Zurich - Digital Assets Workshop

Gerry Afentakis is Managing Director of Zodia Custody Europe and sits on the Board of Zodia’s Luxembourg CSSF regulated entity.

In this role he is responsible for all aspects of Zodia’s commercial, strategic and operational growth across the continent.

Gerry has 20 years of financial services expertise and has a unique track record of scaling early stage financial services businesses across both traditional asset classes and digital assets.

Georges Bock is the Founder and CEO of Investre S.A., a Luxembourg-based FinTech delivering end-to-end DLT infrastructure for investment funds. Under his leadership, Investre became the first Controlling Agent licensed by the CSSF under Luxembourg’s Blockchain IV Law, enabling compliant issuance, safekeeping, and settlement of tokenised fund shares on distributed ledgers.

The licence allows Investre to provide the full regulated DLT stack for tokenised funds, including issuance, safekeeping, settlement, and distribution. This positions the company as a trusted infrastructure partner for asset managers, custodians, banks, and institutional investors transitioning to digital-native fund models.

Through Moniflo, Investre’s retail platform, Georges extends this infrastructure to individual investors, offering access to UCITS and ELTIF products, including tokenised share classes, with greater transparency and liquidity optionality.

Before founding Investre, Georges spent 27 years at KPMG Luxembourg, where he served as Managing Partner, Head of Tax, and Global Financial Services Digital Strategy Lead Partner.

In 2025, he was named Visionary of the Year at the Luxembourg Finance Awards. He also serves as a Non-Executive Director at Bank Julius Baer Europe S.A., Governance.com, and UNICEF Luxembourg.

Julie Bourgeois is a Luxembourg-based investment professional specializing in alternative investment fund management, with a strong focus on private markets and digital assets. She is actively involved in the structuring, governance and operational oversight of investment funds within the European regulatory framework, particularly under AIFMD. Julie combines deep expertise in traditional private equity and venture capital structures with a pioneering approach to regulated crypto-asset investment strategies.

Through her work with Luxembourg-regulated fund structures, including RAIFs and limited partnerships, she contributes to the development of innovative investment platforms bridging traditional finance and the emerging digital asset ecosystem. Her expertise covers fund structuring, regulatory strategy, service provider oversight and investor relations across multiple jurisdictions.

Julie regularly engages with industry stakeholders, regulators and service providers to advance Luxembourg’s position as a leading hub for regulated alternative and digital asset funds. She is particularly interested in the evolution of European financial regulation and the integration of blockchain technologies within institutional investment frameworks.

Lamine Brahimi, CFA is a co-founder and Managing Partner of Taurus SA. Prior to co-founding Taurus SA, Lamine was previously Deputy-COO, Chief Digital Officer of Lombard Odier’s wealth management unit, as well as General Secretary of the Group.

In his capacity as Chief Digital Officer, he spearheaded the design and development of Lombard Odier’s wealth management digital strategy leading to several critically acclaimed platforms, in particular in relation to investment advisory. He also pushed the first real blockchain prototype to be tested in a private bank (clearing and settlements of structured products with the Swiss Stock Exchange and Swiss Fintech Innovations).

Between 2016 and 2018, he represented the Swiss Private Banks at the Fintech Commission of the Swiss Bankers Association and was a founding member and Board member of Swiss Fintech Innovations. He started his career as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company.

Lamine holds an MSc in Communication Systems Engineering from EPFL, an MBA with distinction from INSEAD, and is also CFA charterholder.

Paolo Brignardello is one of the founders of FundsDLT, a pioneering platform that leverages advanced technologies to transform the distribution of investment funds. FundsDLT became part of the Deutsche Börse Group in December 2023 and now operates within Clearstream Fund Services as its digital pillar.

He has broad expertise in cross border fund distribution and the investment fund supply chain, acquired through a number of senior positions and projects in fund services product management and operations (transfer agents, fund platforms).

Paolo holds an MBA from the Open University and an economics degree from the Sapienza University of Rome.

Boika Deleva is a Counsel at Clifford Chance in Luxembourg.

Boika specialises in banking and financial services regulation as well as derivatives, finance, securities, insolvency and general banking law matters.

She advises financial institutions and start-ups on digital finance matters, including tokenisation, issuance of digital assets and use of innovative technologies for traditional financial sector activities.

As Head of EU Crypto Legal at Robinhood, Nomi Goheer advises executive leadership on international crypto regulation, regulatory enhancements across jurisdictions, and market entry strategies.

