Speakers
Cameron & Tyler Winklevoss
Gilles Roth
As Finance Minister, he is responsible for fiscal, budgetary and financial sector policy. A member of the Eurogroup and the European Council of Finance Ministers, he represents Luxembourg in key European and international financial fora.
His vision for a future-proof international financial centre includes deepening sustainable finance, boosting private markets and accelerating digital finance, in particular in AI, blockchain, and tokenization, and embracing crypto.
Under his leadership, Luxembourg's Intergenerational Sovereign Wealth Fund (FSIL) was the first in Europe to have invested 1% of its assets in Bitcoin.
Adam Back
Jack Mallers
David Bailey
Khing Oei
Khing is a seasoned investor with deep expertise across traditional and digital markets. He most recently served as Senior Advisor Crypto at a multi-billion-dollar hedge fund focusing on crypto distressed situations such as FTX and Genesis, where he is a member of the Board of Directors. In this role, he oversaw multi-billion-dollar Bitcoin swaps, acquisitions and distributions.
He began his career at Goldman Sachs in the Fixed Income, Currency & Commodities’ Special Situations Investing Group, before moving into senior investment roles at Fortress and Bardin Hill (formerly Halcyon), where he was CEO of Europe and built the firm’s $2.5B securitized credit business. He later founded and was Chief Investment Officer of Eyck, a $200M event-driven distressed & special situations hedge fund.
Throughout his career, Khing executed complex transactions across equities, credit, special situations, and digital assets. As an entrepreneur, he has also launched ventures such as Maicrotrader, an AI-driven Bitcoin and crypto trading agent platform.
Pat Riley
Prior to leading design at BTC Inc., Riley began working full time in Bitcoin in 2014, pioneering product design for the first bitcoin payment flows and multi-signature wallets. Since joining BTC Inc. in 2016, he has led the redesign of Bitcoin Magazine, expanded The Bitcoin Conference into a global flagship event, and most recently launched the Nakamoto brand, where he continues to guide its creative direction.
At the core of his work is narrative-driven brand design, rich with symbolism, paired with cultural collaborations and large-scale event experiences that define Bitcoin’s global identity and visual language.
Patrick Liou
Paul
Paul Buitink
Pedro
Peter Slagter
René Pickhardt
With a background in mathematics and data science, Pickhardt has contributed pioneering research on payment reliability, routing optimization, and liquidity management in decentralized payment networks. His information-theoretic and probabilistic approach to multi-path payments—known as Pickhardt Payments—improves success rates by modeling payment flows statistically rather than deterministically. Even Core Lightning’s API for obtaining routing candidates is named “askrene” in recognition of his work.
Pickhardt’s recent paper, A Mathematical Theory of Payment Channel Networks, formalizes liquidity dynamics and flow optimization across payment channels, offering one of the first rigorous mathematical frameworks for decentralized payment infrastructures.
When the Ark protocol was introduced in 2023, Pickhardt was the first to recognize that—rather than serving primarily as a payment system—its architecture is far better suited as a channel factory, offering new pathways for liquidity management and scaling within the Lightning Network.
Supported by grants from OpenSats, BitMEX, and other patrons, René continues to advance open, mathematical research that helps Bitcoin evolve into a truly decentralized and efficient monetary network.
Robert Harrison
He earned a B.A. in Political Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a J.D., magna cum laude, from the University of Georgia School of Law. Prior to Yorkville, Robert was a member of the Mergers & Acquisitions group at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP in New York City.
Robin Linus
For more infos, check out https://robinlinus.com
Robin Seyr
Russel Coultart
I was very early in e-commerce launching my first e-commerce store in 1997, became global head of e-commerce at Universal Music Group in 2013 and with Bitcoin it feels very much like we're at the early stage too, so I'm very excited to be on the Bitcoin journey so early.
I first heard about Bitcoin in 2015 from a friend said he was 'mining it in his garage', but I just didn't really understand what he was talking about, so I ignored it, (oops) then in 2017 as the price started to shoot up another friend convinced me to buy a little and I made small investments in BTC, ETH, LTC, XRP etc. At that point I had absolutely no idea what the difference was. Prices crashed in 2018 and I was sitting on a big loss, so I more or less forgot about it, but thankfully didn't sell. Fast Forward to 2021, the ICO nonsense and I once again jumped in buying every shit coin you could imagine, based on name alone, very silly behaviour. Of course I got burnt again,, but didn't sell.
FF to 2024 I decided to take a fresh look at the whole 'Crypto' Space, and took a course called 'The Defi Academy' which taught me all about staking, swapping etc, which all seemed like nonsense to me. The main goal of the course was to sell you their next course, which would give me early access to the next 'Defi' token, so I could invest before it went public, sell at the top and make loads of money. That just felt fundamentally wrong. I hated the whole idea of it. Thankfully I had been told about Jack Mallers and Michael Saylor during the course, so I watched some of their you tube videos, read The Bitcoin Standard and Broken Money and had the class "Light Bulb" moment, instantly understood that Bitcoin was massively different from all the other 'Crypto'.
