TMAC Toronto is pleased to host an insightful educational session on Digital Currencies, Blockchain and their affect on Finance.
In August, 2019, The Bank of England governor, Mark Carney, has challenged the dollar’s position as the world’s reserve currency, arguing that it could be replaced by a global digital alternative. In this session we will explore how digital currencies (E.g. central bank issued currencies, Libra, settlement coins) could have potential to unlock governments dollar funds, reduce U.S. dollar dominance on trade, and increase financial inclusion. The session will highlight both - the risks and the benefits of the approaches proposed and technological innovations in recent years starting with bitcoin.
This session will bring perspectives from Bank of Canada, and other industry players. Our speakers will include:
Elena Litani- Moderator VP of Engineering, KOHO Financial
Elena is a senior influential leader with a deep passion for technology and innovation. With extensive experience in technology and financial industry companies, she currently serves as VP of Engineering at KOHO Financial, Canada’s first challenger bank, looking to help eradicate debt caused by a system fuelled by hidden fees and interest rates. With an integrated app and reloadable Visa card, KOHO is building the ultimate savings experience and leading the charge in the fintech space. Previously, she held numerous roles in fintech, banking and IT sectors. In recent years, she focused on digital economy vision that enables digital identity, central bank digital currencies (CBDC) and new ways to pay.
Lucia is a Honduran serial entrepreneur building socially impactful emerging technology solutions to some of the world’s most pressing problems as Founder & CEO of Emerge. Emerge’s solutions facilitate a more efficient, more humane, and more transparent movement of people, goods, data and resources around the world. For its work, Emerge has been nominated for the 2018 Global SDG Awards and Newsweek’s 2019 Blockchain Impact Awards. Lucia is a 2017 Venture for Canada Fellow, a 2018 RBC Future Launch Fellow, a 2018 Money 20/20 Rise Up Fellow, and a certified UN SDG Advocate. Most recently, she was nominated for MIT Technology Review's Latin American Innovators under 35 and the Royal Bank of Canada's 2019 Women of Influence.
Brad Kirby VP, EDJX
Brad is a seasoned global finance, treasury and capital markets professional, spending 6 years at Deloitte (Canada/Cayman Islands) and nearly 5 years at Brookfield Asset Management before starting DLT Advisory Group in March 2018, advising blockchain executives. He has a degree in Finance from the University of Western Ontario, holds a CPA, CA designation and is a Certified Blockchain Professional.
Brad is currently a VP at EDJX, a blockchain-based edge computing platform, where he is actively developing a market for blockchain-based computing, micro payments and stablecoins. He previously advised a number of blockchain-based start-ups in the fintech space, which included companies active across the capital market supply chain.
Francisco Rivadeneyra is a Research Advisor in the Funds Management and Banking Department at the Bank of Canada. His research is broadly divided into financial economics and payments research. He is interested in how agent heterogeneity and payments infrastructure affect asset prices and welfare. His recent academic research focuses on the implications of technological innovations, for example electronic money and distributed ledger technologies, for the mandates of central banks. His recent policy work has been to develop computational tools to measure the risk and efficiency of payments systems. Earlier work focused on the management of domestic debt and foreign reserves portfolios.
Mr. Rivadeneyra holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Chicago.
Remarks will be off the record and will not necessarily reflect the view of the Bank's Governing Council.
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