Digital Assets Outlook Europe 2023 Speakers

Ron Akram is co-founder and co-managing principal of Isla Capital, a regulated alternative investments manager whose flagship fund ‘AB Digital Strategies’ (Cayman Islands-domiciled) is a market-neutral digital assets hedge fund. Ron has worked as a founder, operator and investor in a range of technology-related companies. Ron has also held roles as a global markets banker and advisor for institutional and high net worth clients in a variety of structuring and distribution roles, originating and trading cross-asset investments in areas of asset, product and cross-border regulatory novelty. Ron originally qualified as both a Solicitor in England & Wales and Attorney in New York State. Ron holds an MSc in Finance from London Business School, where he has also served as a course instructor for several years. Ron was also educated at King’s College, London (LL.B) and Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne (Maîtrise in Law).

Marc P. Bernegger, co-founder at fund of hedge funds AltAlpha Digital, is speaking at Digital Assets Outlook Europe 2023. Marc is a serial-tech entrepreneur who first explored Bitcoin in 2012. Besides starting the crypto hedge fund AltAlpha Digital he is a co-founder of the longevity company-builder Maximon, sits on the board of the Swiss Blockchain Federation and CfC St. Moritz and he is the Chairman of Longevity Investors. Marc started the party platform usgang.ch in his 20s, and later sold it to Axel Springer Media. He is also a co-founder of amiando, a ticketing platform, which was purchased by Xing and named “Global Technology Pioneer” by the World Economic Forum (WEF). Marc was a founding shareholder and board member of Crypto Finance Group (acquired by Deutsche Boerse in 2021) and has been involved in crypto quants since 2018. Marc holds a master’s degree in law from the University of Zurich and is an alumni of the Singularity University.

Manu is the CEO of DMALINK - a leading independent electronic trading, analytics and market data venue for institutional FX & precious metals and the Co-Founder of DeFinity Markets - an institutional ECN for cryptocurrencies and wholesale Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC). Before joining DMALINK in 2019, Manu spent 17 years working in fixed income, currencies and commodities, OTC derivative sales & structuring for Lloyds Bank and Barclays investment bank. Manu is a tech focused entrepreneur, venture investor and crypto NFT artist. Subject matter expert on emerging financial technologies including electronic trading, digital assets and deep learning artificial intelligence. Manu has a Masters degree in business administration and a Bachelors degree in Psychology from the University of Leicester.

Prior to co-founding Sussex Partners, Mr. Ghali worked for Bear Stearns where he was part of a team that established a global private banking operation in London, and where he advised hedge funds and funds of hedge funds on institutional and pension fund mandates. Before joining Bear Stearns, Mr. Ghali founded Strategic Solutions International, a firm that specialised in capital introduction, due diligence and M&A through which he launched and sold a number of businesses in Europe and the United States. Mr. Ghali is a member of the Board of Directors of Vedra Partners Ltd, a UK based, FCA regulated multi-family office, and has sat on the Boards of a number of asset management and other businesses. In addition, Mr. Ghali was a Founding Mentor of Henkel˟, a division of German conglomerate Henkel, tasked with accelerating the group’s entrepreneurial transformation, and is a member of the Human Rights Watch Zurich committee, a leading international non-governmental organisation for advocacy on human rights. A frequent speaker at industry conferences and contributor to the financial press, Mr. Ghali has written articles for Bloomberg, Financial News, the FT’s Mandatewire, and is frequently cited in publications such as the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, Pensions & Investments and other financial and sector specialist press. He was named as one of Financial News’ 40 under 40 Rising Stars in Hedge Funds 2015. Mr. Ghali received a B.S. in Finance from the Stern School of Business, New York University, and is a Swiss national.

