Global Leaders

Speakers

SmartCon brings together the world’s leading voices in finance, Web3, and government to share firsthand insights on how blockchain and onchain technologies are transforming industries, institutions, and the global economy—sparking critical conversations that chart the course of an onchain future.

Aaron Schnarch
Founder and Executive Director, Compound Foundation
Jakov Buratovic
Master of DeFi, Lido
Dan Silverman
Co-CEO, Balcony
Ari Juels
Chief Scientist, Chainlink Labs
Eleanor Terrett
Journalist, Host, Crypto In America
Alex Zhang
Co-Founder, Pharos
Jeremy Ng
Founder & CEO, OpenEden
Scott Dykstra
CTO and Co-Founder, Space and Time
Michaël van de Poppe
Founder & CIO, MN Capital & MN Fund
Sogol Malek
Founder CEO , XTreamly
Laszlo Szabo
CEO & Co-Founder, Kiln
Rhett Shipp
CEO, Avant
Mitchell Demeter
CEO, Sonic Labs
Joe Sticco
Co-Founder, Cryptex Finance
Marcus Hardt Filho
CEO, Balancer Labs
Andra Nicolau
Co-Founder, LYS Labs
Paul-Adrien Hyppolite
CEO, Spiko
Noah Buxton
CEO, The Network Firm
Ashish Khandelwal
Founder & CEO, Anq
Demian Brener
Founder & CEO, OpenZeppelin
Sandra Ro
CEO, GBBC
Adam Levi
Co-Founder, Backed Finanace
Vivek Raman
CEO, Etherealize
Austin Przybysz
Co-founder and Chief Builder, Instruxi
Ben Weiss
Crypto Reporter, Fortune
CJ
CEO, XSwap
Jillian Friedman
COO, Symbiotic
Victor Lee
Founder, Maiga.ai
Christian Pusateri
CEO/Co-Founder, Mind Network
Austin Arnold
Founder, Altcoin Daily
Frances Edwards
Chief Operating Officer, Avantgarde Finance
Vijay Pravin Maharajan
Founder and CEO, bitsCrunch
Christian Harrington
Co-Founder, QuantAMM
Aaron Arnold
Host/Founder, Altcoin Daily
Michael del Castillo
Founder and CEO, Media Luna
Robbie Morris
Founder, Contract Level
Karen Ottoni
Senior Director of Ecosystem & Strategic Initiatives, LF Decentralized Trust
Pritam Dutta
Founder & CEO, Zoth
Mathew Harrowing
Co-Founder, Instruxi
Karina Du
CMO, Solv Protocol
Eric Turner
CEO, Messari
Patrick Delaney
CEO, Ampli Technologies
Jordan Gray
Co-Founder, CMO, PublicAI
Benedetto Biondi
CEO, Folks Finance
Jonny Huxtable
CEO and Founder, LinkPool and stake.link (SDL)
Ben Forman
Founder & Managing Partner, ParaFi Capital
Solange Gueiros
DevRel Education Manager, Chainlink Labs
Kubilay Ozcelik
CEO, Matrixed.Link
Michael Bar Zeev
Co Founder & President, SHIFT
Peter Van Mourik
Co-founder, Chainlayer
Shea Ketsdever
Product Lead, Flashbots
Jake Loo
CTO, thirdweb
Bill Lee
Co-Founder & CEO, DualMint
Matthew Felice Pace
CEO, Simply Staking
Fiona Ma
VP of Growth, Falcon Finance
Rich King
Co-founder, RPS AI
Andy C
Co-Founder, The Rollup
Ilan Klein
Founder, NFT Bridges
Greg Osuri
CEO of Overclock Labs & Founder, Akash Network
Serena Leung
Head of RWA Tokenization, Polygon Labs
Mike Grantis
Co-Founder & CEO, General TAO Ventures
James Wright
CEO, Multisynq
Ryot Seo
Co-Founder, Xitadel
Amy Hang
Chainlink Advocate, Chainlink Community Volunteer
Joshua Gottlieb
CEO & Founder, Lendvest
Corey Caplan
CTO of World Liberty Financial, World Liberty Financial
Edwin Mata
CEO & Co-Founder, Brickken
Felix Bengtsson
Founder, Planet Ix
Isaac Zarb
Co-Founder and CTO, Simply Staking
Danielle Tamasi
Product Manager, CCIP, Chainlink Labs
Vladimir Novakovski
Founder & CEO, Lighter
Zale Reeves
Founder, NorthWest Nodes
Clayton Lowery
Co-Founder & CSO, The Network Firm
Lou Kerner
Founder, CryptoMondays
Mathias Lundoe Nielsen
Founder & CEO, EntravelX
Kevin Rusher
CEO, RAAC
Artiona Bogo
Global Head of Solutions Architecture, Chainlink
Alex Bowman
CEO, Voyager
Charles Cao
Founder, Swan Chain
Yonathan Lapchik
CEO, SukuPay
Zayi Reyes
Head of Partner Marketing, Chainlink Labs
Michael So
Co-Founder & CEO, Tokenyze
Hannah Yang
Co-Founder, TerpLayer
Surendra Kalidindi
Co-Founder, COO & CTO, Hadron by Tether | Pointsville
Cody Carbone
CEO, The Digital Chamber
Bogdan Habic
Co-Founder and CTO, Tenderly
Eman Herawy
Founder, Arabs in Blockchain
Johann Eid
CBO, Chainlink
Philip Forte
Founder, Elixir
Kylie Poole
Head of UK Sales & Partnerships, Chainlink Labs
Sunil Sachdev
SVP, Embedded Finance and Digital Assets, Fiserv
Oleg Kron
Co-founder, CTO, Concero
Gabriel Otte
Co-Founder and CEO of Dinari, Dinari
Andy Kangpan
Co-Founder and General Partner, Metalayer
Dennis O'Connell
President, ERC-3643 Association
Ashley O'Brien
Customer Engagement Strategist, Banking and Capital Markets, Chainlink Labs
Andrew McFarlane
CTO, Validation Cloud
Hong Kim
Co-Founder and CTO, Bitwise Asset Management
Dror Gurevich
CEO, Velocity Career Labs
Arthur
CTO, Swapper Finance

More SmartCon speakers announced soon…

NOV 4-5, 2025  |  THE METROPOLITAN PAVILION

Where Worlds Converge.

