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EVENT DETAILS |
Expert Panel on How ICOs, Tokens, & Cryptocurrencies are Creating Business Opportunities
In spite of recent SEC comments, ICOs have experienced explosive growth with over $2 Billion invested in the past year, which surpassed VC funding by a factor of six. New CryptoFunds & ETFs are being launched. Fidelity Investments has started allowing clients to use its website to view their holdings of bitcoin & other cryptocurrencies held through digital wallet provider Coinbase. Goldman Sachs is telling clients that real dollars are at work in cryptocurrencies & should not be ignored. Numerous investors & VCs, including Mark Cuban, have encouraged their portfolio companies to pursue ICOs.
Blockchain is the underlying technologies that is facilitating these new ecosystems which are are attracting record funding. The relationship between the technology & the value of these tokens, coins & cryptocurrencies make it hard to understand. Some of the tokens represent protocols while others are used within ecosystems for usage or transaction payments.
The panel will discuss the many facets of these ecosystems & the economics around the use of these new architectures.
Host
Beth Kramer
Partner
Winston & Strawn LLP
Beth Kramer has extensive experience in advising investment advisers on the formation & ongoing management of funds & on the regulatory & compliance aspects of their businesses. She counsels investment companies, private funds & separately managed accounts on structuring, organization, distribution, & SEC regulatory & compliance issues, including responses to SEC examinations.
Beth's experience includes the creation of new advisory businesses, along with registration & formation with appropriate regulatory authorities, development of compliance policies & procedures, performing compliance reviews, representing advisers in connection with SEC examinations, & counseling clients on compliance with the Dodd-Frank Act, Investment Advisers Act of 1940, & the Investment Company Act of 1940. She also regularly advises on the creation of disclosure documents for private funds, drafting of investment management products, & evaluating fund documents for institutional investors & family offices seeking alternative investments.
Moderator
JAck Tatar
Co-Author
Cryptoassets: The Innovative Investor's Guide to Bitcoin & Beyond
Jack Tatar is co-author of "Cryptoassets: The Innovative Investor's Guide to Bitcoin & Beyond". Jack is an angel investor & advisor to startups in the cryptoasset community, who worked for nearly three decades in financial services, including time as a financial advisor & marketing executive with Merrill Lynch. Jack was one of the first financial professionals to receive certification from the Digital Currency Council. He has written & spoke extensively on the topic of cryptoassets & is the coauthor of one of the earliest books on Bitcoin, What's the Deal with Bitcoins?
Speakers
Mitchell Dong
Managing Director
Pythagoras Investment Management
Mitchell Dong is a Managing Director of Pythagoras Investment Management & is a private investor in real estate, listed & private alternative energy companies, hedge funds & private equity funds. He is active in developing quant models for trading commodities including bitcoin on exchanges in Asia, Europe & USA & working with Asian investors to invest in real estate in the USA. Mitchell earned his MBA at HBS & studied economics at Harvard University.
Jonathan J. Anastasia
Senior Managing Counsel,
Digital Payments & Labs
Mastercard
In his role, Jonathan is responsible for leading a team that helps drive innovation in the digital space. His team provides integrated legal & transactional support in the development of products & services in the areas of blockchain, artificial intelligence, machine learning, chatbots, conversational commerce, mobile applications, digital consulting & data research. His team is also responsible for providing legal support in connection with the evolution of the Mastercard Developers API platform.
Prior to assuming his current position, Jonathan was Senior Counsel for Mastercard Labs where he managed & developed legal programs for Mastercard Labs. Labs is Mastercard's global innovation division that focuses on the evolution of technology, the incubation of products in a variety of areas related to commerce, & engagement with, & investment in, startup companies. This also includes developing & managing the legal aspects of the newly created Mastercard Lab for Financial Inclusion in Africa.
Before joining Mastercard in 2014, Jonathan was as associate in the Intellectual Property group of Crowell & Moring LLP.
Jonathan graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Systems Engineering from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 2001. After serving as a Captain in the United States Army, he received a Juris Doctorate from Brooklyn Law School in 2009.
Kimberly Trautmann
Director
DRW Venture Capital
Kimberly Trautmann joined DRW Venture Capital in 2015. DRW VC, an arm of principal trading firm DRW, is a private investor in financial & enterprise technology. The team focuses on revenue generating & growing businesses that will derive value from DRW beyond capital: as a client, as a product advisor, & through our deep trading industry expertise. The current portfolio holds more than 25 investments, including OpenFin, Droit, Solarflare & Pico. Prior to DRW, Kimberly was an investor at Goldman Sachs on the Principal Strategic Investments team for a decade. She is a CFA charterholder & holds a BS in Business Marketing from Wagner College & an MBA from Columbia Business School.
Cumberland, a provider of liquidity solutions for OTC traders, brokers & exchanges, is a DRW Company.
Ryan Rugg
Head of North America
R3
Ryan is spearheading North American Business Development for R3, focused on building & empowering blockchain solution for her clients; improving processes & business models - while simultaneously working to expand relationships with regulators & other ecosystem participants.
Recently she launched the Center of Excellence for Insurers & Reinsurers in partnership with ACORD, which will accelerate deployment of DLT solutions at scale within the financial services industry.
R3 leverages it 70+ members' decades of experience & deep networks within the financial services community to empower innovators, promote industry collaboration, affect positive market transformation & design/build robust commercial products for use on a global scale.
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