The goal of the fifgh general meeting (Block #5)

BGIN #5 continues to bring voice to individuals focused on governance for digital economic networks. Major themes to include sustainable development, social-economic design, financial stability, ethics and BGIN community growth for all stakeholders.

Who should attend?

• Developers
• Regulators
• Business entities
• Consumers
• Civil society
• Academia
• And anyone interested in blockchain ecosystems!

Program

Day 1 (4/4 Mon. noon JST)

Day 2 (4/5 Tue. noon JST)

Editing sessions of the working group/task forces

Day 3 (4/6 Wed. noon JST)

invited Speakers / Panelists

Erik Feyen

Head Global Macro-Financial Monitoring and Lead Financial Sector Economist, World Bank Group

Erik Feyen is Head of Global Macro-Financial Monitoring in the Finance, Competitiveness, and Innovation Global Practice of the World Bank Group. In this capacity, he leads the global monitoring and analysis of key macro-financial vulnerabilities and trends. He co-leads the Bank’s analytical work on the future of finance, advises on fintech-related country operations, and regularly coordinates IMF - World Bank collaborative efforts such as the Bali Fintech Agenda and the joint staff position on the regulatory and supervisory implications for the banking sector stemming from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Erik has led and participated in a wide range of country policy engagements related to financial stability, development, and regulation, including numerous IMF - World Bank Financial Sector Assessment Program missions (FSAPs). He has written extensively on international macroeconomics, financial stability, financial development, fintech, and climate change and his academic research has appeared in the Journal of Financial Economics, the Journal of Portfolio Management, and the World Bank Economic Review. Erik represents the World Bank in the Analytical Group on Vulnerabilities of the Financial Stability Board (FSB) and in several groups of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) work relating to virtual assets activities. Erik is also a member of the FSB’s Regulatory Issues in Stablecoins (RIS) Working Group and the World Economic Forum’s Digital Currency Governance Consortium. He previously served on the FSB’s Financial Innovation Network. Erik holds a Ph.D. in Finance from the University of Amsterdam and an M.S. in Technology, Policy, and Management / Electrical Engineering from Delft University of Technology. He regularly lectures at Columbia University.

Lord Fusitu'a

Chairman of GOPAC (Global Organization Against Corruption) Oceania, an Executive member of the GOPAC World Board, and the Chairman of the Commonwealth Pacific Parliamentary Group on Human Rights

Lord Fusitu’a is the Chairman of GOPAC (Global Organization Against Corruption) Oceania and an Executive member of the GOPAC World Board, he is also Chairman of the Commonwealth Pacific Parliamentary Group on Human Rights, Co-Chair of the AFPPD Gender & Women’s Empowerment Committee and a Barrister & Solicitor from Australia for over three decades. Lord Fusituʻa has been active in several key areas of anti-corruption and global transnational security in Oceania regionally and globally, as well as in the financial technology arena. He is a grassroots and social media educator and advocate for digital currency such as Bitcoin, especially to empower the underbanked agrarian farmers of Tonga, particularly in the area of remittances. He advocates for legislation to allow Tonga to adopt Bitcoin as a legal tender to solve the GDP remittance dependence issues that face Tonga and all the Pacific.

Takahide Habuchi

Assistant Commissioner of International Affairs Office, Japan’s Financial Services Agency (JFSA)

Habuchi Takahide is Assistant Commissioner of International Affairs Office, Japan’s Financial Services Agency (JFSA) who represents JFSA at FATF since July 2019. He co-chairs Virtual Asset Contact Group (VACG) of FATF since its foundation in 2019. As a Co-chair of VACG, he has led a number of FATF’s dialogues with private sectors and FATF initiatives on virtual assets including a publication of 1st and 2nd 12 Month Review Report in 2020/2021 and updated FATF guidance on VAs/VASPs in 2021. He has many years of experiences at JFSA and central bank of Japan (BOJ), including supervision/monitoring of financial institutions and financial market infrastructures. He has degrees of an MBA from The Fuqua School of Business at Duke University and Bachelor of Laws at The University of Tokyo.

Omar Hamwi

Business Development Lead, Parallel Finance

Omar Hamwi is currently the Senior BD Lead for Parallel Finance, a DeFi Platform built on Polkadot ecosystem with the goal of bringing 1 bn people to DeFi. There he focuses on growth initiatives, partnerships, marketing, and other related activities. Omar has had over four years of professional experience in the cryptocurrency industry. He joined Parallel Finance from Dash Core Group, where Omar led the Business Development efforts globally within the trading, and remittances segments among other areas for Dash, a leading global payments focused cryptocurrency.