I converted the small amount of ETH XRP etc into Bitcoin in early 2024 and I've been a Bitcoin Maxi ever since
I'm probably 5,000+ hours of study into Bitcoin, read every book, etc etc
Now working for a Dutch Fintech (SSAS platform in Tradfi) and Talk non stop about Bitcoin and I have just started advising Wealth management firms about Bitcoin
I'm on the Robin Seyr Podcast here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kR8JJVV79ww
Sadiq Jaffer
Sadri Sali
With hands-on experience with Euronext (the largest stock exchange of Europe and the fourth largest in the world), various EU regulators, a Maastricht and Utrecht law education, he is adequately prepared to cater crypto businesses for the EU regulatory framework. He is adequately equipped with the know-how to provide top executives with international solutions recognized by every jurisdiction in blockchain and cryptocurrency matters.
His final aim is clear: to educate stakeholders and create trust between Crypto Asset Service Providers, regulators and the general public interested in blockchain technology and crypto assets.
Samuel Kullmann
Sander Andersen
Sebastien Hess
Sergi Delgado
He began working on Bitcoin from an academic perspective in 2015 and shifted to a more hands-on approach in 2019, when he developed a Watchtower protocol for the Lightning Network under the Spiral grant program. In 2023, he joined Chaincode Labs to contribute to Bitcoin Core, with a particular focus on the P2P network. Most recently, he joined 2140 to help build an EU-based developer team and mentor new contributors.
Simon Lelieveldt
Simon is also part-time chair of Human RIghts in Finance.EU, an NGO set up in 2023 to protect human rights in finance/crypto. HRIF.EU became the only NGO in the world that in 2024 used abuse-reports and legal opinions to get AWS to stop hosting (and kick out) an illegal Dutch banking surveillance dragnet that operated for five big banks in the Netherlands and spanned billions of transactions in the years 2021-2024.
Stafford Masie
Upon returning to South Africa in 2004 as Managing Director of Novell Sub-Saharan Africa, Stafford later established Google’s first presence in the country in 2006, serving as its founding country manager. He later launched thumbzup that invented the Payment Pebble®, a world-first globally adopted fintech innovation backed by Visa Inc.
During 2014 he was first exposed to Bitcoin, sparking a lasting fascination up until today where he is known in SA as a Bitcoin maxi.
Since then, Stafford has become a leading voice and investor in the African Bitcoin and crypto ecosystem. He has angel-invested in and advised multiple AI and blockchain startups, co-founded BitMach, a Bitcoin mining venture in South Africa, and is currently launching a crypto audit and analysis platform in the United States.
He served as Chairman of the Board of Altvest Capital, which has since transformed into Africa’s first Bitcoin treasury company (BTCTC) listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), where he now holds the position of Executive Chairman and Director of Bitcoin Strategy.
In addition to his corporate leadership, Stafford independently advises African regulatory bodies on artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency legislation. He has previously served on the boards of Discovery Bank, ADvTECH, and Chairman WITS University/Telkom Innovation Lab, among others.
Widely recognized as a Bitcoin maximalist, Stafford is passionate about “orange-pilling” key stakeholders and advocating for Bitcoin as a transformative force for financial sovereignty across the African continent.
Stefania Barbaglio
Stephan Lutz
Under his leadership, BitMEX celebrated a decade without security breaches in 2024, a rare feat in the crypto industry, while also advancing innovations that enhanced trader engagement, user trust, and platform efficiency.
Before BitMEX, he was a Senior Partner at PwC for close to a decade, where he advised many of the world's largest financial institutions. Prior to PwC, he held senior positions with Deutsche Börse. His career began in corporate finance and equities trading at Dresdner Bank AG (now Commerzbank AG).
Steven Reiss
Susie Violet Ward
Temo Bezhiashvili
Tracy Hoyos-Lopez
She played a pivotal role in orange-pilling President Donald Trump, directly influencing his embrace of Bitcoin and crypto during the 2024 Presidential campaign. Her leadership helped secure President Trump’s historic appearance at the Bitcoin Conference and led to a record-breaking $25 million fundraising effort in just 1.5 months. Her efforts established Bitcoin and cryptocurrency as core components of the national political conversation in the United States.
Tracy’s influence extends across the industry, bridging legal expertise, political acumen, and Bitcoin and crypto advocacy. At Kraken, she leads strategic initiatives that shape the company's positioning in both U.S. and global markets. Her deep understanding of regulatory dynamics, coupled with her commitment to financial freedom and decentralization, has made her a trusted advisor, a movement builder, and a driving force behind Bitcoin and crypto’s most important political and institutional breakthroughs.