With over 15 years of professional legal experience, including more than 5 years at Robinhood, he brings deep specialization in U.S. and international regulatory engagement and advisory work.

At Robinhood, he aligns business strategies with global regulatory frameworks and drives initiatives that support compliant business growth. His mission is to foster innovation in financial technology while upholding the highest legal and regulatory standards.

He also provides global regulatory legal advice on financial crimes compliance, including anti-money laundering, sanctions, fraud, and anti-corruption.

Jean-Baptiste Graftieaux brings over two decades of senior leadership experience across global financial services, payments, and digital assets. Prior to joining Coinbase, he served as Group Chief Executive Officer of Bitstamp, where he scaled the business and led the company through its strategic acquisition by Robinhood in 2025.

Earlier in his career, he held executive and governance roles at PayPal as Chief Compliance Officer for EMEA and at eBay Europe, where he drove regulatory strategy, complex cross-border initiatives, and board-level decision-making.

At Coinbase, Jean-Baptiste is focused on building institutional partnerships, executing Europe’s MiCA strategy, and driving disciplined, long-term growth through regulatory clarity, strategic execution, and market leadership—advancing Coinbase’s mission to expand economic freedom globally.

As an Executive Director at Clearstream, David Guerrero designs the future of digital securities custody. His work centers on digitising and tokenising assets and workflows to create new product categories for institutions, with a long-term strategy for B2B2C expansion. A key part of his role is helping expand post-trade market operations to a 24/7 framework and enhancing the utility of tokenised securities by delivering advanced collateral services. This includes driving the D7 platform, a digital ecosystem that streamlines the issuance of securities.

Before joining Clearstream, he spent eight years at Google building its Cloud organisation for financial services. There, he led innovation projects with major financial institutions. He worked with CME Group on their Cloud transformation and on advancing 24/7 trading capabilities, and with Goldman Sachs on modernising their global ledger.

His background also includes serving as CTO for two startups and holding foundational engineering roles at Microsoft and Disney.

Myles Harrison serves as Chief Product Officer at AMINA Bank, one of the world’s first FINMA-regulated crypto banks, where he leads global product and marketing strategy. Additionally, he is Chairman of AMINA EU, the MiCA-licensed, FMA-regulated wholly owned Austrian subsidiary of AMINA Bank.

At AMINA, Myles champions a client-first approach in product development and has been instrumental in the bank’s transformation into a global platform serving clients across 35+ countries.

Myles brings 15 years of financial services leadership, including Santander UK, where he held several product roles across retail and corporate banking. His experience scaling products for one of Europe’s largest banks provided the foundation for his transition to fintech innovation as Chief Product Officer at London-based Globacap, where he led product development for nearly three years.

Chris Hollifield is Head of Business Development at Luxembourg for Finance, where his work involves advising FinTech and financial companies looking to develop cross-border activity through Luxembourg-based platforms. He also advises on the development of the ecosystem in Luxembourg and on synergy creation with other key financial centres, with a focus on East Asia.

Prior to working at Luxembourg for Finance, Chris worked in the strategy department of Clearstream Banking SA, an International Central Securities Depository that facilitates the settlement of interbank transactions in over 50 markets worldwide. Here, his work focused particularly on strategic projects concerning distributed ledger technology and other FinTech topics.

Biba Homsy is lawyer in Luxembourg and Switzerland. 

She is active in the Blockchain and crypto space since 2015 and runs her boutique law firm Homsy Legal with 4 associates in Geneva and Luxembourg supporting private actors with specialisation in regulatory, compliance, financial services and crypto-assets. 

Before that, she was heading teams at the Swiss regulator FINMA for 5 years, and was also Chief Compliance for Credit Suisse where she was in charge of Luxembourg and its European branches (France, Portugal, Ireland, Austria, the Netherlands) with oversight of 40 people.

She has been designated one of the 30 worldwide crypto experts by the International World Economic Forum (WEF) to support the WEF in the digital expansion.

She is a lecturer for several universities in compliance, AML and Fintech. She holds two masters of Law (French & Swiss Universities) and a certification from Harvard Law School on regulation.

She sits on the board of directors of three major banks in Europe, one alternative investment fund manager, and one asset manager.

Peter Hubli started as Head Market Operations at Zürcher Kantonalbank in December 2011.

