Event: US-Swiss Exchange on Blockchain Innovation and Regulation

Program

• 09:00

  Welcome Coffee

• 09:30

  Introduction

  Sunnie Groeneveld

  —Moderator

  Sunnie J. Groeneveld is the Managing Partner of the consultancy Inspire 925 as well as a board member of the engineering company Hefti.Hess.Martignoni, the software firm emineo and the media group galledia. Previously she worked as the first managing director of digitalswitzerland (formerly DigitalZurich2025), Switzerland’s largest cross-industry initiative on digital transformation. Moreover, she’s the author of the the book “Inspired at Work” (Versus, 2014), was named as one of the “Top 100 Women in Business”, appeared in the list “Top 50 Who is Who in Digital Switzerland” by the business newspaper Handelszeitung as well as in the “30 under 30” list of Forbes magazine. Sunnie graduated in Economics from Yale University.
  

• 09:40

  Visions, different use cases

  Rik Willard

  —Agentic Group (New York)

  Rik Willard is the Founder and Managing Director of Agentic, a global Blockchain and Frontier Technology consultancy with affiliated member companies on five continents. Mr. Willard is considered one of the world’s foremost Blockchain entrepreneurs and sits on several Boards for companies and funds in the sector. He is a Honorary Fellow of the Foreign Policy Association, and is on the Advisory Boards of Pace University’s Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Baruch College’s Field Center for Entrepreneurship which is rated as one of America’s foremost graduate schools for emerging entrepreneurial talent. He has spoken at events for the Harvard Business School, the Stern Business School at New York University, and many others. He is featured in Manuel Stagars‘ award-winning documentary „The Blockchain And Us“.
  

• 10:10

  Distributed Ledger Technology – Point of view of SwissBanking

  Adrian Schatzmann

  —SwissBanking

• 10:30

  Crypto Assets are the new Black

  Roger Darin

  —Head Crypto Assets inacta AG

  With his first IT startup founded at age 17, Roger Darin has always been enthusiastic about technology and entrepreneurship . While he then pursued a more traditional career in Investment Banking, working in several major financial centres such as Singapore, Tokyo, Sydney and others, he continued to nurture his interests in technology. His first professional foray into Bitcoin was in 2014 when his company started to offer seminars, demonstrating the vast implications that came with Blockchain technology. After working as a Product Manager for a wealth management platform for a little under two years, he joined inacta in Zug where he is heading the Crypto Assets Group and the company’s Blockchain Advisory.
  

• 10:50

  Industry approach in the US and Outlook

  Eli Stern

  —Principal Advisory Services EY (New York)

  Eli Stern is a principal in Ernst & Young LLP’s Financial Services Organization (FSO) in the Advisory Services practice and is based in New York. He serves as the FSO Advisory Blockchain Leader, working with financial institutions on building out blockchain-based platforms and approaches and managing the corresponding risks. Eli also co-leads FSO Advisory’s Structured Finance Advisory Services (SFAS) practice, where he focuses on serving financial services institutions in the securitization market. The SFAS practice provides advisory, valuation, and transaction issuance and compliance-related services. He supports the financial services industry as an advisor and has served financial services organizations in many aspects of regulatory reform compliance and readiness. Eli frequently speaks on panels and at conferences about blockchain and financial-markets-related topics.
  

• 11:10

  30 min break

• 11:40

  Panel discussion with speakers, moderated by Sunnie Groeneveld

• 12:10

  Closing remarks

  Tara Erath

  —US. Embassy, Deputy Head of Mission

  Tara Feret Erath has served in Bern since June 2016. Previously, she was the Director of the State Department’s Nordic and Baltic Affairs Office. Other assignments include Economic Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul; Acting Director of the Office of European Union and Regional Affairs; Economic Counselor in Brasilia; Member of the Secretary’s Policy Planning Staff; Director for Investment, Agriculture and Sanctions at the National Security Council; and tours in Brussels, Paris and Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo.
  

• 12:20

  Closing remarks

  Dr. Michael Manz

  —Swiss Federal Department of Finance, FDF

  Mr. Manz is Deputy Head of the Department of Financial Systems and Markets and responsible for the blockchain submission to the State Secretariat.
  

• 12:30

  –14:00

  Light Lunch