Tycho Onnasch
Tyler Evans
Veronika Kuett
Vijay Selvam
Vince van Hoesel
Vladislav Dramaliev
Willem Middelkoop
Win Ko Ko Aung
Wyatt O'Rourke
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Previous Speakers
Jack Mallers
Strike Jack Mallers is the Founder and CEO of Strike, the global Bitcoin app. Prior to Strike, Jack was one of the first application developers on top of Bitcoin's Lightning Network. Jack has spent the last decade of his life in the Bitcoin space, pioneering efforts in distributed systems infrastructure, architecture, and application development.
Edward Snowden
Co-founder and CEO of Blockstream, Dr. Adam Back, invented Hashcash, the proof-of-work algorithm cited by Satoshi Nakamoto in the Bitcoin whitepaper, as the future basis for its mining function. Throughout his two-decade-long vocation as an applied cryptographer and security architect, he has held senior roles with a number of technology companies, including Microsoft, EMC, PI, VMware, and Zero-Knowledge Systems, as well as advised many more companies on cryptography and peer-to-peer finance. Dr. Adam Back holds a computer science Ph.D. in distributed systems from the University of Exeter.
Pierre Rochard
Pierre Rochard has researched and written about Bitcoin since 2013. He co-founded the Satoshi Nakamoto Institute in 2014 to curate the best primary source literature. In addition to developing open-source Bitcoin software, Pierre is an outspoken advocate for Bitcoin’s decentralized governance. He co-hosts the Noded Bitcoin Podcast and the Bitcoin for Advisors Podcast. Pierre served as the Bitcoin and Lightning product manager at Kraken for three years before joining Riot as the VP of Research.
Adam Back
Co-founder and CEO of Blockstream, Dr. Adam Back, invented Hashcash, the proof-of-work algorithm cited by Satoshi Nakamoto in the Bitcoin whitepaper, as the future basis for its mining function. Throughout his two-decade-long vocation as an applied cryptographer and security architect, he has held senior roles with a number of technology companies, including Microsoft, EMC, PI, VMware, and Zero-Knowledge Systems, as well as advised many more companies on cryptography and peer-to-peer finance. Dr. Adam Back holds a computer science Ph.D. in distributed systems from the University of Exeter.
Ben Arc
Co-founder and CEO of Blockstream, Dr. Adam Back, invented Hashcash, the proof-of-work algorithm cited by Satoshi Nakamoto in the Bitcoin whitepaper, as the future basis for its mining function. Throughout his two-decade-long vocation as an applied cryptographer and security architect, he has held senior roles with a number of technology companies, including Microsoft, EMC, PI, VMware, and Zero-Knowledge Systems, as well as advised many more companies on cryptography and peer-to-peer finance. Dr. Adam Back holds a computer science Ph.D. in distributed systems from the University of Exeter.
Martti Malmi
First developer of Bitcoin after Satoshi in 2009, founder of bitcointalk.org and former maintainer of bitcoin.org. Made the first known BTC-USD transaction in 2009, selling 5,050 BTC for $5 on PayPal. Ran bitcoinexchange.com for a while in 2010. Currently working on Iris, a decentralized social networking application on the Nostr protocol. Iris, like many Nostr clients, supports tipping of posts and users with Lightning.
Stella Assange
Stella Assange is a human rights lawyer and advocate for digital freedom. She is renowned for her tireless work defending Julian Assange and fighting for press freedom and transparency. Her legal expertise and unwavering commitment to civil liberties make her a crucial voice in discussions surrounding privacy, censorship resistance, and the societal impact of decentralized technologies like Bitcoin. Her advocacy highlights the intersection of digital rights and financial sovereignty.
Bert De Groot
Bert de Groot keeps companies warm with bitcoin miners and helps businesses, families and plebs on their bitcoin journey. Green houses, workshops, warehouses and offices are being heated with bitcoin miners. In one of the greenhouses flowers are being grown. His company bitcoinbrabant.com is the official reseller of open source signing devices (hardware wallets). He has helped thousands of people with storage and payment solutions, Dutch bitcoin books, and much more. In Q3 2023 Bert became chairman at VBNL.org. VBNL consists of 13 Dutch bitcoin companies that work together in this industry body to combat fraud and improve bitcoin adoption in the Netherlands. The original passion is coastal and hydraulic engineering. In previous jobs the main driver was innovation and technology. Work experience across the globe in every continent except Antarctica. Currently enjoys working on the bitcoin standard full-time.
Paul Buitink
Paul Buitink is a dedicated Bitcoin educator and advocate within the Netherlands. He focuses on making Bitcoin accessible and understandable, fostering its adoption through clear communication and practical insights. His work bridges the gap between traditional finance and the emerging world of decentralized currencies, contributing to a more informed and empowered Bitcoin community.