Since autumn 2020, in his role as Head Digital Asset Solutions, he has been responsible for the evaluation and implementation of DLT technologies in the processes at ZKB and also responsible for trading and settlement transactions in digital assets (including cryptocurrencies). Furthermore, representative of ZKB in external committees (e.g. IIF, ISSA) on the topic of DLT and digital assets. Peter led the successful onboarding to the SIX Digital Exchange (SDX) and act as Project Lead in the FundsDLT onboarding process as well as in the Helvetia Project of the Swiss National Bank.

Peter holds an Executive M.B.A. from the University of St. Gallen (HSG), Switzerland and has successfully completed the Executive Management Program at London Business School.

Rani Jabban has over 30 years of experience in the Financial industry. After two MSc in Economics and Finance, he has held senior FX and Treasury positions at BFO in London and Credit Agricole in Geneva.

Rani joined Arab Bank Switzerland in 2009 as Head of Treasury. Appointed to the Executive Committee in 2014, he also leads the Digital Assets activities, which he spearheaded, and the Marketing functions of the bank.

Sorin Jitaru is a Digital Assets Senior Expert at Caceis, a leading Asset Servicer in Europe dedicated to asset managers and institutional investors, part of the Crédit Agricole Group.

In his current role, he is in charge of product management, business development and client on-boarding for the Digital Assets Business Line.

He joined Caceis back in 2014 in Luxembourg as a FATCA Analyst, after previous experiences in 2 retail banks, part of Raiffeisen Bank International and Erste Group.

Sorin has held several positions at Caceis, as Project Manager and Business Coordinator with a focus on Fund Distribution Services, Inspector within the Internal audit department, and more recently as Group Product Manager in charge of Fund Administration and Regulatory Reporting services.

Fritz Jost is the Chief B2B Officer at Sygnum Bank, where he leads the team that serves as a trusted advisor and integration partner to private, retail and universal banks worldwide. Under his leadership, Sygnum’s B2B platform enables institutions to offer regulated digital-asset products and services to their clients seamlessly and securely. With more than 25 banking partners, Fritz has deep expertise in bridging traditional and digital finance, helping millions of end-clients access institutional-grade crypto services.

Before joining Sygnum, Fritz built and led the strategic platform-partner initiative at Leonteq AG, a fintech specialised in structured investment products and savings solutions.

Earlier in his career, he held senior investment-banking roles in New York and London, including global responsibility for capital markets and derivatives at SBC Warburg / UBS, and later served in executive positions within UBS’s ultra-high-net-worth and family-office division.

Marco Kessler joined SDX in October 2018 and has been a core contributor since the early days of the platform. Following the integration of SDX into SIX in 2025, Marco serves as Head Product and Business Development for Digital Assets at SIX, where he is responsible for shaping product strategy and driving commercial growth across the digital assets portfolio. As of August 2025, Marco also serves as Head of the Management Board of SDX AG.

Marco brings more than 14 years of experience in capital markets and digital transformation. Prior to joining SDX, he worked at Accenture, where he played a key role in large-scale digital transformation programs for global Swiss banks, with a particular focus on wealth management, advisory, and core banking.

His expertise spans management and technology consulting, business architecture for financial services, and IT strategy, with a strong emphasis on innovation in financial market infrastructures. Since joining SDX, Marco has been instrumental in building and scaling the platform and in advancing the adoption of digital assets within regulated capital markets.

With a deep understanding of financial markets and a strong product and business mindset, Marco continues to play a central role in the development of SIX’s digital assets offering.

Bjorn Krog Andersen is the Chief Compliance Officer at Banking Circle. With nearly 20 years in the banking and finance industry, Bjorn is an expert in global payment regulation.

At Banking Circle, Bjorn ensures overall adherence to relevant global and local regulations, bolstering the institution’s reputation as a trusted financial partner. His visionary approach also within stablecoin offering has been key in navigating the complex landscape of financial regulations.

Bjorn’s expertise spans regulatory compliance, risk management, and financial technology. His background includes significant roles in both trading platform banks and law firms advising fintech startups, providing him with a comprehensive view of industry challenges and opportunities.

A sought-after speaker, Bjorn has delivered keynotes and participated in panels at international conferences, addressing topics like digital transformation, AI driven compliance and the future of regulatory frameworks.

Bjorn is also committed to ethical business practices and mentors upcoming talent in the financial industry including promoting compliance as an interesting workplace for young talent.

Dr. Hans Kuhn is a practicing attorney in Zurich (Switzerland) specialized in banking and securities law, with a focus on fintech and blockchain law. Before joining private practice in 2014, he was general counsel of Swiss National Bank for over 13 years. From 1995 to 2001 he worked at the Federal Office of Justice (International Private Law Section).

