Scott Walker, SEC: Scott is a member of the Distributed Ledger Technology Working Group. His primary focus is on Investment Advisers and Investment Companies. Prior to his work as a regulator, Scott was a Corporate Counsel at Barclays and BlackRock. Before joining the Commission, Scott’s practice focused on Derivatives and Securities Finance transactions, and Hedge Fund Strategy. Scott earned his J.D. from Mortiz College of Law at the Ohio State University in 2007.
Joseph Ashby CoFounding Partner Sergenian Ashby LLP Joseph’s practice concentrates on startup disputes, founder disputes, partnership disputes, and trade secret disputes, with an emphasis on representing blockchain companies and individuals in such disputes. Joseph was previously with Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP. He earned his J.D. from University of Michigan Law School.
Ken Kavanaugh Director Customer Acquisition Everbloom, a venture-backed decentralized exchange that aggregates smart contracts and protocols to pool orders and liquidity. As an early employee of E*TRADE within its strategy and M&A department, Ken managed $1B+ in fintech deal volume. He’s co-founder of Moon Assist, an advanced order management platform, and advisor to Altcoin.io, a Plasma-based DEX. Previously, he led corporate and business development efforts for Lykke DEX, a pioneer in the use of the security token.
Shuonan Chen, Founding Partner IOVC/Agile VC, CEO of Shinect (Silicon Valley-based community of 5,000+ engineers passionate about entrepreneurship), and Board Member of North America Blockchain Association. At IO and Agile, Shuo has invested in and helped various startups globalize and expand into new markets; notable investments include Boom (unicorn), Chariot (acquired by Ford), Checkr (unicorn), Grubmarket, Matternet, Node.io, Rescale and Zenreach. She is also a Lecturer at UC Berkeley and Faculty at Singularity University. Prior, Shuo worked at Goldman Sachs in investment banking, where she was involved in deals including Alibaba’s $21.8 billion IPO, the largest IPO in US history. There, she also helped run the convertibles business and represented the firm on the Board of Women in Finance. Before that, Shuo was at PwC, where she worked on Google’s $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola and LinkedIn’s $119 million acquisition of SlideShare. She also ran Cashify, a social enterprise for financial literacy. Shuo graduated cum laude from UC Berkeley with a triple major (and 2 minors) in 3 years, and has been a Board Member for Berkeley’s alumni association. She also completed a JD with the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where her work on financial regulation will be soon published by Cambridge University Press.
John Cooper COO Abelian Technologies John Cooper has a wide range of leadership and business development experience. With a masters, in economics he has developed a penchant for economic modeling and quantitative research. In his last role, helped a start up grow from a team of 4 and $200k annual revenue, to a team of 20+ and a projected revenue of $3M in under 2 years. John built his first bitcoin mining rig back in 2011 and has been researching and following the cryptocurrency space since that time.
Divyesh Jadav Manager/Senior Software Engineer IBM Research Conception, design, and product and protoype implementation of innovative solutions in the realm of storage software, including (but not limited) to the areas of storage resource management tools and analytics, performance evaluation, SAN and NAS systems, networking protocols, RAID algorithms, and large scale systems.
Marta Belcher, IP Attorney Ropes & Gray Marta Belcher is a technology and intellectual property attorney at Ropes & Gray LLP in the Silicon Valley, and a leader in the area of blockchain law. Marta represents blockchain companies and a blockchain trade association in matters related to public policy, as well as speaking about blockchain law around the world, including at CryptoHQ during the World Economic Forum in Davos and in the European Parliament in Brussels. Marta also represents clients in matters related to blockchain and intellectual property, including drafting a blockchain-transferrable software license and advising in industry-wide discussions about blockchain patenting. She is the author of “Defensive Patenting Strategies for Blockchain Innovators” and a participant in an international working group on blockchain for social impact. Marta is an alum of Stanford Law School, U.C. Berkeley, Apple, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. She has been named a “Huffington Post Greatest Person of the Day” and has been featured in Forbes.
