2021 Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Trends, Advancements, Unknowns, and Limitations

Ash Egan is Founder and General Partner at Acrylic, and Venture Partner at Accomplice. He has been investing in crypto companies and protocols since 2015, and previously co-launched ConsenSys Ventures and spent time at Converge VC in Boston.

Ash is known for being an early investor in now pillar companies in the blockchain and crypto space – he invested in Chainalysis’ seed round in 2015, led BlockFi’s seed round in 2017, led Near’s seed round in 2018, and co-led Balancer’s seed round in 2019. He also sourced Accomplice’s investment in Dapper Labs/FLOW, Bison Trails, and API3 among others, and has angel invested in a dozen companies in the category.

Before falling in love with crypto venture capital, Ash captained Princeton University’s squash team and won a national championship in 2012. He was recognized in Forbes 30 Under 30 for Venture Capital in 2020, and serves as a mentor at Harvard Ventures’ ConsenSys Tachyon Accelerator.

Dave Hendricks is the CEO and Founder of Vertalo, a digital transfer agent that ‘connects and enables the digital asset ecosystem’.

Before founding Vertalo in 2017, Dave cofounded LiveIntent, a $100 million revenue machine learning and AI startup that invented the first platform for real time advertising in email.

Dave sits on the executive advisory board for the DTCC, on several boards of technology startups, and has been named by Business Insiders as one the top technologists in data-based startups. Dave and his family live in Austin TX, where Vertalo has its headquarters and growing team.

Karthik Iyer is the ambassador of the P2P-Foundation and runs BlockchainMonk a DLT / DAO think tank and R&D Center. He was featured in the top 200 Fintech influencer list and mentors dozens of DLT startups in 4 continents.

He is a serial entrepreneur and founded Asia’s first neural network in the matching space and was part of the team that built one of the first tablet devices way back in 2007; He holds close to half dozen degrees from leading schools in the world like KTH in Sweden, Fudan University in China among others.

Karthik is regularly featured in Forbes, Economist and leading newspapers in Scandinavia, India and other Asian countries.

Jimmy Nguyen is one of the world’s top Bitcoin and blockchain experts. He is a renowned public speaker, media commentator and global ambassador for Bitcoin SV. Jimmy joined nChain and then helped launch the Bitcoin Association after a 21-year career as an intellectual property and digital technology lawyer.

Jimmy is a Certified Information Privacy Professional/U.S. In 2008, Lawdragon named him (at only age 36) one of the “500 Leading Lawyers in America” and described him as a “dynamo talent.” He has also been recognized by the Century City Bar Association as “Intellectual Property Lawyer of the Year” (2011), and by the Association of Media & Entertainment Counsel with its Industry Leader Award (2017).

For his diverse leadership, Jimmy has been named a “Top 100 Under 50 Diverse Executive Leader” (2015) by Diversity MBA magazine and was inducted into California Minority Counsel Program’s Diversity Hall of Fame (2015).

Prabhakar Reddy is a serial entrepreneur, an active angel investor and an ex-Venture Capitalist. Prabhakar co-founded FalconX, the largest institutional digital asset prime-brokerage, backed by notable investors such as Accel, American Express, Coinbase, Fidelity and Tiger Global.

Prior to founding FalconX, Prabhakar was an investor at Accel, where he invested in promising early stage startups. As a serial entrepreneur, Prabhakar also founded three companies since 2008 and has had two successful exits. An Engineer by training, Prabhakar also holds an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Christina Björnström is serial tech entrepreneur, journalist, advisor, and speaker. Christina Björnström has previously cofounded 3 startups, held executive roles at tech companies, and served as President and Executive Director of the Swedish American Chamber of Commerce New England (2015-2018), where she helped establish Boston as a point of national/strategic interest for the Swedish government.

Christina has launched several seminal STEM initiatives in Boston including hackathons for elementary school children and innovation bootcamps. Currently the Cofounder and CEO of a stealth artificial intelligence/security platform, Christina is also the Founder of Ström Consulting, an MBA admissions consultancy, and regularly advises autonomous driving, AI, and cryptocurrency startups on fundraising, business development, and commercializing R&D.

A frequent contributor to panel discussions and podcasts on entrepreneurship, deep tech, and women in tech, Christina serves as an Instructor for FutureHack, Community Leader for Fishbowl’s Women in Tech, Judge for the Hult Prize Finals, and mentor for the Entrepreneur Futures Network.

Christina holds a BA(Hons) Politics and Human Rights from the University of Essex and an MA in Sustainable Development and Environmental Management from Harvard University.

Ziad K. Abdelnour is Founder, President & CEO of Blackhawk Partners, Inc. a private “family office” in the business of originating, structuring & acting as equity investor in strategic corporate investments and co-Founder of Aeros-Blackhawk Partners; a trading platform focusing on the financing of real estate and project finance properties throughout the US.

Founder & Chairman of the Board of the Financial Policy Council ; a 501 (c) (3) non-profit organization designed to give its select group of supporters the opportunity to have direct face-to-face dialogue with the nation’s quintessential power brokers and policymakers

A member of TIGER 21, a peer-to-peer learning group for super high net worth individuals and of Young Presidents Organization (YPO) – a private group of global chief executives whose companies employ 16 million people and generate 6-trillion USD in annual revenues

Author of the bestselling book “Economic Warfare: Secrets of Wealth Creation in the Age of Welfare Politics” and of the upcoming book ” Startup Saboteurs: How Incompetence, Ego, and Small Thinking Prevent True Wealth Creation” to be published in Summer 2019.

Mr. Abdelnour has over 30 year experience on Wall Street backing over 125 companies & serial entrepreneurs worth in aggregate over 20 billion dollars in the private equity, high yield bond and distressed debt markets.

He holds a MBA in Finance Summa Cum Laude from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania & BS in Economics, Summa Cum Laude, from the American University of Beirut

Today, Mr. Abdelnour continues to be featured in hundreds of media channels and publications every year and is widely seen as one of the top business leaders by millions around the world.

He was just recently been featured as one of the 500 Most Influential CEOs in the World.