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Carlos Pereira is a Partner at BITKRAFT Ventures based in New York. At BITKRAFT, Carlos focuses on crypto-centric opportunities globally, as well as expanding the funds’ coverage in LatAm and India. Before joining the team, he worked at Eldridge, investing in private markets with a focus on growth equity and venture capital, especially in media and interactive entertainment. He also held strategy and finance leadership roles at VENN, a media startup at the intersection of gaming, media, and UGC video. Originally from Brazil, Carlos is a graduate of the Political Philosophy program at the University of Virginia.
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Piers Kicks
Piers Kicks is Partner, Head of Gaming at Delphi Digital. Exploring the emergence of the Metaverse through the lens of decentralized networks. Piers acquired his first bitcoin at 13 years old in exchange for virtual currency in a video game. After reaching 69 global in Rainbow Six Siege (over 50 million players), building his own RSPS, being a first generation virtual reality user, and growing up with crypto, he leverages his unique insight into the undercurrents of the web to cross the digital divide. Computer science and philosophy background, entrepreneurial with a global digital asset network. Hunting asymmetric crypto/venture investment opportunities in early stage projects that seek to advance and support the decentralized dream.
Ori Shimony
Ori Shimony is a developer at dOrg and a venture partner at Portal Ventures. He graduated from the University of Virginia.
Jens Hilgers
Jens is a Founding General Partner of BITKRAFT Ventures, a global early- and mid-stage investment platform for gaming, esports, and interactive media, which he started in 2015. Under his leadership, the firm has built a portfolio spanning more than 50 companies across North America, Europe, and Asia. BITKRAFT launched its inaugural $18M Pre-Seed Fund in 2017, and in 2020 raised a $165M Venture Fund I, featuring LPs including the family offices and investment firms of Bruce Karsh, David M. Rubenstein, and Jonathan Soros. Jens is also Co-Founder and Chairman of esports team G2 Esports, one of the world’s most valuable esports organizations. Widely considered one of esports’ first entrepreneurs, Jens launched his first esports online platform gamers.de in 1997, which he sold in 1999. In 2000, Jens founded ESL and grew the company into the world's most prestigious esports brand during his ten-year tenure as CEO. In 2015, international entertainment company MTG acquired a majority stake in ESL, marking the first acquisition of an esports company by a traditional media organization.
Malte Barth
Malte is a Founding General Partner of BITKRAFT Ventures based in London and Lisbon. Since 2014 he served as Head of Esports at Modern Times Group, which holds one of the largest esports portfolios globally with leading brands like ESL, DreamHack, ESEA, and others. He holds Board roles at ESL and DreamHack and since 2010, serves as an Industrial Advisor to EQT, a leading global private equity firm.Malte graduated in Industrial Engineering and Business Management from Nordakademie and is active as an entrepreneurial leader, investor and operator in the media, games and esports space for over 20 years.
Jai Prasad
Jai Prasad is the Co-founder at Definitive. Presively he Building TokenAnalyst, Crypto Product Lead at Coinbase, Product & Engineering at SeedInvest, College at UVA. Building the intelligence layer for the decentralized world. Former Co-Founder of EntryWire, Management Consultant at Accenture.
Nick van Eck
Nick van Eck is co-founder and CEO of Agora and was previously a partner at General Catalyst. He graduated from the University of Virginia.
Scott Rupp
Scott is a Founding General Partner of BITKRAFT Ventures based in Denver. An interactive entertainment entrepreneur, investor, and operating executive for over 20 years, Scott served as USA Managing Director for Modern Times Group, a global leader in games and esports, where he led their venture capital fund and U.S. expansion.Scott held co-founder and CEO roles at influencer marketing and digital content companies Digital Artists and Icebox and was an early leader in the U.S. online games industry as SVP of Corporate Development for Gazillion.He advised the world’s leading entertainment companies on the games industry while at McKinsey, and previously served at Deutsche Bank and Carlyle Group. He has an MBA from Kellogg and an MPA from Harvard.
John Zettler
John Zettler is the Staking Product Lead at Coinbase. He was a cofounder of $cbETH and has led a number of products at Coinbase through the years including Commerce (crypto payments) and Asset Hub. Before Coinbase, John founded one of the first art NFT marketplaces (RARE Art) and the first combined crypto/stock trading platform for US investors. In a past life, John worked on Wall Street.
Ethan Fast
Ethan Fast is co-founder and CTO of Nash, a non-custodial exchange and management platform for cryptocurrencies and other digital assets. He has a PhD in Computer Science from Stanford and has published articles in renowned journals and conferences, such as Nature, CHI, EMNLP, and AAAI. Prior to this, he co-founded Proxino, a web analytics company funded by Y Combinator.
Katherine Dowling
Katherine Dowling is the General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer of Bitwise Asset Management. She previously held General Counsel, CCO, and COO roles at various financial and private equity firms, and co-founded, was a GP, Managing Director and COO of Luminate Capital Partners, a software private equity firm in San Francisco. A Harvard Law graduate, Katherine spent over a decade as a federal prosecutor, most recently in the Economic Crimes Unit of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California, where she worked with the FBI, SEC, IRS and other agencies to prosecute cases of insider trading, fraud, and money laundering, among others. She also serves on the boards of two non-profit organizations.