Ritas Ziupsnys

Former CEO of Eagle Merchant Services for over 20 years, a startup and eventually an innovative National Acquiring ISO that was one of the first to cover non-bank merchant relations in the US. Having first-hand experience of the control that banks had over the everyday actions of their customers led Ritas to understand the fundamental importance of Bitcoin’s ability to level the playing field as a financial instrument, sparking a fervent interest in blockchain technologies as a whole.

Since his exposure to Bitcoin in 2015, Ritas has helped to develop and guide projects tackling financial services, supply chain solutions, and loyalty reward systems in the blockchain space. Ritas’s previous career includes a background in financial, banking and investment services. He managed relationships with major financial institutions and processors in the United States while leading innovation into new sectors of the acquiring industry. Ritas still actively consults for mergers and acquisitions within the ISO Acquiring industry. Advisory services include Fortune 500 companies and public and private investment groups. Began as a registered series 7 representative at Oppenheimer. Holds degrees in business management and computer science.

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Brennan Nacol

A 15 year Wall Street veteran. Brennan’s career began on the trading desks of JPMorgan Chase and The Royal Bank of Canada. He transitioned from Investment Banks to Hedge Funds beginning with Frontpoint Partners, Ivory Capital, and ended as Head Trader of Vollero Beach Capital. While having traded nearly every asset class domestically, his main focus was global equities and US listed derivatives. Brennan acted as the face of the firm and managed over 130 banking relationships.

His tenure on the buyside afforded him a first hand look at all of the technological advances that Wall Street had to offer enabling him to build out and structure trading desks specifically tailored to the needs of that fund.

Brennan was exposed to blockchain technologies when they became an integral part of a family business years ago, beginning with mining and the family is still heavily involved with 2 successful mining operations.

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Chris Reinertsen

Chris is a business strategist and digital marketer who has worked in several indu tries, including tech startups, medical, and IT for 10 years, and also has a background in traditional education. After having read the original Bitcoin whitepaper days afte publication, he has been involved in the cryptocurrency space as an educator, trader, miner, and investor and has married his digital marketing experience with this pasion for blockchain technologies. Chris has also begun speaking at small blockchain conferences to further educate those new to the space.

He has advised and worked with multiple tech startups over the years and has made it his goal to help spread awareness and adoption of emerging technologies being brought to fruition through new technologies in digital assets. By utilizing his expertise in market analysis and user data and behavior, Chris helps to make blockchain more accessible and usable for large-scale applications in commercially viable way.

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Noah Marconi

A researcher turned developer, Noah comes with over a decade of experience spanning research, analytics, and software development. No stranger to emergent technology, he is right at home in the fast moving blockchain arena.
Beginning his career as a researcher at Vision Critical, Noah migrated to the product side to design and build research automation tools. More recently, Noah has held the position of Scientist at Zero Gravity Labs (LoyaltyOne’s innovation arm), Vice President, Research & Development at BlockAble Inc. where he designed and implemented hybrid on and off chain blockchain verification product, and CTO of Tag Innovation.

Noah co-designed and developed George Brown College’s Blockchain Development Program. The first of its kind in Canada. Recent activities in the blockchain arena include:

– HR Recruitment Platform – Architectural design & PoC
– ­Digital Asset Brokerage – Architectural design
­- Points balance anchoring with upgradable smart contract
– Smart Contract RBAC
-Open source Merkle chunking implementation

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Sean Ristau – Advisor

Sean is the Director of Exchange Integration and Education at Bcause LLC. Sean
has an extensive 17 year background in the capital markets space and is fluent with most sectors of the financial & capital markets industry. Sean was an early adopter of cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies particularly Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ethereum. Sean frequently provides advisory in a variety of capacities to firms looking to enter the crypto space.

Sean is the founder and Chairman of the FIX Protocol Digital Currency & Blockchain Working Group, a group that is working to ensure FIX Protocol proper representation in this ever-changing space. Sean is also an Advisory Board Member for the Security Traders Association of Chicago.

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Michael Lubman – Advisor

Michael was most recently the Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer of Sierra Brook Capital, an alternative investment organization. As a founding member, he spearheaded the formation of the organization and oversaw all essential non-investment functions, including trading operations, accounting, legal and regulatory. He also served as the organization’s Chief Compliance Officer and was involved in the firm’s business development and investor relations initiatives.

Bringing over 23 years of industry experience, Michael was formerly the Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer of Vollero Beach Capital Partners, a hedge fund where he was also a founding member, the Chief Financial Officer for Jove Partners and Jovian Holdings, a hedge fund and private equity manager where he was charged with the strategic development and launch of a multi-strategy platform, and Chief Financial Officer for Cornerstone Quantitative Investment Group, a multi-strategy quantitative hedge fund.

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Jason Mealler – Advisor

Jason is a Software Engineer with a decade of experience in industry. He’s worked on a range of projects, from teleconference provisioning systems to diagnostic, compliance, and integration tools for hard drive integrators and end users. Throughout his career, he’s encountered a variety of technologies within the Java and C++ ecosystem, and mastered his fair share of the same. (any projects or “nifty” things you’ve worked on or played around with? that can be added after this?)

Over the last five years, Jason was instrumental in building out competency and core infrastructure supporting machine learning efforts across Google’s Geo product area. The platforms he and his colleagues created have been a multiplying force for numerous teams and projects, with rippling impact across the company. He excels at constructing big data systems in conjunction with machine learning applications built for mass scale implementations in regulation compliant ways.

Habeeb Syed – Advisor

Habeeb Syed is a Corporate and Securities Partner at B.J. Kang Law, PC. Mr. Syed also heads the ICO and STO Working Group of the Government Blockchain Association and is an organizer of the Blockchain Technology, Law & Policy Meetup in D.C.; speaks at, and organizes, blockchain conferences around the world; is active with startup and blockchain organizations in DC and California (bringing together regulators and the private sector to foster understanding and innovation); is a Global Mentor for the Korean Innovation Center (a Korean government incubator), and serves on the executive committee of OPEN Washington DC, an organization focused on fostering entrepreneurship..

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