Trading cryptocurrencies in 2021: Risks and opportunities

Darius is Co-Founder and CIO at QCP Capital, a digital asset trading firm headquartered in Singapore. QCP Capital focuses on Asian markets and is a global leader in digital asset derivatives with over 1 billion USD deployed in various strategies.   Darius is also Co-Founder of Phillip Street Partners, a Singapore domiciled asset manager focused on digital asset alpha.

James Cox is the CEO of Taipan Trading and Investments Pte Ltd (TTI), a Singapore based Fund Management Company established in 2012. TTI trades on behalf of the Straits Currency Fund - an open ended fund for Accredited Investors only. James is an early crypto adopter, having written one of the first published books on the topic Bitcoin and Digital Currencies and co-founded Ripple Singapore - both in 2013. He is from the UK and is based in Singapore.

John is the founder of AlphaLab Capital, a quantitative trading firm focused in the cryptocurrency space. John has over 15 years of experience in quantitative and algorithmic trading. Prior to founding AlphaLab Capital, John built and led a team at Tower Research that consistently achieved double digit sharpe ratios and triple-digit ROI's. Before Tower, John worked at other top quantitative hedge funds including Citadel and AlphaSimplex Group. John graduated from MIT with degrees with Computer Science and Management, and minors in Math and Economics.

Richard is CEO of Diginex. He has 20+ years of experience spanning finance, start-ups, investment, and fintech sectors. Previously Managing Director at Nomura, the Japanese Investment Bank, Richard was running Derivative and Equity Linked product Sales for Asia Pacific product globally. The youngest Managing Director in the firm’s history, Richard led the build of the #1 franchise for Convertible Bonds in Asia from 2005. In both 2008 and 2009 he was the firm’s largest producing salesperson across Nomura’s global wholesale investment banking franchise. Richard led the syndication and distribution of some of Asia’s largest convertible bond deals in the last 15 years including China Unicom and Softbank. In business, Richard has founded several companies and is an active investor, having started his first trading company in 1990. He sits on the advisory board to PrivateMarket.io, a private equity fund marketplace. Richard is Hong Kong Regional Ambassador for the Global Blockchain Business Council (GBBC), and has spoken extensively around the merits of blockchain for business and finance at WEF (Davos) and the United Nations (Geneva).

Henri Arslanian is the PwC Global Crypto Leader, the former Chairman of the FinTech Association of Hong Kong and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Hong Kong where he teaches the first FinTech university course in Asia. Henri advises many of the world’s leading crypto exchanges, investors, financial institutions and tech firms on their FinTech and crypto initiatives as well numerous governments, regulators and central banks on Fintech and crypto regulatory and policy matters. With over 500,000 LinkedIn followers, Henri is a TEDx and global keynote speaker, a best-selling published author and is regularly featured in global media including Bloomberg, CNBC, CNN, The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times. Henri was named by LinkedIn as one of the global Top Voices in Economy & Finance and is the host of the FinTechCapsules™ and CryptoCapsules™ social media series. Henri was recently named by Onalytica as the #1 most influential individual on Finance globally on LinkedIn out of 50k+ individuals working at the top professional services and management consulting firms in the world. Chambers Global named Henri the “highest profile FinTech consultant in Hong Kong”, Blockchain Asset Review named him the “Most Influential Crypto and Blockchain Thought Leader in Asia”, and Asian Private Banker awarded him the “FinTech Changemaker of the Year” award. Henri’s latest book “The Future of Finance: The Impact of FinTech, AI and Crypto on Financial Services” published by Palgrave Macmillan, was ranked as one of Amazon’s global top 10 best-sellers in financial services and was recognized as one of the “Best FinTech Books of All Time” by Bookauthority. Before joining PwC, Henri was with a FinTech start-up and previously spent many years with UBS Investment Bank in Hong Kong. Henri started his career as a financial markets and funds lawyer in Canada and Hong Kong. Henri speaks five languages including English, French, Armenian, Spanish and Mandarin Chinese. He holds a Masters in Chinese Law from Tsinghua University; a joint Global Executive MBA from Columbia Business School, London Business School, and Hong Kong University; a Bachelor of Law from the University of Montreal (Dean’s List of Excellence) and a Masters in Transnational Law from the University of Sherbrooke, where he was awarded the Governor General of Canada Gold Medal for Academic Excellence for having graduated with the highest grades of the university.