Personal financial data is highly sensitive and highly valuable. What are the growing opportunities and markets around personal financial data, and what are the utilities of such data to people and to businesses? What should we be concerned about when our personal financial data is being used by companies to make decisions or adjudicate transactions? How should we understand privacy, control, and value from the perspective of the data creators and producers?

Session Host

Arka Ray, Managing Director, The Data Economics Company

Technology executive and computer scientist, currently leading the development of the Lydion DEOS (Data Economic Operating System) and overall strategy for the creation and propagation of Lydion Solution Platforms built on Lydion DEOS. Previously built the Sidelines and Popularium content publishing platforms, as well as helped design and launch several games and products on the Xbox Live network as a part of the Xbox and Windows Gaming teams at Microsoft.

Session Participants

Anish Mohammed, Co-founder and CEO, RSQ Labs

Anish has spent over two decades in security and cryptography as a researcher and consultant, he started his career working on security of micropayment systems for Ericsson HP Telecomm. He has spent half his career researching cryptographic algorithms and protocols at three different research groups including Microsoft Research. He has worked as a strategy consultant for Accenture and Capgemini. He has advised and worked for various banks and financial institutions including Banko Azteca, AIB, HSBC, Lloyds and Zurich. He was also an early advisor to Ripple , Adjoint , Ocean Protocol, Arteria, Devv, Boson Protocol, reviewer of Ethereum Orange paper and was one of the founding members of the UK Digital Currency Association. He has been involved in designing or auditing half a dozen blockchain protocols and more than a dozen distributed applications. He is the cofounder and CTO of Panther Protocol and an adjutant faculty at Harbour Space and the head of research at the Information Sciences Institute at SRH Berlin.


Gary Fan, EVP and Chief Banking Officer, Gateway Bank

Gary Fan is Executive Vice President and Chief Banking Officer of Gateway Bank FSB. He leads the lending, business development, marketing, and operations functions of the bank. Prior to Gateway, Gary held numerous roles in the financial services industry including the Head of Strategy of North America and the Head of Consumer Lending for the US subsidiary of CTBC, a large $100 billion global bank. Throughout his career, Gary has been responsible for identifying opportunities to ensure profitable growth and leading the execution of business initiatives through innovation, prioritization, resource deployment, and cost management. He’s had numerous years of experience in areas such as: fintech, mergers and acquisitions, new market expansion, strategic partnerships, long range planning, and restructuring. Gary has had P&L responsibility over billion-dollar lending portfolios and has led Sales, Operations, Human Resources, Legal, PMO, and Real Estate teams at various organizations. Gary’s professional experience spans industries including: Banking/Financial Services, Fintech, E- Commerce, Manufacturing, and Supply Chain/Logistics. Gary has a Bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley. Gateway Bank FSB is a federally chartered bank servicing the bay area and surrounding communities. The bank does business throughout California with headquarters in Oakland, CA.


James Nicholls, Managing Director, Braithwate

James is a risk management and regulatory strategy consultant who specializes in helping global financial services businesses to analyze and respond to changing markets and regulatory requirements. Following 16 years’ experience leading advisory practices in both London and New York, James founded Braithwate to bring a new level of applied risk management and regulatory compliance expertise to the financial services sector.


Sirtaj Singh Brar, Director, The Data Economics Company

Sirtaj Singh Brar is a multidisciplinary talent with 15 years of experience, spanning the public sector, pharmaceutical, and financial industries, in helping enterprises solve real world problems through the use of technology solutions. This includes ensuring new software and technologies integrate well across business processes, functions, and the existing technology landscape.

In his current role as Director at DECO, Sirtaj leads product development for Lydion Solutions Platforms built on the Lydion Data Economic Operating System (DEOS), managing projects as they are incubated, developed, and deployed across verticals. He also focuses on continually contributing to the science of Data Economics through new research and application development.

Sirtaj has degrees in Physics and Mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley.


Kouhei Kurihara, CMO, Privacy by Design

Kohei is a Co-founder of Privacy by Design Lab, that is leading data privacy culture and society community, as a not for profit organization originally establish privacy oriented corporate structure program. He used to work at blockchain field, and has also educational and political background, working as voluntary staff at non-profit organization in Japan. Kohei has experienced to speak at many international conferences, UNESCO and more.


Vinay Kuruvila, Head of Product Engineering, Venmo