A curated discussion about the future of privacy, identity, and security online

Cindy Cohn is one of the leading American attorneys focusing on the intersection of civil liberties and digital technologies. She is the author of Privacy’s Defender, My 30-year Fight Against Digital Surveillance. She spent 26 years at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, serving as its Executive Director from 2015 until mid-2026, and as its Legal Director as well as General Counsel from 2000-2015. Ms. Cohn first became involved with EFF in 1993, when EFF asked her to serve as the outside lead attorney in Bernstein v. Dept. of Justice, the successful First Amendment challenge to the U.S. export restrictions on cryptography that established the legal principle that publishing computer code is protected expression under the First Amendment.

Wei is a research partner at 1kx, where he focuses on research and investment in financial and security infrastructure within AI, blockchain, and frontier technologies. Before becoming a venture investor, he published more than a dozen academic papers on security, cryptography, & blockchains, designed, developed, and deployed blockchain & privacy protocols, and advised numerous startups building financial and security infrastructure. He holds a PhD in Computer Science (with specialization in cryptography) from the University of California, San Diego.

Julie Lascar leads global policy at Digital Asset, the creator of the Canton Network. She previously spent over ten years at the U.S. Treasury Department. She most recently served as the Director of the Payments and Innovation team in Treasury’s Office of Terrorist Financing, driving efforts to assess and mitigate illicit finance risks in the digital asset ecosystem through clear and coherent AML/CFT policies and regulations. She also served as the co-chair of the FATF’s Virtual Asset Contact Group, leading multilateral efforts to advance global implementation of the FATF standards.

Neha Narula is the Director of the Digital Currency Initiative at the MIT Media Lab, where her research interests are in cryptocurrencies and distributed systems. She is also on the Board of Directors for Block and the Innovation Advisory Council for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Neha has given a TED talk on the future of money and was named to WIRED's list of 25 leaders shaping the next 25 years of technology. She received her PhD in computer science from MIT in 2015, where she published work on fast, scalable databases and before that was a senior software engineer at Google.

Justin Slaughter is the VP of Regulatory Affairs at Paradigm. Prior to joining Paradigm, Justin was Director of the Office of Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs and Senior Advisor to Acting Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Allison Herren Lee. Justin has also served as Chief Policy Advisor and Special Counsel to former Commissioner Sharon Bowen at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and as General Counsel to Senator Edward J. Markey. He has also served as a consultant in private practice focusing on crypto, fintech and frontier technology startups.

Peter is Executive Director at Coin Center, the leading non-profit research and advocacy group focused on the public policy issues facing cryptocurrency technologies such as Bitcoin. He is a graduate of NYU Law, as well as a self-taught designer and coder. He has testified before Congress, briefed staff and members of the EU parliament and educated policymakers and regulatory staff around the world on the subject of cryptocurrency regulation and decentralized computing systems. Previously, he was a Google Policy Fellow and collaborated with various digital rights organizations on projects related to privacy, surveillance, and digital copyright law.