Hans Kuhn has extensive experience as a member of national and international expert groups on topics such as blockchain and securities law, bank resolution and derivatives law. He was chair of the expert group for the preparation of the Intermediated Securities Act (2003-2004) and chairman of the governmental expert committee for the adoption of the Geneva Securities Convention (2005-2009). Most recently, he was a member of working groups on blockchain laws in Liechtenstein (2017-18) and Switzerland (2019, 2023-25). He is a member of the board of directors of Amina Bank AG, a Swiss crypto bank.

He is the author of numerous articles and a number of books on securities and credit security law, including a comprehensive treatise of Swiss credit security law (2nd edition 2025). He has been teaching master classes on secured transactions law and financial and monetary law at the University of Lucerne (2003-2020).

A graduate of the University of Zurich in 1993, Hans Kuhn was admitted to the Swiss bar in 1995. In 1998 he received his doctorate summa cum laude from the University of Zurich. He holds an LL.M. degree from Tulane University School of Law (New Orleans, 2001).

Rafal Kwasny is the Conducting Officer for Distribution, Marketing, and TA Oversight at Franklin Templeton Luxembourg, and Head of International Intermediary Oversight. He also serves as Fund Board Director for private asset products.

He has 27 years of experience in financial services and prior to moving to asset manager 8 years ago he worked for the asset servicers where he led Businesses, Product Management and Operational teams in Luxembourg, Ireland and Poland, working for HSBC, BNP Paribas Securities Services, Citibank and UniCredit Group.

Rafal holds an Executive MBA from the University of Illinois and is a member of ALFI, Findel Group, and ILA.

Laurent Marochini was appointed CEO of Standard Chartered Luxembourg in December 2024. He is very involved in the Fintech ecosystem, currently acting as Chairman of the ABBL (Association Banques et Banquiers Luxembourgeois) for the working group for Tokenisation and DLT and was co-chairman of the Working Group Blockchain & Crypto Currencies of ALFI (Association Luxembourgeoise des Fonds d’Investissements) from 1996.

Prior to joining Standard Chartered Luxembourg, Laurent was Head of Innovation at Societe Generale Securities Services in Luxembourg and Blockchain and Crypto Leader for Société Générale Group. He has held various management positions in the banking sector, including at BNP Paribas Securities Services and Credit Suisse.

The industry has recognised Laurent as: Fintech Entrepreneur of the Year by Finance Awards in 2025, Personality of the Year, Digital Assets by Deloitte in 2024, and Top 100 Movers and Shakers in the Banking Industry by Delano in 2023.

Laurent holds a masters in economics and finance as well as a masters in innovation.

Partner Tiago Nogueira’s practice focuses on banking, insurance and financial services regulatory matters.

He advises a large number of credit institutions, MIFID firms, insurance companies, professionals of the financial sector, payment/electronic money institutions and crypto-asset service providers (CASPs) on a wide range of regulatory matters, including CRD/CRR, MiFID, IFD/IFR, PSD, MiCA and AML.

Tiago specialises in the field of licence applications (including legal qualification of regulated services), governance and internal controls, banking, professional secrecy, AML, acquisitions/disposals of qualifying holdings, group reorganisations (including transfer of regulated business units/branches), buyer/vendor due diligences and inspections by regulatory authorities.

Karen O’Sullivan is Head of the Innovation, Payments, Market Infrastructures and Governance at the CSSF.

She coordinates the activities of this department which is responsible for financial innovation, both the application process and on-going prudential supervision of payment institutions and electronic money institutions, the registration and AML supervision of virtual asset service providers, market infrastructures and the oversight of remuneration and governance practices and policies implemented within financial institutions.

Furthermore, her team is responsible for coordinating the CSSF’s efforts with regards to MiCA Regulation. In this respect her team spearheads the CSSF’s internal MiCA taskforce and is responsible for the authorisation and the prudential supervision of crypto-asset service providers and certain EMT/ART issuers.

Being the department in charge of financial innovation means that Karen and her team are the privileged contact and point of entry to the CSSF for the FinTech industry.

She represents the CSSF on an international level through participation in various working sub-groups and as speaker at several conferences, covering payment services, virtual asset and/or crypto asset service providers, innovation topics, and corporate governance matters at both national and international level.

Robert Oleschak is an Adviser in Banking Operations at the Swiss National Bank, where he leads Project Helvetia, exploring how transactions in tokenized assets could be settled in central bank money.

