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Christian Decker is the Lead Engineer at Blockstream. Christian is a Bitcoin enthusiast from the very beginning, back in 2009. He got involved in the, then small, community and starting to contribute. In 2012 he was offered a PhD Candidate position in the Distributed Computing Group at ETH Zurich. The goal of his research is to improve the understanding of the underlying consensus mechanisms and to enable the network to scale with the increasing demands. The result was the world’s first PhD dissertation about Bitcoin and the creation of a number of protocols including PeerCensus and Duplex Micropayment Channels.
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Michele D'Aliessi
Michele D'Aliessi is Co-Founder, COO at Superfluid, Building Real-time Finance. In Blockchain since 2015, studying tokenomics and crypto networks activity/adoption, especially token value generation, capture and retention for long term sustainability and growth. Now building real-time finance at Superfluid. Michele has 8+ years experience in working with tech startup entrepreneurs to expand their business internationally and scale their operations/sales. In 2015 he successfully launched the new robotic bar MakrShakr worldwide, negotiated and closed the first sales contracts with Fortune 500 corporations, while setting up and managing global operations and sales. In 2013 and 2014 Michele produced two startups documentaries on YouTube that collectively reached millions of viewers with pure organic growth. His combined tech and business background allows Michele to develop structured and measurable approaches in studying, designing and optimising processes. He is an experienced public speaker and lecturer in technology and entrepreneurship at several business schools. Areas of interest/expertise: Startups, Blockchain, Token Economics, Fintech, Robotics, AI.
Adam Back
Adam Back is the co-founder and CEO of the blockchain technology company Blockstream. He invented Hashcash, the proof-of-work algorithm cited by Satoshi Nakamoto in the Bitcoin whitepaper, which was intended to be the basis for its mining function in the future. Over the course of his two-decade-long career as an applied cryptographer and security architect, he has held senior roles at several technology companies, including Microsoft, EMC, PI, VMware, and Zero-Knowledge Systems, and has provided advice to many more companies on cryptography and peer-to-peer finance. Dr. Adam Back holds a Ph.D. in distributed systems from the University of Exeter.
Alyse Killeen
Alyse Killeen is a founding managing partner of Stillmark and serves on the boards of companies Blockstream, Satoshi Energy, and IBEX Mercado.
Pieter Wuille
Peter Wuille is a Bitcoin Core developer and the co-founder of Blockstream. He is ranked second in terms of commits to Bitcoin Core and is responsible for important improvements to Bitcoin such as BIP 66, libsecp256k1, and Segregated Witness. His programming languages include C++, C, Perl, Java, Bash, (PG)SQL, Haskell, OCaml, and PHP. He is also skilled in system administration, including Linux, Apache, PostgreSQL, and LDAP. His specialties include programming languages, compilers, and cryptography.
Erik Svenson
Erik Svenson is the co-founder, President, and CFO of Blockstream. He has more than 20 years of experience in leading strategies, operations, and fundraising in his previous roles. He spent 10 years in the traditional finance industry in leading roles, followed by another decade as a co-founder and consultant for rapidly growing technology startups. Erik has a BA from Stanford and is a former CFA charterholder.
Jan Camenisch
Jan Camenisch is the CTO of DFINITY and a member of the Technical Management Committee of Sovrin. He graduated from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich.
Sebastian Burgel
Sebastian Bürgel is the CTO and Co-Founder of Validity Labs and HOPR. He received his PhD from ETH Zurich, and then directed his curiosity and energy towards blockchain, smart contracts, and other decentralized technologies. His previous project, SONECT, a mobile cash solution, drew the attention of one of Switzerland's largest financial institutions, PostFinance. Sebastian is a frequent speaker at major blockchain conferences, and is one of the world's leading decentralized application architects. He has built applications for industries such as insurance, real estate, finance, biomedical, and others
Steven Willinger
Steven Willinger is the Partner of Blockchain Builders Fund. Presively he was Ventures Lead at Coinbase. Product Management at Blockstream. GTM at Google. Steven Willinger graduated from Stanford University Graduate School of Business.
Korbinian Abstreiter
Korbinian Abstreiter is the Co-Founder at AwesomeQA.He graduated from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich
Mike Schmidt
Mike Schmidt joined the Bitcoin ecosystem in 2018 as a product manager at Blockstream and a contributor to Bitcoin Optech. With Optech, he contributes to the newsletters in addition to organizing and presenting technical content at member workshops. Mike has also contributed to Bitcoin Core by organizing events, assisting in running the taproot review sessions, and performing testing and outreach in the space. 15 years experience discovering, understanding, and developing software solutions to achieve customer needs. Success in leading multiple payment system deployments for large institutions. Rabid learner and productivity geek.