New York Oct 2020

Chief Scientist, nChain

Dr. Wright is an Australian computer scientist, businessman, and inventor who challenges the world with visionary ideas. Currently, he is Chief Scientist for nChain – the global leader in research and development of blockchain technologies.

U.S. Representative (FL-9) | Co-Chair, Congressional Blockchain Caucus

Elected in 2016, Darren Soto represents Central Florida in Congress. The 9th District includes all of Osceola and parts of Orange and Polk Counties, and is home to many of the people who make Orlando’s theme parks world-renowned, who grow more citrus and raise more cattle than anywhere else in the State, and who explore the farthest reaches of the galaxy from the Kennedy Space Center. 

Darren entered public service to work for these hard-working Floridians. Serving for a decade in the Florida Legislature, he fought to create high paying jobs, increase access to higher education, and ensure clean water, land, and air for his constituents. Soto passed landmark legislation protecting families of fallen firefighters, giving victims of sexual assault more time to report their attackers, and allowing Dreamers to be admitted to the Florida Bar. He also secured $25 million to build a state of the art college campus in the District, helped provide $10 million to save Florida’s springs, and brought in $15 million for a high-tech sensors manufacturing facility.                                       

The first Floridian of Puerto Rican descent to serve in Congress, Darren is proud to represent all the diverse people of the 9th District. Soto graduated from Rutgers University and George Washington University School of Law. His hobbies include playing guitar, pastel painting, and kayaking.  Initially joining his local Orlando Young Democrats club to make friends, he was soon encouraged to run for the Florida House. At the age of 29, he ran, won, and has brought a sense of humility to public service ever since.

Author & Host, Team Human | Professor of Media Theory & Digital Economics, CUNY/Queens

An author and documentarian, Douglas Rushkoff has spent his prolific career thinking about how new media and technology are impacting culture, business, and the economy. Named one of the world’s 10 most influential thinkers by MIT, Rushkoff has written 15 bestselling books and coined such concepts as “viral media,” “social currency,” and “digital natives.” His talks are a culmination of his pioneering work, and an infallible source of what’s to come. 

In expansive and exuberantly perceptive keynotes, Rushkoff touches on subjects as varied as how educators can retain the value of live presence in classrooms populated by screens, or how branding and advertising professionals can communicate with the human consumers behind the statistical profiles. We can re-humanize our technology and economy, he says; and in his book and popular podcast of the same name, Team Human, he shows how to reconnect people at work, home, school, in our faith practices, and even politics. His approach yields better, longer lasting results—for individuals, and the connected communities we form together.  “Rushkoff [has] a pretty good idea of how information technology and the culture we’ve built with it went off the rails. He even has a pretty clear idea of how to get things back on track,” says NPR.

Among his bestselling books, translated to over 30 languages, are Present Shock, an exploration of our instantaneous, always-on culture, Program or Be Programmed, a clarion call for digital literacy, and Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity, a critique of the digital economy and a set of actionable principles for thriving within it. A witty and astute media presence, Rushkoff has made many television, NPR, and PBS appearances, including his Frontline documentaries Generation Like, about teens and social media; The Persuaders, about the arms race between marketers and the public; and The Merchants of Cool, about who really drives youth culture. Rushkoff has appeared everywhere from Occupy Wall Street to The Colbert Report. He is also Professor of Media Theory and Digital Economics at CUNY, a correspondent on digital business and society for CNN, a consultant to the United Nations and the State Department, a graphic novelist, and the winner of the Marshall McLuhan Award for Media Writing, as well as the first Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity. 