Previously, he worked at the Swiss Centre of the BIS Innovation Hub on projects examining how Distributed Ledger Technology can enhance the funding of Multilateral Development Banks (Project Promissa) and how central banks could issue retail CBDCs that combine privacy, scalability, and security (Project Tourbillon). With 20 years of experience in the oversight of Swiss financial market infrastructures and consulting, he brings deep expertise in regulation, technology, and project management.

He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Bern.

Matthew Osborne is Policy Director for Europe & UK at Ripple, the leading provider of digital assets infrastructure to businesses. He is passionate about new technologies and believes that well-designed regulation plays a key role in supporting sustainable innovation.

Matthew previously worked at the Bank of England, where he led the payments policy team working on innovations such as stablecoins and distributed ledger technology. Prior to that he held a number of senior policy roles at the Bank of England and was seconded to NatWest Bank’s global treasury.

He has a PhD in Finance from Bayes Business School and has authored numerous papers and blogs on financial services policy topics. He serves on the Board of Blockchain for Europe and the advisory council of the Digital Pound Foundation.

Tobias Seidl is a fintech entrepreneur and investment structuring expert with over 18 years of experience in alternative investments and digital assets.

As Co-Founder and CEO of STOKR, a leading platform for tokenized investments, he focuses on streamlining digital securities issuance and building institutional-grade infrastructure for digital securities.

As a former attorney at Hogan Lovells, Tobias actively contributes to European digital asset regulation through initiatives such as ThinkBLOCKtank and Blockchain Bundesverband. He is a strong advocate for Bitcoin-based infrastructure as a foundation for future global capital markets.

Oliver Sigrist is an expert in tokenisation, financial market innovation, and central banking. He is an Adviser to the Swiss Centre of the BIS Innovation Hub, focusing on Project Agorá.

Until early 2025, he led the Helvetia pilot, pioneering the Swiss National Bank’s (SNB) issuance of tokenised central bank money on a regulated DLT platform. From 2020 to 2023, he was a key driver in multiple Innovation Hub projects on tokenised central bank money. In the early stage of his career, he was a macroeconomist in the SNB’s Economics Department.

Oliver holds a PhD in economics from the University of Basel.

Claudio Tognella is responsible for market expansion at BX Digital (Boerse Stuttgart Group), Switzerland’s first trading system for tokenized assets (“DLT Exchange”).

In his role as Director of Sales & Business Development, he supports banks and securities issuers on their journey into the digital capital market. With extensive banking experience and by having contributed to the establishment of Switzerland’s first tokenization platform, he unites two worlds – traditional and digital capital markets.

Claudio studied Finance and Accounting at the University of St. Gallen (HSG) and is an active member of the Swiss Blockchain Federation, shaping the future of Switzerland’s financial center.

Denzel Walters is Head of Luxembourg for B2C2, a global leader in institutional liquidity for digital assets.

He leads the company’s Luxembourg office where he is responsible for local strategy implementation, provision of OTC liquidity to institutional clients and B2C2’s European regulatory efforts.

Prior to B2C2, Denzel worked at Optima Partners in a consulting and business development capacity, and at Bank of England and the Prudential Regulatory Authority supervising the UK’s largest banks.

Martin Watkins is Chief Executive of Montis Digital SA, where he is creating an innovative, post-trade infrastructure in Luxembourg, to bridge the TradFi/DeFi divide.

Using DLT to issue and settle traditional and natively digital security tokens, Montis is an applicant CSD seeking Securities Settlement System designation from BCL and CSD authorisation from the CSSF. An active member of the ECB’s New Technology Working – Contact Group, Martin contributes to Project PONTES and Project APPIA regarding Euro CBDCs. 

Martin has held high profile executive management, practitioner and advisory roles in London, Paris, Brussels, and New York with leading FMIs, Big Four audit and global technology firms. Prior to creating Montis, Martin spent 7 years at Ernst & Young (EY) as EMEIA Lead for Exchanges and FMIs, working on 12 blockchain engagements.

Before EY, Martin was a member of senior management at Euroclear in London settling £2 Trillion per day. This followed several years in Paris as an Executive member of AtosEuronext, running LCH.Clearnet S.A. technology services across Europe, clearing €1.7 Trillion per day. 

Martin is a Board member of Delta Capita Distributed Ledger Software Limited, and a former Board member and Trustee of the Chartered Institute for Securities and Investment in London.