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Caroline Pham
Acting Chairman, U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission
Acting Chairman Caroline D. Pham

Caroline D. Pham was designated CFTC acting Chairman on January 20, 2025. She was sworn in as a CFTC Commissioner on April 14, 2022, after being nominated by the President and unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Acting Chairman Pham is an internationally recognized leader in strategy and innovation, with deep commercial expertise in derivatives and capital markets. She began her financial services career on the fixed income trading floor and has 24 years of experience in law and finance including over 10 years of experience in crypto and digital assets. Acting Chairman Pham was named to CoinDesk’s Most Influential 2023 list in recognition of her groundbreaking proposal for a U.S. regulatory sandbox by creating a CFTC digital asset markets pilot program.

As sponsor of the CFTC’s Global Markets Advisory Committee, acting Chairman Pham has delivered 14 recommendations on U.S. Treasury market reform, repo and funding markets, money market funds, collateral management, capital and margin, exchange volatility controls, T+1 securities settlement and FX markets, central counterparty resilience, streamlining trade reporting data, tokenized collateral, and a first-ever U.S. digital asset taxonomy. Her leadership has focused on access to markets, American competitiveness, and right-sizing regulations to promote market liquidity and efficiency.

As acting Chairman, Pham has transformed the agency by saving nearly $50 million in annualized costs, implementing enhanced governance and accountability, simplifying organizational structure, and updating the CFTC’s annual performance plan and key performance indicators for the first time in 8 years. She has issued over 20 staff letters, advisories, and other guidance documents to provide regulatory clarity and reduce administrative burden, and has completed all strategic priorities, 30% of outstanding regulatory matters, and 50% of open enforcement actions, some dating back over 15 years.

Prior to her appointment, acting Chairman Pham advised boards of directors, executive and senior management, policymakers and regulators, and industry leaders on changes to the regulatory landscape and implications of emerging issues, trends, and economic and market developments to the global financial system, markets, and banking. Her engagement includes international standard setters such as the Financial Stability Board (FSB), International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO), Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS), and Bank for International Settlements (BIS), as well as central banks, government ministries, regulators, and other stakeholders across North America, Latin America, United Kingdom, Europe, Middle East and Africa, and Asia-Pacific regions. Her substantial experience spans key international issues such as prudential regulation and systemic risk and the impact of major disruptions like the savings and loan crisis, the 2008 great financial crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Acting Chairman Pham was previously a managing director at Citigroup, where she served on firm-wide governance forums and held various group-level executive roles in the chief administrative office, institutional clients group (banking and markets), legal, and compliance. Most recently, acting Chairman Pham was head of market structure for strategic initiatives, working closely with innovation, strategic equity investment and venture capital, and business and product development teams on digital assets and other opportunities.  Other roles at Citigroup included deputy head of global regulatory affairs, head of capital markets regulatory strategy and engagement, and global head of swap dealer and Volcker Rule compliance.

Acting Chairman Pham has a proven track record in driving transformational change and delivering solutions that add value to the firm’s franchise and clients. At Citigroup, she built global programs and teams and led initiatives for implementation of the Dodd-Frank Act and other global regulatory reforms across all institutional and retail businesses. For 5 years, she led global initiatives for markets and securities services including G10 rates, FX, local markets, credit, securitized markets, municipals, commodities, equities, and multi-asset.

Acting Chairman Pham’s past experience in the public sector includes serving as Special Counsel and Policy Advisor to former CFTC Commissioner Scott O’Malia; and in enforcement at the CFTC, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), and for the former chief judge of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims while in law school.

Acting Chairman Pham is a Life Fellow of the American Bar Foundation. She was also a Visiting Fellow at the George Washington University Center for Law, Economics, and Finance, and has served on the Dean’s Advisory Council for the Business and Finance Law Program. Her former leadership roles with the American Bar Association (ABA) include member of the Council of the Business Law Section; Vice Chair of the Banking Law Committee; and Co-Chair of the Securities, Capital Markets, and Derivatives Subcommittee. She is a former Co-Chair of the Business Law Fellows Committee, a program to develop future leaders, and also a former Fellow herself. In addition, acting Chairman Pham has served in leadership roles on a multitude of industry forums.

Acting Chairman Pham has a B.A. from UCLA, a certificate from UCLA Anderson School of Management, and a J.D. from the George Washington University Law School. Among other professional awards, acting Chairman Pham received the 2025 Legacy Award from the Financial Club and UK US Crypto Alliance and the 2024 Belva Ann Lockwood Award presented to one inspiring GW Law alumna each year who is a trailblazer. She also received the National Conference of Vietnamese American Attorneys Cornerstone Award for lifetime achievement as the first Vietnamese-American woman appointed by the President to a Senate-confirmed executive branch position. She was born and raised in California’s Central Valley, the “food basket of the world.”