Does safe DeFi require CBDCs?

Ekaterina is the founder of SMART-compliance GmbH, provides compliance support to fintech start-ups, Board Member of Crypto Valley Association and Chairwoman of IDAXA.

Ekaterina has served over 20 years in various roles within the exchanges, fin-tech, and commodity trading. Based out of London, she was head of the Moscow Stock Exchange office in the UK for the global business operation, cross border compliance and clients' onboarding. Also served as head of representation for Eastern Europe for the commodity valuation firm S&P Global Platts. Before founding her company, she worked for 2,5 years as a Senior Compliance Manager at gwp. The most recent work focused on the development of regulatory and compliance frameworks that address blockchain & crypto project management. Ekaterina holds an MBA in finance from California State University and currently attending the "DAS Compliance" course of the Hochschule Luzern.

Morten Bech joined the BIS in mid-2011.

Before taking up his current assignment in 2020, he was the head of the secretariat supporting the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures with responsibility for coordinating and contributing to the activities of the Committee and its various working groups.

He has also served as Secretary to the Markets Committee. He previously worked for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Danish central bank. In 2009, he was a visitor at the Monetary Affairs Division of the Federal Reserve Board in Washington DC. He holds a PhD in economics from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has written on various issues relating to monetary policy implementation, money markets, the network topology of financial markets, large-value payment systems and systemic risk.

His current research focus is DLT, Blockchain and Cryptoassets, and nonconventional monetary policy instruments such as negative interest rates and balance sheet extensions. He is currently a research fellow at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and a member of the advisory board of the thematic equity funds for Credit Suisse Asset Management. He used to be an external advisor for the Swiss National Bank, the ECB and the Bank for International Settlement. He publishes in top academic journals such as the American Economic Review and the Review of Economic Studies and co-authored the book "Bitcoin, Blockchain, and Cryptoassets" published by MIT-Press.

He studied at the Universities of Basel and Bern, and at the London School of Economics, and held visiting positions at the University of California in Berkeley, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Zurich, the Free University of Berlin and the Université Paris Dauphine.

Before founding the financial technology company, Jan Brzezek held various positions at UBS Asset Management, Wealth Management, and Investment Bank. In his most recent position at UBS, he was Business Manager for the President of UBS Asset Management. Additionally, he was a global innovation expert and worked on the impact of new technologies on the UBS business model. He was responsible for the smart structured product proof-of-concept. Earlier, he worked several years in derivatives and fixed income sales and trading for UBS in Zurich, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Prior to his career at UBS, he was a derivatives expert at the SIX Swiss Exchange.

Mr Carstens became General Manager of the BIS on 1 December 2017.

Mr Carstens was Governor of the Bank of Mexico from 2010 to 2017. A member of the BIS Board from 2011 to 2017, he was chair of the Global Economy Meeting and the Economic Consultative Council from 2013 until 2017. He also chaired the International Monetary and Financial Committee, the IMF's policy advisory committee from 2015 to 2017.

Mr Carstens began his career in 1980 at the Bank of Mexico. From 1999 to 2000, he was Executive Director at the IMF. He later served as Mexico's deputy finance minister (2000–03) and as Deputy Managing Director at the IMF (2003–06). He was Mexico's finance minister from 2006 to 2009.

Mr Carstens has been a member of the Financial Stability Board since 2010 and is a member of the Group of Thirty.

Mr Carstens holds an MA and a PhD in economics from the University of Chicago.

At Polygon, Amit has been involved with research and development of next-generation DeFi protocols to grow and support the DeFi ecosystem. Previously he has researched in the intersection of cryptocurrency, finance, econometrics, and statistics. Amit had also worked in quantitative roles in TradFi firms like JPMorgan Chase and ICICI bank. Amit started his career in the field of computational fluid dynamics. He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Warwick, an MA in economics from the Delhi School of Economics, and a Bachelor of Technology from IIT Kanpur.

Michael is the founder of Curve Finance, an on-chain automatic market-maker for cryptocurrencies with initial focus on stablecoins. Before Curve Finance, Michael co-founded NuCypher and worked at LinkedIn. Before working in software world, Michael studied Physics at MIPT (Moscow), received PhD at Swinburne (Melbourne) and did a postdoctoral research at Monash (Melbourne).

