Panel 1: KEYNOTE: The Pioneers of Crypto Bank Charters
Panelists:
Georgia Quinn – Anchorage
Georgia Quinn is the general counsel of Anchorage, the premier digital asset custodian and financial services platform for institutions. Prior to that she was the general counsel of CoinList, a cryptocurrency exchange and platform that provides services to top token developers including compliant offering, distribution, and liquidity services. She is also the co-founder of iDisclose, a legal technology company focused on the disclosure and legal document needs of small business and startup entrepreneurs. Ms. Quinn began her practice in capital markets at Weil, Gotshal and Manges and later moved to Seyfarth Shaw before founding iDisclose. Ms. Quinn received a Juris Doctor from Columbia Law School, and received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from New York University.
Marco Santori– Kraken
Marco Santori is the Chief Legal Officer at Kraken Digital Asset Exchange. Marco is a recognized authority in the law and policy of blockchain technologies. Prior to his move to Kraken, Marco was the Chief Legal Officer of Blockchain.com, as well as a Partner at both Cooley LLP and Pillsbury Winthrop, where he counseled banks, broker-dealers, exchanges, digital wallets, payment providers and other companies making new and exciting uses of distributed ledger technology. Marco counseled his clients primarily on the money transmission and securities laws, including anti-money laundering regulations. Marco is an author of the SAFT Project Whitepaper, a self-regulatory effort to curb Initial Coin Offerings. He is an advisor to the International Monetary Fund, the Blockchain Ambassador to the State of Delaware and was the Chairman of the Regulatory Affairs Committee of the Bitcoin Foundation.
Panel 2: Promising Blockchain Ventures & Institutional Investment
Panelists:
Jeffrey Amico – a16z
Jeff is a partner on the crypto team at a16z. Before joining a16z, he was General Counsel at Fluidity, a blockchain technology company which was acquired by ConsenSys in 2020. Before Fluidity, he practiced law at Cravath, Swaine & Moore in New York.
Dan Robinson – Paradigm
Dan Robinson is a Research Partner at Paradigm focused on crypto investments and research into open-source protocols. Previously, Dan was a protocol researcher at Interstellar. Before Interstellar, Dan practiced as a litigation attorney at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP. He earned a J.D. from Harvard Law School and an A.B. from Harvard University.
Alok Vasudev – Standard Crypto VC
Alok Vasudev is a co-founder of Standard Crypto. Alok has worked with startups in crypto, genomics, and AI. He’s been a VC at Spectrum 28 and Benchmark. Before that, he was an engineer and scientist in semiconductors and nanophotonics.
Panel 3: Censorship Resistant Bitcoin as a Sponsor of Social Change
Panelists:
Alex Gladstein – Human Rights Foundation
Alex Gladstein is Chief Strategy Officer at the Human Rights Foundation. He has also served as Vice President of Strategy for the Oslo Freedom Forum since its inception in 2009. In his work Alex has connected hundreds of dissidents and civil society groups with business leaders, technologists, journalists, philanthropists, policymakers, and artists to promote free and open societies. Alex’s writing and views on human rights and technology have appeared in media outlets across the world including The Atlantic, BBC, CNN, The Guardian, The New York Times, NPR, TIME, The Washington Post, WIRED, and The Wall Street Journal. He has spoken at universities ranging from MIT to Stanford, briefed the European Parliament and US State Department, and serves as faculty at Singularity University and as an advisor to Blockchain Capital, a leading venture firm in the fintech industry. He frequently speaks and writes about why Bitcoin matters for freedom, and co-authored “The Little Bitcoin Book” in 2019.
Jerry Brito – CoinCenter
Jerry Brito is executive director of Coin Center, the leading non-profit research and advocacy group focused on the public policy issues facing cryptocurrency technologies like Bitcoin. Jerry has testified several times before Congress and state legislatures about cryptocurrencies, and regularly holds briefings for and consultations with policy makers. He has presented on cryptocurrencies at the the CFTC, SEC, Treasury Department, State Department, and the White House, as well as the Council on Foreign Relations and the Brookings Institution. He is the coauthor of Bitcoin: A Primer for Policymakers, as well as other scholarly work on the regulation of cryptocurrencies. Jerry is a recipient of the Public Knowledge IP3 Award and was named one of Washington’s 100 top tech leaders by Washingtonian magazine and to the POLITICO 50 list of D.C. influencers. His op-eds have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and elsewhere.
Jessie Liu – Skadden
Jessie K. Liu served as the Senate-confirmed U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia from 2017-2020. In that role, she created a Threat Finance Unit to focus on deterring, disrupting and prosecuting illicit financial flows supporting criminal activity and terrorism. Under her leadership, the office investigated and prosecuted some of the most high-profile cryptocurrency-related crimes in the world. She has appeared on Laura Shin’s Unconfirmed podcast and elsewhere to discuss the Department of Justice’s new Cryptocurrency Enforcement Framework.
Elizabeth Stark – Lightning Labs
Elizabeth Stark is CEO and Co-Founder of Lightning Labs, where she is building the future of internet money with fast, scalable bitcoin transactions. She holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School.