Peter is Aaro Capital’s Chief Executive Officer, responsible for the strategic direction of the firm as well as integrating rigorous economic thinking into the asset allocation process. After successfully trading cryptocurrencies on his personal account, Peter co-founded Aaro Capital to help give investors access to the growing opportunity presented by DLT and cryptoassets. He previously worked at competition economics consultancy RBB Economics, advising on multibillion-dollar global M&A deals, and draws on this background to provide a traditional competition and industrial economics framework to DLT and cryptoassets. Peter holds an MSc in Economics from the University of Southampton.

John van Marle is a Partner at Theta Capital Management, the largest investor in crypto-native venture capital funds globally. John joined Theta in 2021 and is responsible for marketing and origination. He has worked in London for 19 years, starting on the European equity sales desk at Cazenove, moving to the specialist sales desk when JP Morgan acquired Cazenove in 2010, with a focus on real estate. John was voted #1 in the annual Reuters Extel Survey in 2016. In 2015 he became Head of EMEA Block Trading, managing ECM risk and distribution of all JP Morgan European ECM products. In 2019, John joined real estate fund manager ICAMAP, where he sat on the investment committee of ICAMAX fund and led the firm’s investor relations and fundraising efforts. He earned a Masters degree in Law from the VU Amsterdam in 2002.

Raoul is the Co-Founder and CEO of Real Vision Group, one of world’s leading financial media platforms. Additionally, he publishes the Global Macro Investor, a renowned independent macro investment strategy service and is a founder of two other businesses, both in the digital asset industry - a Fund of Digital Asset Hedge Funds and a social token/NFT studio, which tokenizes the world’s largest communities for brands, music artists, sports teams etc. Formerly Raoul worked for Goldman Sachs and later ran a global macro hedge fund for GLG Partners. He lives in the Cayman Islands.

Yuval is one of the OGs of Quant strategies in crypto. Founder and CEO of YRD and former Chair of AIBA (Asia Israel Blockchain Association), Yuval has been active in the space since 2017. His pioneering vision, and leadership resulted in YRD consistently being one of the top performers in its category. Highlights of his pre-crypto career include a senior position at Infinity Equity (Beijing), Managing Director at Hone Capital (Shanghai), General Manager at ironSource APAC (NYSE: IS), to name a few. Based in London, Yuval is married to Roni and father to Ellie, MBA, INSEAD.

Mr. Round has acted as CEO of publicly listed crypto asset broker Global Block Digital Asset Trading (formerly Helix Applications Inc.) since October 2019. Formerly an investment manager with over twenty years of experience in multi-asset investments, Mr. Round recently managed funds at an award-winning London-based investment firm, Cheyne Capital. Prior to that, he was a partner at niche arbitrage specialist Boston & Alexander, also based in London. He has specialised in convertible bonds, fixed income, credit, equities and their derivatives throughout his career. This has led to an early and natural interest in digital assets and their underlying technologies.

Moritz started investing in 1998 and began his professional career as a derivatives trader at HSBC in Germany. Later, he worked for RBS in the UK as well as in the USA, where he was responsible for the bank’s equity derivatives structuring business. Subsequent to RBS, Moritz co-founded Aquantum, a Munich-based systematic CTA focused on short-term trend following and commodity spread trading strategies. Recently, Moritz served as the CEO/CIO of Munich Re Investment Partners, a quantitative asset management company serving institutional clients globally. Today, Moritz is the CIO at Exponential Age Asset Management and co-heads the Digital Innovation Group at Real Vision together with Moritz Heiden. He lives south of Munich, close to the mountains, with his wife and two kids. Next to trading he likes reading a good book and enjoys playing tennis.

Dave has over 30 years of banking and investment experience. He is the CSO of Truss Edge, the complete software and operations platform for hedge funds, CTAs and ETFs and he is also the CEO of MATware , the portfolio management system for institutional investors in hedge funds and private equity. Dave was Managing Director of FundXchange which was acquired by Zurich Financial Services. For over 18 years he was at the Bank of Bermuda with his last position as Vice President and Head of Business Development of Global Fund Services, EMEA and he has assisted managers in establishing hedge funds since 1992. Dave is a director of a number of prominent private investment businesses.