Yiseul Cho Venture Partner FBG Capital FBG Capital is the largest crypto fund based in China. She is also Founder Crypto Girls and Cofounder of a stealth project. She is Advisor to the Korean Blockchain Association. She is also Advisor to ICON, Medibloc, Waves platform, Nucleus vision, Beetoken, PolicyPal Network and Metadium. She is Ex-Founding Partner Blockchain Partners Korea (currently HASHED) . Yiseul is the first blockchain engineer @HSBC.
Austin Alexander VP Kraken Digital Asset Exchange Kraken is currently one of the largest and most successful cryptocurrency exchanges globally. Previously, in 2013, Austin co-founded the New York Bitcoin Center, the world’s first physical bitcoin exchange space. After nearly 5 years in the bitcoin exchange space, Austin has consulted and advised hundreds of businesses and investors on the practical utility of cryptocurrency.
Monette Stephens, Head Corporate Dev Tokensoft has a unique combination of entrepreneurial, investing, technical, banking, sales and marketing expertise. As the Head of Corporate Development of TokenSoft, she has been instrumental in building the sales and partnership pipeline supporting over 20 fully compliant Security Token Offerings with investors from over 170 countries. Monette co-founded and ran a FINRA registered Broker-Dealer obtaining Series 7, 24 and 63 registrations and had multiple exits through IPO or M&A. She has BS and MS degrees in CS/ECE.
Corey Harris Growth Manager Dispatch.io: Corey is the Growth Manager for Dispatch (dispatchlabs.io) and leads their growth marketing strategy. Dispatch is a DLT platform for creating data-centric smart contracts for B2B enterprise businesses. Before joining Dispatch, he cofounded, Blackchain, a tech education platform, where he discusses tokenomics, distributed network history, blockchain infrastructural issues and consensus models’ impact on distributed network platforms’ adoption. He is an avid blogger (coreyaharris.com) who writes about tokenomics and how to create effective token incentive models. He views distributed network technologies like Blockchain, DAG, and IPFS as the next wave of new economic theory.
Jalak Jobanputra Founding Partner Future Perfect Ventures, an early stage venture capital fund in NYC focused on next generation technology such as blockchain and machine learning.FPV’s portfolio includes Abra, Open Garden, Blockstream, Bitpesa, FuseMachines, Everledger and Blockchain. Jalak was awarded Institutional Investor’s Top Fintech Dealmakers in 2017 and 2016. In 2017, she was cited as a “Top 5 Investor Powering the Blockchain Boom” and CB Insights noted FPV as one of the top VC funds in blockchain “before it was cool”. Since founding the firm, she has spoken on blockchain technology at many global conferences, including the Milken Global Institute, Dutch Development Bank/FMO annual meeting, and The Economist Buttonwood Gathering. Prior to FPV, Jobanputra was the Director of Emerging Market Mobile Investments at Omidyar Network, a philanthrocapitalist fund started by Pierre Omidyar, co-founder of eBay. Previously, she worked at Intel Capital investing in enterprise software in Silicon Valley from 1999-2003. as well as New Venture Partners and the NYC Investment Fund where she formed one of NYC’s first seed funds and helped establish the Fintech Innovation Lab in 2010. She started her career as a media/tech/telecom investment banker in NYC and London. Jobanputra is also active in supporting education reform and social entrepreneurship. She servedas a Trustee of Achievement First Bushwick Charter Schools (Brooklyn). She is on the Board of Directors for the Center for an Urban Future, Advisory Board of L’Oreal’s Women in Digital Initiative, member of Mayor DeBlasio’s Broadband Taskforce, and former Access to Capital Committee member of the US Secretary of State Clinton Women’s Leadership Council. She is a magna cum laude graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, with a B.S. in Economics (concentration in Finance) from The Wharton School and a B.A. in Communications from the Annenberg School. She received her MBA from Kellogg in 1999.
