Featured Speakers & Panelists
Muneeb Ali
Dr. Muneeb Ali is the co-founder of Stacks, a Bitcoin layer for smart contracts. He serves as the CEO of Trust Machines, a company building the largest ecosystem of Bitcoin apps. He has raised more than 200 million USD in funding from investors like Union Square Ventures, Y Combinator, Breyer Capital, and others. Muneeb received his Ph.D. and Masters in Computer Science from Princeton University, where his Ph.D. thesis was nominated for the ACM SIGCOMM dissertation award. Muneeb gives guest lectures on Bitcoin & crypto at Princeton and his research publications have over 1,900 citations. He is one of the main characters in the book Life After Google and was a technical advisor to the HBO show Silicon Valley.
Paul Brody
Paul Brody is responsible for driving EY’s initiatives and investments in blockchain technology across consulting, audit, and tax business lines. He has held numerous leadership positions in the areas of IoT, supply chain and operations, and business strategy, working with client organizations such as HP, Samsung, LG, Huawei, Apple, Canon, Toshiba, Sony, Panasonic, Ericsson, Nokia, Alcatel, FIAT, Honeywell, and Raytheon, among others. As a member of the open LinkedIn network, he enjoys learning about new ideas and technologies that have the potential to reshape the industry or create opportunities and challenges for EY. His specialties include consumer electronics business strategy, mobile telecommunications, product design, supply chain, and operations management.
Brian Brooks
Brian P. Brooks served as Acting Comptroller of the Currency from May 2020 to January 2021, overseeing the federal banking system and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), which supervises nearly 1,200 banks handling 70% of U.S. banking activity. He was also a director of the FDIC and a member of the Financial Stability Oversight Council. Previously, he was Chief Legal Officer at Coinbase, EVP and General Counsel at Fannie Mae, and Vice Chairman of OneWest Bank. A former managing partner at O’Melveny & Myers, he also advised fintech startups. Brooks holds a bachelor’s degree from Harvard and a law degree from the University of Chicago.
Chris Brummer
Chris Brummer is the Agnes Williams Sesquicentennial Professor of Financial Technology at Georgetown Law, as well as the Founder and CEO of Bluprynt, the digital assets disclosure company. He is a trusted advisor to policymakers, founders, firms, and regulators, at the highest levels, around the world. As a thought leader, board director and policy architect, and entrepreneur he has lent his expertise to leaders grappling with some of the most challenging puzzles facing innovation, technology, and financial regulation. Chris graduated summa cum laude from Washington University in St. Louis, earned a Ph.D from the University of Chicago and graduated from law school with honors from Columbia.
Anna Chekhovich
Anna Chekhovich is a financial director and activist with the Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF), founded by Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Persecuted by the Russian government, she fled the country in 2019. Since 2016, the ACF has used Bitcoin to evade government surveillance and sustain its operations while facing financial repression. After being labeled an extremist organization, the ACF relocated to Lithuania, where Chekhovich now works on crypto asset accessibility for NGOs. She collaborates with European banks and officials on crypto regulations, ensuring financial support for Russian political prisoners and activists. She also advocates for crypto access as a lifeline for opposition movements in authoritarian regimes worldwide.
Luigi D’Onorio DeMeo
Luigi D’Onorio DeMeo is the COO of Ava Labs, where he initially led DeFi and Developer Relations before expanding his role to drive the company’s vision of tokenizing the world’s assets. A recognized thought leader in crypto, he helps shape industry evolution and innovative value exchange. Luigi began his career as an institutional trader at Citigroup, specializing in credit and equity products, before moving into valuation and M&A advisory. In 2018, he founded a venture-backed decentralized application (dapp), deepening his involvement in crypto, where he has been active since 2016. His expertise in both traditional and decentralized finance enables him to bridge the gap between these sectors.
Philip Daian
Phil Daian is a crypto-economic researcher and lead author behind the landmark paper, “Flash Boys 2.0,” which introduced and defined the MEV problem in the Ethereum landscape, over 4 years ago. He is the cofounder of FlashBots, which is a research and dev organization with the mission of mitigating the negative externalities of MEV.
Fadi Elsalameen
Fadi has 15 years of experience working in the US, the Middle East, and Africa. Raised over $3 billion dollars for various deals in several countries.
Carole House
Carole House is an experienced cybersecurity and risk management professional with a demonstrated background in U.S. military intelligence and the Federal executive and legislative branches of government who is committed to protecting people. She is skilled in cybersecurity and emerging technology policy, security operations and risk management, unconventional warfare, and strategic and operational planning. Carole is also a strong research professional with a Master of Arts (M.A.) focused in Security Studies from Georgetown University.
Kevin Tang
Kevin Tang is a Director, Digital Assets at BlackRock based in New York City, New York. Previously, Kevin was a Vice President, Digital Assets at BlackRock and also held positions at State Street Global Advisors, BNP Paribas, HKEx. Kevin received a Bachelor of Science degree from Tufts University.
Jon Wong
Jon Owng leads the Ecosystem Engineering team at the Solana Foundation, where he focuses on guiding teams and companies on their journey into Web3. Previously, he developed NFT collections for Orca, Phantom, Parcl, and Welcome to Chinatown. Before that, he spent over eight years architecting frontends and shaping the culture at Coursera.
Scott Zoldi
Scott Zoldi is chief analytics officer at FICO responsible for the analytic development of FICO’s product and technology solutions. While at FICO, Scott has been responsible for authoring 105 analytic patents, with 53 granted and 52 pending. Scott is actively involved in the development of new analytic products and Big Data analytics applications, many of which leverage new streaming analytic innovations such as adaptive analytics, collaborative profiling and self-calibrating analytics. Scott is most recently focused on the applications of streaming self-learning analytics for real-time detection of cyber security attacks. Scott serves on two boards of directors, Software San Diego and Cyber Center of Excellence. Scott received his Ph.D. in theoretical and computational physics from Duke University.