Thomas is Sygnum's Head of Business Units and Member of the Group Executive Board, responsible for the further development of Sygnum's suite of regulated products and services.

Prior to joining Sygnum, he was a strategy consultant at Boston Consulting Group where he led projects for financial institutions, insurance companies and Private Equity Funds. Thomas started his career at Roland Berger and has worked at UBS and Credit Suisse prior to that.

Dr Andreas Glarner advises international technology and financial market companies with a focus on FinTech, DLT, Blockchain, Decentralized Finance (DeFi), NFT and Gaming.

Andreas understands the digital business needs related to digitalization strategies and the cutting-edge technology setups of this clients to support implementing new ideas in a constantly evolving regulatory landscape. As an expert on questions at the interface between technology and (financial market) regulations, he supports his clients to design technology setups to achieve particular business goals in compliance with regulatory requirements. Andreas has been listed as a "leading individual" and "national leader" in FinTech / Technology by Legal 500, WWL and Chambers. He frequently publishes on topics related to his practice areas, is a regular speaker at international conferences, expert in Swiss and international legislative commissions and a lecturer at the Lucerne University for applied science and arts.

Her current research interests include decentralised finance (DeFi), stablecoins, and market design. Her research on DeFi and stablecoins has been covered by mainstream media such as Financial Times, Bloomberg, and Reuters, as well as major fintech media like Coindesk.

He received his PhD in economics from the University of Bern in 1993. Following a three-year post-doctoral research position at the Department of Economics at Harvard University, he joined the SNB as an Economic Advisor in 1997. The University of Bern appointed him lecturer in 1998 and honorary professor in 2003, and he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Basel in 2017. In 2007, the Federal Council appointed Thomas J. Jordan to the position of Member of the SNB's Governing Board. In 2010, he was appointed Vice Chairman and in 2012 Chairman of the Governing Board. He is Governor of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for Switzerland and member of the Board of Directors of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basel. Thomas J. Jordan represents Switzerland in the Plenary and the Steering Committee of the Financial Stability Board (FSB). He is also Chair of the FSB's Standing Committee on Budget and Resources (SCBR).

Robert is the founder and CEO of Liquity, an interest-free borrowing protocol on Ethereum. Holding a PhD in Law from the University of Zurich, Robert served as a law clerk at the Swiss Federal Administrative Court and in various other legal roles, before turning into a Blockchain researcher.

In Summer 2017, Robert became the DFINITY Foundation's first employee in Switzerland. After working on consensus mechanisms and other layers of their Internet Computer project, Robert decided to revolutionize decentralized lending and founded Liquity in December 2019.

Andréa M. Maechler was born in Geneva in 1969. She studied economics at the University of Toronto, and then at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, where she obtained her Master's in International Economics. Following a period of study at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Public Administration in Lausanne, she obtained her PhD in International Economics from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2000.

Andréa M. Maechler's early career took her to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the World Trade Organization (WTO). From 1999 to 2001, she worked as an economist in the Swiss National Bank's (SNB) Financial Stability unit in Zurich. She then moved to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), where she occupied a number of senior positions in the Africa, Monetary and Capital Markets, Western Hemisphere and Strategy, Policy and Review departments. From 2012 to 2014, during a sabbatical from the IMF, she worked for the European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB) in Frankfurt. Upon returning to the IMF, she was appointed as Deputy Division Chief in the Global Markets Analysis Division. The functions of this division include monitoring global capital markets, and assessing systemic risks and the macrofinancial impact of capital market developments.

With effect from 1 July 2015, the Swiss Federal Council appointed Andréa M. Maechler as Member of the SNB's Governing Board - the first woman to occupy a Board position. At the same time, she became Head of Department III (Money Market and Foreign Exchange, Asset Management, Banking Operations, Information Technology).

Thomas Moser is an Alternate Member of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank. Before joining the Swiss National Bank, he was an Executive Director at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington D.C., United States. Thomas Moser is also a Visiting Professor at the University of Lucerne and a member of the Managing Committee of the Swiss Institute of Banking and Finance at the University of St. Gallen. He holds a Master's and a Doctoral Degree in Economics from the University of Zurich, Switzerland.