Joi Ito

Co-founder, board member, and chief architect of Digital Garage. Director of the Center for Radical Transformation at the Chiba Institute of Technology

Joichi “Joi” Ito is a digital architect, venture capitalist, entrepreneur, writer, and scholar focusing on the transformation of society and technology. He works to respond to complex challenges such as our democracy and governance, climate change, and redesigning systems of scholarship and science. He served as director of the MIT Media Lab from 2011 to 2019 where he lead the establishment of the Digital Currency Initiative in 2015. He was the board chair and chief executive of Creative Commons and has served on numerous other boards, including at The New York Times Company, Sony Corporation, The Mozilla Foundation, The Open Source Initiative, ICANN and The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). He served as a Senior Independent Advisor for the Minister for Financial Services of Japan from 2016 to 2019. His recognitions and awards include a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Oxford Internet and a Lifetime Achievement Award from EPIC. On his podcast Road to Henkaku he regularly features NFTs, and he is currently engaged in a web3 community development trial.

Nao Kitazawa

GM of Coinbase Japan

Nao Kitazawa is the GM of Coinbase Japan. Nao is responsible for Coinbase’s business in Japan. Previously, he was the COO of Money Design, a company which helped pioneer automated investment advice platforms in Japan. Prior to that, Nao was an investment banker at Morgan Stanley, where he guided a fleet of merger and acquisition deals and composition of funds in the real estate sector. He also spent several years as a member of an international law firm, Paul Hastings. As one of the industry’s leaders, Nao served as a founding board member of the Fintech Association of Japan. Nao received his LL.M from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and his Bachelor of Law from Keio University in Tokyo. He is admitted to practice law both in Japan and in the state of New York. He serves as a corporate auditor of AnyMind Group, as well as Kyash Inc. He is the author of “Who Champions FinTech” (2018 Kadokawa), and a co-author of “Asset Management Revolution of Robo-advisor” (2016 Kinzai).

Caroline Malcolm

Head, International Public Policy, Chainalysis

Caroline leads public policy internationally at Chainalysis, drawing on our unique data analytics and tools to work with clients from the public and private sectors to understand developments in digital asset markets and their intersect with global regulatory trends and requirements. Caroline was previously the founding Head of the OECD’s Global Blockchain Policy Centre, from 2018 to 2021, working on a diverse range of blockchain-related policy issues, such as fintech, competition policy, data governance, and supply chain transparency. In 2019, she co-led the Financial Stability Board’s workstream on decentralised fintech, and also established the OECD’s Blockchain Expert Policy Advisory Board, bringing together more than 100 experts from across the world in government, industry, academia and civil society. In 2020, Caroline was named “Young Global Leader” by the World Economic Forum, and was a judge in the G20 techsprint hackathon.

Jumpei Miwa

Senior Expert, Recruit Co., Ltd.

Jumpei Miwa joined Recruit Co., Ltd. in July 2021 and engages in finance-related SaaS business. Before this, he served for more than 16 years in Financial Services Agency Japan (JFSA). He has undertaken the senior roles in JFSA, such as Assistant Commissioner for Innovation and Sustainable Finance, and Director, FinTech and Innovation Office etc. He also engages in an initial contributor of Blockchain Governance Initiative Network (BGIN), a lecturer of Graduate School of Tokyo Tech, a member of Crypto-assets Governance Task Force (CGTF) and a business advisor for MS&AD. He started his profession with J-EXIM (currently reorganized as JBIC) in 1999.

Kyung-Sin PARK

Professor of Korea University Law School

Professor of Korea University Law School (A.B. in Physics, Harvard University, Class of 1992; and J.D., UCLA Law School, Class of 1995), a former commissioner of Korea Communications Standards Commission, the country’s Internet/broadcasting content regulation body, a member of the National Media Council, the legislature-appointed advisory council overseeing broadcasting ownership, and one of the co-founders of Open Net Korea, has written academically and been active in internet, free speech, privacy, defamation, copyright, etc. (quoted in Freedom House report, New York Times). Internationally, he is a board member of Global Network Initiative, an advisor to Freedom Online Coalition, and a former member of the High Level Panel of Legal Experts on Media Freedom. K.S. Park also was a key drafting partner in two NGO-led international standard-setting efforts in online privacy and online free speech, namely Principles of Application of International Law on Communication Surveillance www.necessaryandproportionate.org and International Principles on Intermediary Liability www.manilaprinciples.org.

George Siosi Samuels

Managing Director, Faiā

George Siosi Samuels in the Managing Director of Faiā. With a background in programming, fintech, and community-building, he has been featured by the likes of Tech In Asia, Entrepreneur, and Business Insider, and received the “Excellence in Finance Leaders” award by FiNext Dubai. With a strong focus on community and culture, taken from his background as a Fijian-Indian/Tuvaluan-Samoan, he initiated a unique blockchain project with the Government of Tuvalu in 2021. George is also a South Pacific Ambassador for the Bitcoin Association, and continues to train, advise and build “meta-communities” for companies looking to enter Web3.

