsuits and arbitrations relating to blockchain and cryptocurrency, but also regularly guides clients to successfully resolve disputes prior to any litigation. -
Robert LeshnerFounder of Compound Finance
Robert is the founder of Compound Finance, one of the world’s leading Cryptocurrency and Blockchain firms and a pioneer in Decentralized Finance (DeFi) and Governance token issuance. He is also an active investor in the cryptoasset space.
After a career in finance, Robert decided to help make the world a more private and better place. He first started his journey in tech startups by founding Safe Shepard, now acquired, and then leading product at Postmates. In 2017, he founded Compound Finance with his previous co-founder, Goeff Hayes.
He holds an Economics degree from the University of Pennsylvania and is a Chartered Financial Analyst. -
Samsul KarimBusiness & Ecosystem Development at Binance
Samsul (Samy) Karim works on ecosystem development for Binance Smart Chain, supporting developers and project teams build and grow in the BSC ecosystem. Samy is passionate about education and specifically developer education, as well as contributing towards realizing the full potential of Web3, by leveraging blockchain tech and crypto to significantly improve and redefine the legacy systems which our economies and societies operate on.
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Sergej KunzCEO and Co-Founder of 1inch
Sergej Kunz is the CEO and Co-founder of 1inch Exchange, the biggest DEX aggregator in DeFi. From 2015 to 2019, Sergej worked for Mimacom consultancy, running projects for major customers, such as Bosch, Siemens and Porsche. After joining Porsche on a full time basis, he gradually shifted towards cybersecurity.
Sergej first entered crypto back in 2012. After mining Ethereum for years, he launched a YouTube channel, CryptoManiacs, in which he did live security audits of smart contracts. His eventual 1inch Exchange cofounder, Anton Bukov, would join him as a co-host on CryptoManiacs soon after. This would be the start of a very fruitful partnership.
In May 2019, at a hackathon in New York City, over the course of 60 sleepless hours, Sergej and Anton developed a DEX aggregator solution. This idea of a crypto exchange aggregator that splits deals across multiple exchanges, offering the user better rates than any individual exchange, became the basis for 1inch. -
Stani KulechovCEO and Founder of AAVE
Stani Kulechov is the Founder and CEO of Aave, an open source and non-custodial liquidity 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.
DeFi vs. Regulation: The Future of Finance
This event series looked at one of the fastest-growing topics in the Finance sector: Decentralised Finance, or DeFi. Aiming to share diverse perspectives on DeFi’s risks and rewards, as well as how they will be impacted by current or future or regulation, the speaker’s list included DAOs, regulators and governance experts. The event series took place over three sessions in February.
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