Lyudmyla Kozlovska
Lyudmyla is a bitcoin advocate & human rights defender from Ukraine. She has been advocating regulators to address financial exclusion, political oppression and the delivery of humanitarian aid, promoting the vital role of bitcoin. Lyudmyla has been leading the campaign to prevent the abuse of anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) laws by malign state actors. Previously, she initiated the reform of INTERPOL to fight its misuse as a tool of political prosecution worldwide.
Aaron Van Wirdum
Aaron van Wirdum is the technical editor for Bitcoin Magazine and the cohost of the Bitcoin, Explained podcast. With a background in studying the historical influence of society-shaping technologies, he’s been covering Bitcoin and related projects since 2013. He is known for his ability to explain highly-technical subjects to a layman audience and specializes in topics including Bitcoin’s history, scaling and privacy technology.
Willem Middelkoop
Willem Middelkoop (Geneva, August 21, 1962) is an entrepreneur and investor, who, earlier in his career, became well-known as a photojournalist, columnist and market commentator on TV. In 2008, he founded AmsterdamGold and the Commodity Discovery Fund. The former he sold to Value8 in 2011, after which he and two co-investors became founding shareholders of the successful business accelerator Startup Bootcamp Amsterdam. Today, as founder and director, Middelkoop works full time for the Commodity Discovery Fund and travels the world as a speaker and commentator on monetary and geopolitical issues. He has written a series of successful books on these topics. Middelkoop is a member of the Advisory Board of the London-based monetary think-tank OMFIF.
Abubakar Nur Khahil
Abubakar Nur Khalil is a Nigerian Bitcoin core contributor and CEO of the Bitcoin VC fund Recursive Capital. He is a board member and CEO of ₿trust, a non-profit focused on training African Bitcoin developers via Btrust builders and growing the African Bitcoin ecosystem.He is also a Forbes Digital Assets contributor, where he focuses on Bitcoin, from documenting developments in the African Bitcoin ecosystem to writing Investor special reports.
Amanda Fabiano
Amanda Fabiano has been working on Bitcoin related projects since 2017, with a passion for mining. She finds the picks and shovels of the industry to be the most captivating aspect and dedicates her time utilizing her experience and expertise fostering businesses that thrive at the crossroads of energy and compute.She played a pivotal role as the founding member of Galaxy Digital's Mining Business. During her tenure of 3 years with the company, she successfully spearheaded the acquisition of a $65 million Helios mining asset, grew and expanded Galaxy's proprietary mining operations, facilitated over $400 million worth of miner finance loans, and assembled a team comprising and lead a team of more than 50 highly skilled professionals.Before joining Galaxy, Amanda held the position Director of Bitcoin Mining at Fidelity Investments, where she focused on building bitcoin products since 2017 and expanding Fidelity's mining operations.Additionally, she served on the boards of Compass Mining and Aspen Creek Digital Corporation. Amanda is an advisor to Square's Bitcoin Clean Energy Initiative and Bitcoin Magazine.Her work has been featured on various publications including CNBC, Forbes, Bloomberg, and Coindesk.
Bart Mol
Founder and Host of Satoshi Radio PodcastBart Mol is a dedicated Bitcoin educator and experimenter since 2017. He hosts the Satoshi Radio podcast and creates hands-on tutorials for Bitcoin nodes, mining, and self-custody. Bart's impact includes-- Guiding 1,000+ people in setting up Lightning nodes- Distributing Bitaxe miners to 300+ individuals- Speaking at Bitcoin AmsterdamHis work embodies Bitcoin's principles of decentralization, education, and empowerment.
Brad Tomm
Bradley Tomm is a sustainability professional, MBA, and LEED AP with over 15 years of experience in both the private and public sectors. He previously served as the first full-time sustainability lead at Harry Reid International Airport, achieving Airport Carbon Accreditation Level 1. Tomm’s career includes roles at MGM Resorts, where he helped secure LEED Gold certifications for City Center/ARIA, and at Zappos, where he earned LEED Gold for a campus renovation and led several sustainability initiatives. He holds an MBA from ASU Thunderbird and two bachelor’s degrees from Vanderbilt University.
Bram Kanstein
Bram Kanstein is an early-stage startup expert, entrepreneur, consultant, and host of the 'Bitcoin For Millennials' podcast. His Bitcoin journey started in early 2013 when he bought one of his first Bitcoin through a route that involved the game Second Life. After buying Bitcoin for $400 (and selling it all at $4000!), he has been on a journey down the Bitcoin rabbit hole. After 10+ years, Bram sees Bitcoin as the most important technological and monetary discovery everyone in the world should understand and adopt.