Emin Gun Sirer, CoFounder/Chief Scientist BloXroute Labs Professor Emin Gun Sirer is the co-founder and Chief Scientist at bloXroute Labs, a venture backed team of Professors and PhDs from Cornell and Northwestern Universities that are developing networking solutions to solve the blockchain scalability problem at Layer-0. Prof. Sirer is also the Associate Professor and Co-Director of the Initiative for Cryptocurrencies and Smart Contracts (IC3) at Cornell University. He has played pivotal roles in characterizing the Nakamoto consensus and the DAO detection and aftermath, and is the inventor of the Falcon backbone relay network which has been operational in the Bitcoin network since April 2016.
Jordan Davis Director of Business Development Tokensoft Jordan has spent the last 7 years of his career in financial services, specifically on the wealth planning for high net worth individuals. Most recently, he served as a VP at Fidelity Investments where he was responsible for over $500M of client assets. In May of this year, he transitioned to TokenSoft to help develop and expand TokenSoft’s scope of business relationships and partnerships. TokenSoft is a technology platform that enables small businesses, enterprises, and institutions to meet compliance requirements for blockchain-based securities at issuance, distribution and exchange. TokenSoft enables it’s clients to meet banking, securities and tax requirements in over 50 countries. Current and past clients include Hedera Hashgraph, The Tezos Foundation, Andra Capital, and 19 other global fundraising projects.
Daisy Ozim Director Blockchain for Social Justice collective: Blockchain for Social Justice collective is a platform designed to promote education and access of blockchain technology and cryptocurrency for marginalized communities. Daisy has worked to support the inclusion of women in the blockchain ecosystem through her tireless advocacy efforts. She is a founding member of the Black Womens Blockchain Council, and advisor for SHEQ wallet, a cryptocurrency wallet specifically designed for women and is now working on statewide efforts to establish blockchain policy and education for economic development non-profits. Daisy hosts events to bring women together and educate them in order to diversify the blockchain space.
Mike Han, CTO Splend Ltd Mike is a blockchain developer with 20 years of experience in software development in Silicon Valley. Mike’s technical and financial services background and blockchain software experience led to envisioning Splend’s powerful technology – Integrated Blockchain Architecture™ (IBA™). Prior to Splend, Mike had the role of CTO, senior and lead engineer on multiple projects, including first-generation enterprise applications, platform re-architecting efforts, and mature, existing applications.
Bryce Clemmer Chief Advisor/Strategy Officer IHT is a seasoned blockchain/crypto entrepreneur who has founded, advised and invested in several disruptive technology companies. Clemmer first became involved in the blockchain and digital currency space in 2010. In 2012, he founded Vadio which had more than 120 million monthly users and was the first video distribution platform that allowed music streaming services to incorporate music videos into their audio streams in real-time. Clemmer was also an integral part of launching the first-generation iPhone at Apple and was part of the MIT/Stanford Venture Lab. He currently serves on the advisory board at Oregon State University’s School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and is also a guest lecturer at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business. Clemmer graduated with a degree in economics from Willamette University, where he also co-founded the Willamette University Investment Group
Elliot Feeny Senior Associate BTC Labs BTC Labs is an innovation studio for Web 3.0 protocols and businesses where Elliot has contributed significantly to projects like Po.et, CoinCart, and MAD Network. Elliot also serves as the Technical Editor for yBitcoin Magazine and has been featured in Bitcoin Magazine, Distributed, and Wolter’s Kluwer Securities Regulation Daily.
P.P.S. Narayan (also known as PPSN) is a technology executive with more than 20 years of experience in software engineering, distributed and large scale systems. Until recently, PPSN held various leadership positions at Yahoo and Oath/Verizon, where he led teams that built much of Yahoo Video platforms and Cloud services. Namely, encoding, players/sdks, video AI/ML, structured and unstructured storage, user data, pub-sub messaging, serving and the edge. He was also the head of Systems Research at Yahoo Labs for part of his tenure. Prior to Yahoo, PPSN spent 10 years at Bell Labs Research where he led research and development in areas such as databases, query processing, network management and discovery, and geo-fencing for location based services. PPSN holds a bachelor’s and masters degree in Computer Science and Engineering. He has co-authored multiple publications in top-tier database conferences and holds patents in many areas across databases, network management, storage, and video. These days, he is mentoring, providing consultations, advising and blogging about all matters technology and products, including blockchains.