Yutaka Soejima

Director General of the Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, the Bank of Japan

He joined the Bank in 1990 and mainly worked in research sections covering financial markets, bank supervision, macro prudence, financial engineering, risk management, payment and settlement systems and economic developments. He was also in charge of the head of the FinTech center. Some of his studies applied state-of-the-art technologies to central bank business such as AI, high frequency data analysis, artificial markets simulation, social network analysis and geographic information study. He worked for international standard setting bodies such as CPMI at BIS and currently engages in CBDC issues. He launched BOJ’s flagship reports of Financial System Report and Market Review, a forerunner of BOJ Review.

Roselyne Wanjiru

Lead On-Chain Analyst, Utafiti

Roselyne is an economist, youth mentor, and blockchain strategy consultant. She is the Lead On-Chain Analyst at Utafiti, a digital assets advisory platform that enables investors to leverage financial opportunities in emerging technology platforms. She has served as the Director of Growth and User Acquisitions at Pesabase, a premier payments and remittance solutions provider in Africa. She is a keynote speaker & thought leader in Africa’s budding blockchain ecosystem, having spoken in international conferences & media platforms on the need for innovation in and adoption of emerging technologies for economic efficiency & creation of new opportunities for youth in Africa as contributors, not just consumers in the global digital economy. She is passionate about leading initiatives towards appreciating & adopting Blockchain technology.

Pindar Wong

Chairman,VeriFi (Hong Kong) Ltd

Pindar Wong is the Chairman of VeriFi (Hong Kong) Ltd, a discrete Internet Financial Infrastructure consultancy. Pindar is an Internet pioneer, who co-founded the first licensed Internet Service Provider in Hong Kong in 1993. Previously, Pindar was the first Vice-Chairman of ICANN, Chairman of the Asia Pacific Internet Association, alternate Chairman of Asia Pacific Network Information Center, Co-Public Lead of Creative Commons Hong Kong, Chairman of APRICOT, Commissioner on the Global Commission on Internet Governance and elected Trustee of the Internet Society. In Hong Kong, he has served on the Hong Kong Government’s Committee on Innovation, Technology and Re-industrialisation and on the Board of Directors of the Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute Company Limited (ASTRI). In 2015, he helped organise Asia’s first Blockchainworkshops.org, ScalingBitcoin.org (I, II, III) and sponsored the Hong Kong Bitcoin Roundtable. In 2016 he established a global blockchain research network the bsafe.network to promote applied academic research in blockchain technologies. He participates in the Blockchain Governance Initiative Network (BGIN) and serves on the Advisory Board of Coindesk. Pindar graduated from the Imperial College London with a 1st Class Honours degree in Computing Science and was a Sir Edward Youde Memorial Fellow at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Hiromi Yamaoka

Member of the Board at Future Corporation, Chairperson at Digital Currency Forum, Special Advisor for International Finance at Tokyo Metropolitan Government

Hiromi Yamaoka assumed various positions in the Bank of Japan, including the Director-General of Markets Department and the Director-General of Payment and Settlement Systems Department. He also served as the Alternate Executive Director for Japan in the International Monetary Fund, the Member of the Basel Committee for Banking Supervision, the Member of the Markets Committee the Member of the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructure (CPMI) of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). He obtained LL.B. from the University of Tokyo Faculty of Law and LL.M. from the University of California at Berkeley School of Law. He is the attorney of law in New York State. He is now serving as the chairperson of the Digital Currency Forum, which consists of leading companies and mega-banks in Japan. He published many books and articles, including “Digital Innovation, Data Revolution and Central Bank Digital Currency” (BOJ working paper co-authored with Noriyuki Yanagawa, 2019) and “The Future of Central Banking” (2019)

Event Sponsors

Organizing and program committee

BGIN Co-Chairs

• Shin’ichiro Matsuo
• Mai Santamaria

Working Group/Task Force Co-Chairs

• Nat Sakimura
• Shigeya Suzuki
• Leon Molchanovsky
• Drew Wallin
• Ali Nejadmalayeri
• Ryosuke Ushida
• Aaron Wright

Local organizers

• Kanta Matsuura
• Kenei Suzuki
• Junpei Miwa
• Hirotaka Nakajima

Administration

• Robert Schwentker
• Ayako Yamazaki

Co-chairs of the previous block (Block #4)

• Nii Quaynor (Accra, co-chair)
• Roselyne Wanjiru (Nairobi, co-chair)

Chairs of the next block (Block #6)

• Claudio J. Tessone