Iota is a Policy Analyst at the Financial Markets Division of the OECD, where she currently manages the FinTech Experts Group of the Committee on Financial Markets and leads the analysis around the digitalisation of finance.

Prior to joining the OECD, Ms Nassr was an Investment Banker, working for the M&A desks of Merrill Lynch and Citigroup in London. She holds an MBA from ESSEC Grande École and a M.Sc. in Accounting and Finance from Athens University of Economics and Business.

David is the head of SIX Digital Exchange, the world's first fully regulated and fully integrated securities settlement and custody platform to trade, settle and custodise digital assets. Prior to SDX, David was Senior Managing Director at State Street where he was Global Head of GlobalLink Execution services responsible for the Currenex and FXConnect trading platforms. David has over 20 years of experience in the Capital Markets, having joined Currenex in 2001 as a founding member of Currenex's London operation. Before joining Currenex, David worked for MicroStrategy, a leading global provider of enterprise software platforms for business intelligence.

Davis is the CEO of Centre, the company that governs the technology, policy, compliance, audit and reserve standards for USD Coin (USDC), the world's fastest growing dollar-based digital currency. Centre was founded in 2018 by market-leading companies Coinbase and Circle to enable the development and growth of Centre stablecoins, commencing with USDC, now the world's second most active stablecoin. Stablecoins are price-stable cryptocurrencies that are transforming the global financial system by enabling payments to move domestically and across borders at the speed of the internet at little to no cost. 

Centre was founded with the mission to connect every person, merchant and financial service in the world through the power of digital currency and open, public blockchain networks.

Mr Puth's career spans more than three decades of leadership in the financial markets, payments, and technology sectors. Prior to joining Centre, he served as the CEO of CLS Group, a Designated Systemically Important Financial Market Utility, and the leading provider of risk management and operational solutions for the global foreign exchange market. Mr Puth also spent 19 years at J.P. Morgan, where he served on the JPMorganChase Executive Committee and the Investment Bank Management Committee. He has held key leadership positions in various industry bodies and has worked closely with policy makers on regulatory issues and on best practices for financial markets.

Mr Puth has held a number of public and private corporate board and advisory positions. He is also actively involved with non-profit activities. Since 1998, Mr Puth has been a member of the board of the Robin Hood Foundation in New York and has served on the board of the Institute for Contemporary Art in Boston since 2009.

Camila is the Founder of The Defiant, a media company focusing on decentralised finance, and the author of The Infinite Machine, the most read book on the history of Ethereum.

Previously, she was a markets and crypto reporter at Bloomberg News based in New York, Madrid and Buenos Aires. She has an MSc in Journalism from Northwestern University and is originally from Santiago, Chile.

Camila Russo es la fundadora de The Defiant, una empresa de medios enfocada en las finanzas descentralizadas, y autora de The Infinite Machine, el libro más leído sobre la historia de Ethereum. Anteriormente, fue reportera de mercados y cripto en Bloomberg News, basada en Nueva York, Madrid y Buenos Aires. Tiene estudios de periodismo de Northwestern University y de la Universidad Católica de Chile.

The decade prior to founding the protocol engineering firm, Clearmatics in 2015, Robert was a hedge fund manager focused on central bank policy, running a quantitative STIR derivatives trading strategy in G10 currencies.

A long-time student of inter-bank liqudity and the moral hazard engendered by the financial safety net, Robert anticipated the fragility of the money markets going into the GFC and had his best trading year in 2008. Robert's interest in financial cryptography dates back to his student days, when he first learned of David Chaum's work, and has been thinking about how cryptography and distributed systems can be used to create alternative forms of private money ever since. An early critic of the mechanism design behind the Bitcoin protocol, in 2014 he published the "Seigniorage Shares" stablecoin design, which has since been adapted and implemented by multiple algorithmic stablecoins in production today. He also contributed to Ethereum protocol research prior to its Mainnet launch.

