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

Austin Campbell is Founder & CEO of Zero Knowledge Group and Adjunct Professor at NYU Stern School of Business, where he teaches decentralized finance. He previously served as CRO and Head of Portfolio Management at Paxos, overseeing risk, reserves, and regulatory strategy for ~$23 billion in stablecoins under the NYDFS framework. At Citi he co-headed Digital Assets Rates Trading, and at Stone Ridge he pioneered early institutional Bitcoin lending while running sophisticated cash and bond strategies. He advises traditional institutions on stablecoins, payments, and market structure, translating where blockchain creates genuine operational value and where it does not.

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.

Yaya J. Fanusie is the Global Head of Policy at Aleo, where he leads global policy engagement and regulatory strategy to advance privacy-preserving blockchain systems and stablecoin adoption across consumer, enterprise, and institutional markets. A pioneer in assessing the national security implications of digital assets, Yaya previously served as Director of Policy for Anti-Money Laundering and Cyber Risk at the Crypto Council for Innovation, where he remains a Senior Advisor, and earlier spent seven years at the CIA as an economic and counterterrorism analyst. He is also a Visiting Fellow at Georgetown’s Psaros Center of Financial Markets & Policy.

Matthew D. Green, an associate professor of computer science and a member of the Johns Hopkins University Information Security Institute, is a nationally recognized expert on applied cryptography and cryptographic engineering. His research includes techniques for privacy-enhanced and regulatory-compliant systems. Green is one of the creators of the Zerocash protocol, which is used by the Zcash cryptocurrency, and his work is used by a number of private currencies. He is the author of a popular blog, A Few Thoughts on Cryptographic Engineering.

Julie Lascar leads global policy and government affairs at Digital Asset, the creators of the Canton Network. She previously spent over ten years at the U.S. Department of Treasury and most recently served as the first Director of the Payments and Innovation team in Treasury's Office of Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes, driving efforts to assess and mitigate illicit finance risks in the digital asset ecosystem and advance the use of digital identity and AI for AML/CFT compliance. She also served as the co-chair of the Virtual Asset Contact Group for the FATF, leading multilateral efforts to press countries to implement AML/CFT regulations for digital assets.

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.

Josh is the founder and CEO of Zcash Open Development Lab (ZODL), the creators of the Zodl wallet. A longtime leader in the Zcash ecosystem, he previously served as CEO and SVP at the Electric Coin Company and has decades of leadership experience across privacy technology, software, and digital commerce. Under his leadership, ZODL has raised over $25 million from leading crypto investors and driven significant growth in Zcash usage, including expanding the shielded pool by over 400% and facilitating more than $600 million in ZEC swaps. In his current role, Josh is focused on expanding access to private digital money through self-custodial tools.

Ying Tong is an applied cryptographer working on privacy for coordination and purpose limitation. She is interested in real-world applications and better methods for threat modeling and inclusive design. She has worked on financial privacy, privacy-preserving digital identity, and protocols for zero-knowledge proofs and multi-party computation. She is also a contributor to the ZKProof Standards effort to standardize generic zk-SNARKs.

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.

Erik Voorhees is a technology entrepreneur and a longtime advocate for privacy and free speech. One of the earliest entrepreneurs in Bitcoin, he spent more than a decade building companies that let people move and manage money freely and privately, including ShapeShift, a pioneering digital asset exchange. He became a leading voice for the idea that individuals deserve tools they can use freely and without asking permission. Now he brings that same belief to artificial intelligence as the founder and CEO of Venice, the privacy-first, uncensored alternative to ChatGPT and Claude.