Keynote Speakers & Lead Panelists

The Business of Blockchain Technology Conference
Keynote Speakers & Lead Panelists

We are delighted to announce our confirmed keynotes and lead panelists. Additional speakers will be announced in the coming weeks.

2026 Keynote Speakers

Dr. Ram Gopal headshot Dr. Ram D. Gopal
Warwick Business School, University of Warwick

Dr. Ram D. Gopal is a distinguished academic and leader in information systems and financial technology. He serves as Professor of Information Systems Management at Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, where he is also the Director of the Gillmore Centre for Financial Technology. In this role, he spearheads research and initiatives exploring emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and decentralized finance (DeFi), fostering collaborations between academia and industry to advance innovative financial solutions. He leads the FutureFinance.AI research program, which focuses on integrating AI and financial technologies to revolutionize PropTech, including partnerships such as the transatlantic PropTech research engine with the University of Delaware. Dr. Gopal teaches courses on Generative AI, Digital Finance, Blockchain, and Cryptocurrencies within Warwick's MSc programs, and contributes to discussions on DeFi decentralization and the role of stablecoins in modern banking. He holds a PhD from the State University of New York at Buffalo and has been cited over 9,000 times in scholarly works, underscoring his profound impact on the intersection of technology and finance.

Dr. Hanna Halaburda headshot Hanna Halaburda
New York University Stern School of Business

Hanna Halaburda joined New York University Stern School of Business as an Associate Professor of Technology, Operations, and Statistics in September 2019.

In her research, Professor Halaburda studies how technology changes economic forces and thus affects business models and interactions in the marketplace. One strand of her work focuses on competition between digital platforms. Since 2011, she has built a research program in digital currencies and blockchain technologies, including analyses of incentives in consensus protocols, cryptocurrency adoption, smart contracts, and token issuance. Professor Halaburda’s work has been published in Management Science, RAND, American Economic Journal, Games and Economic Behavior, and other academic journals. In 2015, she co-authored Beyond Bitcoin: The Economics of Digital Currency, the first book analyzing digital currencies from an economic perspective. The book’s 2nd edition, co-authored with Miklos Sarvary and Guillaume Haeringer, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2022. Before joining NYU Stern, Professor Halaburda was an Assistant Professor at Harvard Business School and a senior economist at the Bank of Canada. She holds a Master’s degree in Economics from the Warsaw School of Economics and in Philosophy from Warsaw University, and a PhD in Economics from Northwestern University.

William Quigley headshot William E. Quigley
Co-founder WAX/Co-founder Tether

William E. Quigley is a cryptocurrency and blockchain investor. He has incubated and invested in more than 30 bitcoin, blockchain and cryptocurrency-related investments and co-developed the first crypto derivative used to trade pre-release Ethereum. He co-founded Tether, the first fiat-backed stablecoin and most traded cryptocurrency to date, GoCoin, a pioneering crypto payments processor, and co-founded WAX, a leading NFT blockchain platform. In 2013, Mr. Quigley co-founded Crypto Currency Partners, a blockchain equity investment fund with early notable investments in Coinbase, Kraken, Bitfury, Authy, ChangeTip and Circle.

Prior to his involvement in blockchain, Mr. Quigley was a venture capitalist, co-founding Clearstone Venture Partners, a $700M early-stage focused venture capital firm where he concentrated on communications and consumer technology companies. Before Clearstone, Quigley was a managing director at idealab! Capital Partners (ICP), the world’s first consumer Internet venture capital firm. ICP was an early investor in some of the leading Web 1.0 era companies, including PayPal, Netzero, MP3.com, and Goto.com, one of the first companies to rank search results based on a bidding process.