In 2016, Clearmatics co-founded with UBS the Utility Settlement Coin project, and over the subsequent years built the project into a multi-bank consortium, where Robert chaired the consortium's steering committee and led its engagements with several G10 central banks. The project was later spun out of Clearmatics as a separate entity, Fnality International.

Some of Robert's work on applying blockchain technology to financial markets has been published in journals such as _Risk_ and the _Journal of Financial Transformation_, but he spends most of his time building stuff with the Clearmatics team and collaborating with firms and teams who share the mission to create market infrastructure that is open, anti-fragile and untethered from financial intermediaries.

Robert lives in London with his wife and 6 year-old son.

He has a PhD in Cryptoassets and Blockchain economics, co-authored the bestselling book "Bitcoin, Blockchain and Cryptoassets", published by MIT Press and several publications in scientific journals. His research is at the intersection of economics and computer science, with a particular focus on public Blockchains, Cryptoassets and Decentralized Finance protocols. His work has been featured in the Economist, the Financial Times and Forbes, and he has been listed in the NZZ ranking of the most influential economists in Switzerland. He is the organizer of the "Blockchain Symposium", the "Blockchain Challenge", member of the organizing committee of a conference with the Swiss National Bank and co-initiator of a project to secure academic credentials on a Blockchain. In addition, he is a board member of the first FINMA regulated crypto asset manager, an advisor to the Multichain Asset Managers Association and Blockchain for Europe, a member of various World Economic Forum working groups, and an invited expert to hearings by numerours Central Banks, the OECD and IOSCO. He spoke at over 100 conferences, including the G20 Global Financial Stability Conference in Seoul, Korea. Prior to that, he worked as a consultant in various positions at banks and bank-related companies.

As the BIS Economic Adviser, Mr Shin co-leads the Monetary and Economic Department and is part of the Bank's senior management as a member of its Executive Committee.

Mr Shin has a background in academia. Before he took up his current position in May 2014, he was the Hughes-Rogers Professor of Economics at Princeton University, having previously held appointments at Oxford University and the London School of Economics. He has been an intellectual leader in the fields of banking, international finance and monetary economics, topics on which he has published widely, both in leading academic and official publications. One area of recent focus has been in developing the BIS's research programme on digital innovation and the financial system, including the design of central bank digital currencies and their implications for users, financial intermediaries and the central bank. Mr Shin was part of the BIS management team that developed the BIS Innovation Hub, and served as its Interim Head at its launch in 2019.

Lex is a futurist and entrepreneur working on the next generation of financial services. He is the Head Economist and Global Fintech Co-Head at ConsenSys, a blockchain technology company building the infrastructure and applications that enable a decentralized world. 

Lex focuses on protocol crypto-economics, digital assets, public and private blockchains, and decentralized finance and autonomous organizations. 

Previously, Lex was the Global Director of Fintech Strategy at Autonomous Research (acquired by AllianceBernstein), an equity research firm serving institutional investors, where he covered artificial intelligence, blockchain, neobanks, digital lenders, roboadvisors, payments, insurtech, and mixed reality. Before Autonomous, Lex was COO at AdvisorEngine (acquired by Franklin Templeton), a digital wealth management technology platform, and CEO of NestEgg Wealth, a roboadvisor that partnered with financial advisors. Prior to NestEgg, Lex held roles in investment management and banking at Barclays, Lehman Brothers, and Deutsche Bank. 

Lex has contributed thought leadership to the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, Bloomberg, FT, Reuters, American Banker, ThinkAdvisor, and Investment News, among others. He is a regular speaker at industry conferences such as Money2020, LendIt, Schwab Impact, In|Vest, T3 Enterprise Edition, and Consensus. He earned a JD/MBA from Columbia University and a B.A. in Economics and Law from Amherst College.

Evan is the founder of Starbloom Ventures, an early stage venture fund investing in the future of web3. He also publishes Week in Ethereum News, a resource for Ethereum developers.  He lives in Texas where he likes to watch and play football and drink mate.

He also worked multiple years at Microsoft Research in Redmond, Washington, at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. His work received multiple awards, eg the Prize for Innovation in Distributed Computing for his work in Distributed Approximation. He published the book "Blockchain Science: Distributed Ledger Technology", which has been translated to Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese.