John Rolle is governor of the Central Bank of the Bahamas. Before his appointment, he served as the financial secretary in the Bahamian ministry of finance. He has also been seconded to the executive board of the International Monetary Fund, as a senior adviser to the executive director for Canada, Ireland and the Caribbean constituency.

Central banks around the world have intensified their research and experimentation in central bank digital currency. Given financial stability and disintermediation concerns, consumer-ready CBDCs have captured global attention with much of the discussion focusing on public-private partnerships. This panel will explore the policy implications of a new form of programmable money for central banks and the role of banks and fintechs in the implementation of CBDCs.

The payments revolution is built on the need to promote financial inclusion among consumers, merchants and sectors that lack access to financial services. However, this shift will stall unless prerequisites of digitalisation and consumer adoption is ensured. This panel will look at the payment service providers and CBDC landscape, addressing how best to combat financial exclusion and meet consumer needs. It will address issues surrounding digital identity, data privacy, security, and resiliency and explore how the public and private sector can move beyond walled garden phenomena, solving interoperability and fungibility challenges.

Cross-border payments between financial institutions, businesses and individuals are slow-moving and costly. New technologies have opened the possibility of central bank digital currencies and stable coins addressing these frictions, and policymakers are exploring upgrades to existing systems. This panel will discuss when new payment innovations are necessary, how to balance the trade-off between regulation and data flow restrictions and next steps for promoting international co-ordination on and implementing standards.

Wolfram Seidemann is chief executive officer of Giesecke+Devrient Currency Technology. He was appointed group executive of the banknote division at G+D in 2016. Prior to that, he was chairman of the management board and division head of paper of Papierfabrik Louisenthal. Seidemann joined G+D in 1999 as head of international research and development. He subsequently held various senior management positions at G+D subsidiaries, among them managing director of G+D Asia, president of G+D Teco and member of the board of G+D India.

Natacha Valla is an economist and Dean of Sciences Po’s School of Management and Innovation. Until 2020, she was Deputy Director-General for Monetary Policy at the ECB. Between 2015 and 2018 Natacha Valla was Head of the Policy and Strategy Division of the EIB and a permanent
member of the Conseil d’Analyse Economique (CAE). She was Executive Director at Goldman Sachs Global Economic Research between 2008 and 2014. Natacha Valla worked as an economist at the ECB between 2001 and 2008, seconded in 2005 to the Research Directorate of the Banque de France. She has also been a consultant for the IMF and the OECD, and lectured at New-York University and the Universities of Florence, Paris-Dauphine, H.E.C. and Sciences-Po Paris. She is also a member of the Board of Directors of the groups LVMH, Scor, and ASF/Cofiroute. Natacha Valla received a Ph.D. in Economics from the European University Institute (Florence) in 2003.

Thomas Mayer is a Senior Fellow at CFS since July 2012. As Senior Fellow he is involved in research on European financial integration and current financial market issues. He also organized the CFS Lecture Series “On the Order of Money”. (Please find an overview of the lecture series by Thomas Mayer in the CFS Newsletter 1/2014). Thomas Mayer is founding director of the Flossbach von Storch Research Institute. Previously, he was senior advisor to Deutsche Bank’s management and key clients.

Denis Beau is deputy governor of the Banque de France. He has also been appointed to represent the Banque de France’s governor as chairman of the French prudential supervision and resolution authority. He is a member of the college of the French financial markets authority and of the supervisory board for the European Central Bank’s Single Supervisory Mechanism.

Denis Beau has also been appointed chair of the committee on controlling of the European Central Bank and chair of the analytical group on vulnerabilities of the Financial Stability Board.

Distributed ledger technologies have shifted from the margins to the centre of innovation across financial services. For interbank settlement, digital currency solutions have the potential to transform current systems’ speed, resilience, and cost efficiency, however risks and interoperability with new and legacy systems remains crucial. This panel will explore DLT applications to payments, clearing and settlement, addressing when different innovations are needed, bridging conventional and new payment systems and the impact on traditional intermediaries.

Rhomaios Ram is CEO at Finality and former global head of product management for transaction banking at Deutsche Bank. He has more than 22 years’ experience of working across a wide variety of wholesale banking businesses and functions including sales, trading, product management and technology. Most of his experience has been in developing businesses where the product is at the intersection of finance and technology.

Thomas Moser is alternate member of the governing board and deputy head of department I of the Swiss National Bank. Before joining the governing board, he was executive director at the International Monetary Fund, assistant director at the Swiss National Bank, economist at the KOF Swiss Economic Institute and research and teaching assistant at the institute for empirical research in economics at the University of Zurich.

Tim Grant is head of SDX. He has more than 20 years of deep technology and management expertise across institutional capital markets and enterprise blockchain businesses. Prior to SIX Digital Exchange, Tim worked for UBS O’Connor, UBS Investment Bank, R3 Lab and Research Centre and DrumG Technologies. In his previous role as CEO of DrumG, he was responsible for the delivery and operations of enterprise-grade distributed ledger solutions for financial services.

With the rise of cryptocurrencies, tokenisation – defined as the representation of traditional assets on distributed ledger technology – has been brought to the fore of the debate around the digital disruption of capital markets. There are potential benefits to tokenising assets, such as securities or illiquid assets, including greater liquidity, accessibility, transparency and faster and cheaper transactions. However there remain concerns regarding regulatory alignment, compliance and security. This panel discusses the business case for decentralised finance and tokenisation beyond digital currency. It will explore DLT applications to assets and financial infrastructure and address the potential benefits and challenges of a token economy.

Christian Catalini is chief economist of the Diem Association. He is one of the co-creators of Diem (formerly Libra). He is on leave from his role as associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he founded the cryptoeconomics lab and designed the digital currency research study. He is also faculty research fellow in the productivity, innovation and entrepreneurship programme at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Hester Peirce is commissioner at the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Prior to joining the SEC, Peirce conducted research on the regulation of financial markets at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. She was a senior counsel on the US Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. Peirce served as counsel to SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins. She also worked as a staff attorney in the SEC’s division of investment management. She was an associate at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering (now WilmerHale) and clerked for Judge Roger Andewelt on the Court of Federal Claims.

Bitcoin hit an all-time high in market value this year, leading to speculation that we are witnessing the institutionalisation of a new asset class. However, as more investors turn to crypto-assets, risks for retail investors and the financial system are heightened, making devised legal and regulatory approaches ever more paramount. This panel will discuss these regulatory developments and challenges and look ahead to the future role of cryptocurrencies in a post-pandemic macroeconomic environment.

Michael Novogratz is founder and chief executive officer of Galaxy Digital. He was formerly a principal and chief investment officer of the Fortress Macro Fund and was also a member of the board of directors of Fortress Investment Group.

The advancement of central bank digital currencies, particularly the digital yuan, has raised questions around a potential threat to the dollar’s supremacy and the global reserve currency system. This panel will discuss drivers of currency adoption and whether we are entering a new phase of currency competition. It will explore the risks of currency substitution, capital account management in a world with interoperable CBDCs and the potential shift to a multipolar system.