Katherine Wu, Messari: Katherine Wu is the Director of Business Development and Community Management at Messari, a New York-based crypto startup aimed at promoting transparency and smarter decision-making in the cryptoasset industry. Prior to Messari, Katherine has worked at Bank of China, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Bank of America, and the U.S. State Department. Katherine holds a J.D. law degree from Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and a B.A. in International Relations from Johns Hopkins University. She grew up moving between in Hong Kong and mainland China and has native fluency in Mandarin Chinese.
David Streltsoff VP Sales Ambisafe David is a veteran of the electronic trading industry within the traditional finance industry. As a senior sales executive at Maystreet, Citadel and Knight Capital, David was responsible for building out a sales team focused on unique order routing and connectivity to market centers. Prior to that David was one of the key members responsible for Knight Capitals acquisition of EDGETRADE. Originally from NYC, David has spent the past 5 years in San Francisco.
Adam S. Juratovac is an attorney at Juratovac Law and represents emerging companies and entrepreneurs in the Silicon Valley. He has successfully championed for causes such as entrepreneurs rights and fair pay in addition to helping guide entrepreneurs in emerging industries. Prior to his career in law, he worked at CLEVER in the social media industry. He built the brands of over 100 professional athletes and celebrities leading to successful brand partnerships. His book, Student-Athletes And Social Media, continues to be the standard in digital branding at athletics departments. He is currently the NCAA’s Subject Matter Expert on Social Media. Adam J’s roots run deep in Palo Alto. He is a board member of two Palo Alto non-profits, My Digital TAT2 and Magical Bridge Foundation, in addition to being a football coach at Menlo-Atherton High School.
Dr Stephen Tse Founder Harmony Stephen founded Harmony that scales and verifies smart contracts. He holds PhD in security protocols, formal methods, language design. Stephen worked at Microsoft Research, Google and Apple where he built global-scale systems for personalized search. At Harmony he is building a decentralized AI marketplaces with millions tx/sec, an open consensus platform must scale end-to-end from protocols, systems to smart contract verification. They focus on integrating the latest research to production with 100k nodes.
Bart Stephens CoFounder/Managing Partner Blockchain Capital, the first venture capital fund to invest exclusively in the blockchain technology sector and the first to raise a venture fund through an ICO. Blockchain Capital is the pioneer and most established VC firm in the Blockchain sector with more than 75 portfolio companies across four funds. Prior to Blockchain Capital, Bart Stephens was Managing Partner and Co-Founder of Stephens Investment Management (SIM), a family owned and operated hedge fund and venture capital firm. Bart and his brother and Co-founder, Brad, invented the term and pioneered “Nanocap” investing – venture capital style investing in the public markets focused on sub micro-cap equities. Bart has a background as both an operating entrepreneur and a venture capitalist. Prior to co-founding SIM, Bart was Executive Vice President, Venture Capital for Ivanhoe Capital Corporation (ICC), an international investment firm. Before joining ICC, Bart was a founding investor and Head of Corporate & Business Development for Oncology.com. Oncology.com grew to become the internet’s largest cancer related web site before being sold to Pharmacia (now Pfizer) in 2001. Prior to Oncology.com, Bart spent more than two years with E*TRADE, an early internet innovator in online financial services. While at E*TRADE, he held senior positions focused on product marketing, business development and corporate development. Bart earned a B.A. in Political Science from Princeton University.
Mark Hamade Partner Vivaris Capital LLC an 18 year old private equity firm. Mark Hamade is a Conscious Capitalist, meaning he passionately respects People, the Planet and Profitable enterprise, and believes that organizations have a responsibility to uphold all three Ps equally. He is an accomplished, visionary senior executive with more than twenty years’ experience in driving revenue growth, building world-class teams, enforcing cultures of excellence, strengthening operational effectiveness and increasing profitability. A strategist, developer and leader of people and culture, and a go-to Merger and driving growth in strategic operational roles with measurable top-line results of over $1 Billion. He has had returns between 21% and 68%. His career spans multiple industries, including renewable energy, enterprise software, industrial engineering and IT services. Mark is globally minded and globally well connected, having established offices in Mexico, the Middle East, Europe, Asia and the Far East. He maintains business connections in over 50 countries, including those with the wealthiest economies.
