Crypto Hipster

Nick Cowan, Group CEO of Valereum (VLRM), is an accomplished leader in capital markets. Having served as GSX Group CEO, founding the Gibraltar Stock Exchange and GSX Group, Nick has worked in equities and derivatives trading around the world. Nick has amassed over 35 years of experience in tier-one firms such as Bear Stearns & ING Barings, where he managed up to 2,500 employees across 43 countries, including overseeing 40 stock exchange memberships.  Nick’s vision for fintech-led innovation has positioned Valereum (VLRM) to unlock capital, transform global finance, and create value through tokenized digital markets as an exchange and marketplace operator. Nick currently lives in Gibraltar with his family and is a huge Arsenal fan.

Ishan Bhaidani is the co-founder and Chief Revenue Officer of SCRIB3, a web3 marketing and PR venture. Ishan’s work in the crypto industry includes being involved with more than a dozen projects within the top 200 of Crypto Market Cap in a variety of areas, including product consulting, go-to-market strategy and tokenomics. He has an entrepreneurial background, having previously founded and managed a Private Equity Fund that reached an impressive 8-figure Assets Under Management (AUM). In the realm of Web3, Ishan actively contributes as a DeFi analyst, an active angel investor & advisor in projects such as Polygon Technologies

Michal “Mehow” Pospieszalski is a seasoned tech leader with a track record of pioneering innovative solutions in the crypto world. As the CTO and co-founder of SwissFortress and CEO, co-founder, co-inventor of MatterFi, Michal merges visionary strategy with hands-on tech know-how, propelling both companies towards defining the future of digital asset management.

JOJO is a decentralized perpetual contract trading platform on Base. With its pioneering hybrid liquidity model, JOJO balances liquidity and composability, providing active traders with a smooth, fast, and low-cost trading experience and hedging capabilities for other DeFi protocols. JOJO uses Smart Contract Orders to facilitate off-chain matching of trades, which is faster and less costly, while still settling transactions on-chain. This unique approach maintains the security, transparency and efficiency of decentralized trading environments while minimizing the risks associated with fully centralized systems. JOTARO, also known as Radar Bear, is the co-founder of JOJO. As a veteran DeFi degen, JOTARO is passionate about building better trading experiences that provide active investors optimal liquidity, low fees and fast speeds. He previously co-founded DODO, a decentralized exchange that pioneered a proactive market maker approach that adjusts the price curve of an asset to ensure that there is ample liquidity at the most up-to-date market price. https://x.com/jojo_exchange https://jojo.exchange/

Tom Kiddle is Co-Founder of Palisade, a digital asset custodian backed by Ripple, providing businesses with a comprehensive solution for managing digital assets securely. Through his visionary leadership at Palisade, Tom is shaping the future of digital asset security and management, revolutionizing how businesses safeguard their digital assets and providing a reliable foundation for their growth and success in the Web3 space. Tom is a seasoned software engineer and entrepreneur with a robust background in e-commerce, payments, and blockchain. With nearly two decades of experience, his tenure at notable companies like Ripple, Apple, and BT underscores his commitment to innovation in the digital economy.

Chris Hermida, a longtime Web3 industry veteran, is the co-founder and CEO of Switchboard, a fast, permissionless, and customizable oracle network that makes it easy for developers to bring any data on-chain. Chris previously held positions as an OTC trader, lead data analyst, and risk analyst at Circle, an industry leading stablecoin platform, and as an advisor and co-head of business development at JST Capital, a financial services firm specialized in digital assets.

Agustín Liserra is the CEO & Co-founder at Num Finance, a platform that seamlessly merges the stability of traditional financial instruments with the innovation and potential of blockchain technology. Agustín previously worked as the Chief Financial Officer at Buenbit and has over 12 years of experience in trading, finance, and risk management. Agustín holds a Bachelor’s degree in Electronic Engineering and Master’s degrees in Quantitative Finance and Computer Science. You can find Agustín on X and LinkedIn.

 Chris Yin is CEO and Co-founder of Plume Network, the first modular EVM L2 blockchain dedicated for all real-world assets (RWAs). Previously, Chris served as a Principal at Scale Venture Partners, VP Product at RainforestQA, Director of Product at Coupa, and a founder at Xpenser. Chris has also invested as an angel investor in many projects including Retool, Hightouch, BioRender, Certn, Graphite, Alloy, District, and others.

 Zach Bruch is the founder and CEO of MyPrize, an online crypto casino. Zach previously held positions at Kraken and Cumberland Labs, where he ran their sales trading desk. He later created his own trading operation and became one of the most profitable individual traders of all time. Prior to founding MyPrize, Zach previously served as co-founder and CEO at RECUR and as an advisor at JST Capital, a financial services firm specializing in digital asset markets.

Warren Anderson is the co-founder of Exocore, an omnichain restaking protocol powering an open market for decentralized trust. Prior to Exocore, Warren co-founded Hedgy, one of the first DeFi platforms which pioneered the use of multisig and hashed timelock contracts for atomic transactions of OTC trades on the Bitcoin blockchain. Warren joined Ripple in 2016 to lead product development across a variety of open crypto protocols, platforms, and products, including RippleX, the XRP Ledger, Interledger, and Paystring. While at Ripple, he co-created On-Demand Liquidity, an enterprise payment API that uses crypto to settle cross-border payments in seconds. Warren initially joined Discreet Labs in 2021 as VP of Product, and was promoted to CEO in 2022 to lead a team of over 80 engineers and operators building scalable privacy systems using zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP) for web3.