Panel 4: Taking Down Terrorists in Cyberspace: A Case Study of the Largest Action Against Cyber Enabled Terrorist Financing
Panelists:
Zia Faruqui – United States Magistrate Judge
Judge Faruqui has been serving as a federal magistrate judge for the District of Columbia since September 2020. Prior to his appointment, he was a federal prosecutor, first in the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Missouri and then in the District of Columbia. Over the span of over twelve years of federal service as an AUSA, he prosecuted numerous criminal cases, most recently serving as the lead prosecutor for complex and novel crimes involving, for example, terrorists’ use of cryptocurrency, nuclear weapons proliferation, darknet sites dedicated to child exploitation, and antiquities theft. He also litigated over $700 million in money laundering and asset forfeiture proceedings. As a subject-matter expert, he has presented on cryptocurrency and anti-money laundering issues in conferences spanning from Europe to Asia and the Middle East. Prior to serving as a federal prosecutor, Judge Faruqui worked at a corporate law firm where he focused on government investigations and general commercial litigation. Judge Faruqui is a board member for Jobs for Homeless People, a non-profit that provides housing and vocational training to people in the D.C. metropolitan area. He also served as a Muslim-outreach coordinator for the Department of Justice and an as an adjunct professor at Harris-Stowe State University. He received his J.D. and undergraduate degree from Georgetown University.
Chris Janczewski – Internal Revenue Service (IRS)
Chris Janczewski is a special agent with the Internal Revenue Service – Criminal Investigation’s Cyber Crimes Unit in Washington, D.C. He has been a special agent since 2009. His investigative experience includes international money laundering cases relating to child exploitation, terrorism, state sponsored hacks, darknet markets, virtual currency, stolen identity and tax refund fraud, and the Department of Justice’s Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) Program. Chris is currently assigned as the CI Liaison to the National Cyber Forensic Training Alliance (NCFTA). Prior to becoming a special agent, Chris conducted audits for the IRS – Small Business/Self-Employed division for three years.
Kyle Armstrong – Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI)
Supervisory Special Agent Kyle C. Armstrong is the Unit Chief of FBI’s Counterterrorism Finance Targeting Unit (CTFTU). CTFTU leverages financial intelligence to initiate and enhance illicit finance investigations. CTFTU actively participates in DC-based “Strikeforce Z,” a multi-agency taskforce comprised of regulatory, law enforcement, and intelligence community partners which uses financial investigations to disrupt threat actors. Since joining the FBI in 2008, UC Armstrong has investigated illicit finance in Chicago, Phoenix, and at FBI Headquarters in the Money Laundering Unit and CTFTU.
Panel 5: KEYNOTE: The Rise of Decentralized Finance
Panelists:
Andreas Antonopoulos – Bitcoin and Open Blockchain Educator and Author
Andreas M. Antonopoulos is a best-selling author, speaker, educator, and highly sought after expert in Bitcoin and open blockchain technologies. Andreas has written two best-selling technical books for programmers, Mastering Bitcoin and Mastering Ethereum. He has published The Internet of Money series of books, which focus on the social, political, and economic importance and implications of these technologies.
Prof. Emin Gün Sirer – Cornell University; Co-Director of IC3; CEO of Avalanche
Emin Gün Sirer is a professor of computer science at Cornell University, founder of Ava Labs, co-founder of bloXroute Inc, and co-director of the Initiative for Cryptocurrencies and Smart Contracts (IC3). Among other things, Sirer is known for having implemented the first currency that used proof of work to mint coins, for selfish mining, for characterizing the scale and centralization of existing cryptocurrencies, as well as having proposed the leading protocols for on-chain and off-chain scaling. Of all his collaborations, he is proudest of his contributions to the John Oliver Show’s segment on cryptocurrencies.
Kyle Roche – Roche Freedman LLP
Kyle is a founding partner of Roche Cyrulnik Freedman. Recently named as one of New York Super Lawyer’s Rising Stars, Kyle is an experienced litigator known for leveraging his deep understanding of technology and economics to successfully represent clients facing complex and novel issues of law. He has represented both plaintiffs and defendants in federal and state courts, at both the trial and appellate levels, and has consistently delivered impressive results.
Kyle serves as strategic counsel to some of the most innovative companies and startups in the cryptocurrency/blockchain space. His deep understanding of this technology and the governing legislative frameworks enables him to advise his clients how to best navigate the regulatory landscape. He has published multiple articles on the intersection of cryptocurrency and law, and is a frequent lecturer in that arena.
Eric Rosen – Roche Freedman LLP
Eric Rosen is a nationally recognized former federal prosecutor whose practice focuses on white-collar criminal defense, corporate investigations, and complex civil litigation. Eric was the lead prosecutor in “Operation Varsity Blues,” the seminal case widely known as the college admissions scandal, one of the largest white-collar crime prosecutions in United States history.
Prior to joining the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eric was a litigation associate at Richards, Kibbe and Orbe LLP, a New York-based boutique law firm. While at that law firm, Eric represented clients in complex commercial litigation matters and in investigations conducted by FINRA, the SEC, and the Department of Justice. Eric also conducted multiple internal investigations on behalf of corporate clients.