Mark Albertson Silicon Valley Journalist Mark is a Silicon Valley journalist whose stories are regularly published for SiliconANGLE Media and Blasting News. He was previously a senior writer for the San Francisco Examiner and CBS-Bay Area. He specializes in coverage of Fintech and cybsersecurity topics, in addition to writing regularly about enterprise computing. He is also an experienced video and TV producer, having created Tech Closeup, a nationally syndicated program on technology that aired on ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX affiliate stations over the course of four years.
Mason Borda CEO/CoFounder Tokensoft TokenSoft is the market leader in launching and supporting compliant security token sales through its white label, SaaS token sale platform. An expert on blockchain compliance, Mr. Borda works closely with private equity funds, investment banks and other financial institutions to implement next-generation, blockchain-based equity structures, and has supported the launch of tokens as compliant securities in over 50 countries. Prior to launching TokenSoft, Mr. Borda developed and scaled foundational technologies for Bitcoin and Ethereum, the world’s two largest cryptocurrency platforms. His notable achievements include architecting the custody infrastructure for the blockchain launched by the Royal Mint of England, developing the world’s first-ever multi-signature Ethereum web wallet, and helping scale BitGo, a cryptocurrency custody platform, up to $1 billion in transactions per month. Mr. Borda holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from Cal Poly – San Luis Obispo and an MS in Electrical Engineering from Santa Clara University.
Jason E. Barkeloo Founder/Chairman Knowbella Technology Jason has thirty-four years of experience as an entrepreneur, researcher, investor, and educator. He began his career as a US Army air defense operations and intelligence assistant. Later, after the US Army sponsored his higher education, he managed military medical facilities and research laboratories. At the end of his US Army career with a final assignment as the lab operations officer of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) Medical Detachment, Jason was selected for the Department of Defense “Troops to Teachers” program. In that role, Jason spent 5-years as an inner-city high school science teacher. He received national recognition and awards for innovations in science education including the Sam’s Club/Walmart Teacher of the Year. Notably, he was a founder of a virtual high school focused on prescriptively delivering physical and life science content to students. After teaching, Jason became an entrepreneur and launched a number of startups. Jason’s first company, TouchSmart Publishing, was an educational content company providing content to special needs students. His second company, Somatic Digital, created the touch user interface (TUI) human-computer interface technology and had relationships with NASA, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Freescale Semiconductor, and the National Federation of the Blind. His third company, Pilus Energy, was a synthetic biology company. It was purchased by a publicly traded company in 2014. Jason’s current 9-year effort is Open Therapeutics; an open science company that crowdsources orphan therapeutic intellectual properties (IP) to the global scientific community, particularly the underserved scientists in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The blockchain-enabled collaboration platform is Therapoid.net that is currently in alpha testing. He hired the CEO and serves as Chair of the Board. His second current effort is Knowbella Tech; an open science effort crowdsourcing IP to researchers around the world. Knowbella Tech will provide Helix tokens (“cryptocurrency”) based upon Ethereum blockchain to the researchers who collaborate within the Knowbella Platform. He is the inventor of blockchain-based patents and speaks at conferences, particularly about Security Token Offerings (STO). Jason speaks internationally on the advantages of open science and Open Access publishing. He has patents in synthetic biology, digital rights management, and has patents pending in blockchain-enabled technologies. He holds an Bachelor’s degree in Anthropology from The Ohio State University and a Master’s degree in education with certifications in biological sciences and social studies from Antioch University. He dropped out of a PhD program to launch his first startup.