Economist, Writer, Investor and Technology Visionary

Author 19 books: Life After Google: Fall of Big Data and Rise of Blockchain Economy (Regnery 2018). Scandal of Money (Regnery 2016). A 21st Century Case for Gold (AmericanPrinciplesProject.org/gilder. 2015); Knowledge&Power: The Information Theory of Capitalism (Regnery 2013); Men&Marriage; Wealth&Poverty (new edition Regnery 2012);The Spirit of Enterprise (Micron Technology history); Life After Television, Microcosm, Telecosm, The Silicon Eye, Israel Test (reissued with foreword by Joe Lieberman, Encounter, 2012). Microcosm and Telecosm listed among the era's top 10 technology books by VentureBeat and Microcosm ranked among the era's top two technology books by Wired. Knowledge and Power was libertarian "book of the year" at FreedomFest 2013. Contributor Forbes, National Review, and the Wall Street Journal. Co-author The Party That Lost Its Head (Knopf, 1965) , with Bruce Chapman. Work as venture capitalist (angel) with U.S. technology companies (such as Otoy--world's leading 3D graphics in the cloud; Immusoft, pioneering the programming of immune cells; Gerson-Lehrman Group, world's leader in knowledge networking; Rivetz, leader in digital wallet security and bitcoin interfaces; and Israeli tech companies--such as EZchip, leader in network processing chips, ASOCS, world leading software defined radio chip design); Contextors, breakthrough language recognition products. Wrote Gilder Technology Report. Began technology writing in the Rosen Letter and Release2.0.; on boards of private companies such as Berkshire Corporation (10 years; cleanroom products), Seldon Technology (4 years; carbon nanotube filters), Rivetz (current; security products) and public companies such as Wave Systems (1993-2015), K-12 (several years in the late 1990s and early 2000s), Mosaix (5 years in the 1990s). Number 27 Management Guru in Clayton Christensen's Top 50. Founder-fellow of Discovery Institute. Specialties: Long distance running, chiefly trail and hill races, and Nordic skiing.

Founding President, Bitcoin Association

Jimmy Nguyen is one of the world’s top Bitcoin and blockchain advocates. He is a renowned public speaker, media commentator and global ambassador for Bitcoin SV. Jimmy joined nChain and then helped launch the Bitcoin Association after a 21-year career as an intellectual property and digital technology lawyer. He is a Certified Information Privacy Professional/U.S. In 2008, Lawdragon named him (at only age 36) one of the “500 Leading Lawyers in America” and described him as a “dynamo talent.” He has also been recognized by the Century City Bar Association as “Intellectual Property Lawyer of the Year” (2011), and by the Association of Media & Entertainment Counsel with its Industry Leader Award (2017). For his diverse leadership, Jimmy has been named a “Top 100 Under 50 Diverse Executive Leader” (2015) by Diversity MBA magazine and was inducted into California Minority Counsel Program’s Diversity Hall of Fame (2015).

Managing Partner & Head of Research, Fundstrat Global Advisors

Thomas Lee is a Managing Partner and the Head of Research at Fundstrat Global Advisors. He is an accomplished Wall Street strategist with over 25 years of experience in equity research, and has been top ranked by Institutional Investor every year since 1998. Prior to co-founding Fundstrat, he served most recently as J.P. Morgan’s Chief Equity Strategist from 2007 to 2014, and previously as Managing Director at Salomon Smith Barney. His areas of expertise include Market Strategy, Small/Mid-Cap Strategy and Telecom Services. Mr. Lee received his BSE from the Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania with concentrations in Finance and Accounting. He is a CFA charterholder and is an active member of NYSSA and the NY Economic Club.

Alternate Member of the Governing Board, Swiss National Bank

Thomas Moser is Alternate Member of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank. He is also a member of the Managing Committee of the Swiss Institute of Banking and Finance at the University of St. Gallen and a member of the Board of Directors of Orell Füssli Holding Ltd. From 2006 to 2009 he was Executive Director at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington, D.C., USA. Thomas Moser holds a MA and a doctorate in Economics from the University of Zurich.

Head of Legal, Digital Innovation & Blockchain for European Commission

Dr. Lukas Repa is a lawyer by training and graduate from the University of Vienna, Austria (Mag.iur and Dr.iur) and the College of Europe in Bruges (LL.M). After internships in Istanbul and new York, Lukas clerked at the Tribunal of First Instance of the ECJ in Luxembourg and the Austrian Administrative Supreme Court. After qualifying as attorney at law at the bar of Vienna, Austria, Lukas joined the European Commission as civil servant in 2003. Lukas has a background in finance from private practice and working almost ten years in DG COMP’s Directorate D for financial services (payments, retail banking, insurance and capital markets). From 2017 to 2018, Lukas worked as fellow at UC Berkeley, USA, on FinTech including on AI, cloud computing and blockchain technology.  Since December 2018, Lukas holds a position as senior policy officer for innovation in DG CNECT Unit F3 where his area of expertise is distributed ledger technologies and decentralised data ecosystems with a focus on regulatory and legal aspects. More recently, Lukas has helped set up the International Association for Trusted Blockchain Applications (INATBA) and coordinated the organisation of the World Blockchain Congress “CONVERGENCE” in 2018.