Pierre-R. Wolff VP Tierion Pierre is a 20+ year veteran of Silicon Valley as a business strategist, startup advisor/mentor, and people-connector in the tech industry. At Tierion, a company that has developed a “proof engine” leveraging a decentralized network of nodes for time-stamping and anchoring digital content on the Bitcoin Blockchain, Pierre runs business development after having been an advisor there for two years. Pierre is also a Managing Director at ExecConnect, a consultancy where he focuses on helping financial and technology companies better understand the blockchain and cryptocurrency related ecosystems. In addition to advising several startups, he is an advisor to Science Blockchain, a Santa Monica-based blockchain-focused incubator that raised a venture fund using a registered security token offering in November 2017. When not in his day job, Pierre is a regular participant at various blockchain and cryptocurrency events as a moderator or panelist, discussing regulatory, business model, and technology suitability issues.
Mike Zajko Head Sales CoinList Mike works with the top blockchain projects @Coinlist, helping them to address their fundraising and compliance needs. After hearing about Ethereum for the first time in August 2015 and already being familiar with Bitcoin, Mike was immediately drawn to the many possible applications of the nascent technology. Prior to CoinList, Mike ran a team at Facebook focused on mobile gaming and draws in on that experience to advise projects on incentive mechanisms and growth opportunities. Mike is an advisor at the AlphaLab Startup incubator in his hometown of Pittsburgh but is base in San Francisco
John Boitnott journalist/digital consultant has worked at TV, newspapers, radio and Internet companies for 20 years. He’s an advisor at StartupGrind.com and has written for Fast Company, NBC, Inc Magazine, Entrepreneur, BusinessInsider, USAToday and Venturebeat among others.Moderator: John Boitnott, Journalist/Digital Consultant. John has worked at TV, newspapers, radio and Internet companies for 20 years. He’s an advisor at StartupGrind.com and has written for Fast Company, NBC, Inc Magazine, Entrepreneur, BusinessInsider, USAToday and Venturebeat among others.
Jamie Finn CoFounder Securitize Jamie is a well traveled executive who has worked in 6 countries with startups & corporates. He is currently the co-founder and President of Securitize, the leading platform for Security Token Issuances. During his more than 18 years of experience he has participated in over $500m worth of transactions including Kontera, Sansa Security, Jajah, Tokbox, RingRing Media and Zingy and has seen his share of meeting rooms across the globe. His previous employers include Ericsson, Telefònica o2 and AT&T and he has worked at numerous startups including Zingy, RingRing Media, Thumbplay, Kontera and Sansa Security and Aki Technologies. He has been in San Francisco for the past 5 years after spending 6 years in London and becoming a Chelsea supporter. Jamie grew up in Puerto Rico and is a native English and Spanish speaker.
Tony Lai CoFounder Legal.io Tony is a Silicon Valley based entrepreneur and legal informatics researcher at Stanford Law School, where he co-chairs the Blockchain Group. As the CEO and Co-Founder of Legal.io, Tony leads a team of lawyers, engineers, and designers building and deploying A.I., blockchain, and customer experience solutions for the legal industry. Prior to his time in Silicon Valley, Tony practiced law for 5 years in the London and Hong Kong offices of Herbert Smith, advising companies, public sector bodies and charities on regulatory, transactional and IP issues. In 2017, Tony was appointed for a 3 year term to the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on the Delivery of Legal Services. Tony holds Bachelors and Masters Degrees from Oxford University, and graduated from Stanford University with a Masters in Law, Science and Technology.
Wayne Vaughan, Founder/CEO Tierion Tierion is a proof engine that turns the blockchain into a universal platform for proving the integrity of any data, file or business process. Prior to Tierion, Wayne pioneered the development of marketing automation software. He is the co-author of Chainpoint, the first standard protocol for anchoring data in the blockchain. In 2004, Wayne was a member of the first team of amateurs to launch a rocket into space.
Carla Carriveau, Circle: Carla is a Securities & Regulatory Affairs attorney & former Senior Counsel SEC. She currently serves as Senior Managing Counsel at a robo-advisor in Redwood City, California. Carla was previously Senior Counsel at the United States Securities and Exchange Commission serving in a number of capacities including as a top government affairs aide to former SEC Chair Mary Jo White. During her tenure with the SEC, she led teams in the FinTech space with respect to policy, rulemakings, and market operations and advised as to the potential application of securities regulations to virtual currency.
