Itay Malinger

CO-FOUNDER AND CEO

Itay Malinger is co-founder and CEO of Curv, drawing on more than 15 years of cybersecurity experience in both the public and private sectors, as the company establishes a new standard for digital asset security. Most recently, Itay was the director of enterprise security products at Akamai Technologies, where he was responsible for the company’s security portfolio strategy, launching new security products in the cloud, overseeing product execution plans, as well as identifying and managing M&As and partnership agreements. Prior, Itay led a department within a prestigious technological division of the Israeli Government, where he was awarded the Israel Defense Prize for his leadership role in a groundbreaking technological endeavor. Itay holds a B.Sc. in math, physics and computer science from the Hebrew University, and a master’s in computer science from Tel-Aviv University.

Dan Yadlin

CO-FOUNDER AND CTO

Dan Yadlin is co-founder and CTO of Curv, using his expertise in operating systems, networking and software infrastructure to lead the team to technological breakthroughs that are helping secure the new digital economy. Dan has over ten years of experience in engineering and leadership positions in the Israeli government. In his last position he led a department of over 50 of Israel’s most talented individuals, executing on the core cyber missions of the Israeli defense community. He holds a B.Sc. in math, physics and computer science, and master’s in computer science from the Hebrew University.

Dr. Ben Riva

CHIEF SCIENTIST

Ben Riva is the Chief Scientist of Curv, bringing more than 15 years of experience in software development, team leadership, and computer security, in both the private and public sectors. Most recently, he was a software engineer at Google after a position as a postdoctoral researcher at Bar-llan University. Ben holds a M.S and Ph.D. in Computer Science from Tel Aviv University, where he specialized in applied cryptography and secure computation.

Josh Schwartz 

Chief Operating Officer

Josh Schwartz brings a unique background of leadership in both digital assets and traditional financial services with a specialization in market structure, trading technology and transaction cost analysis. He has extensive capital markets experience with buy-side and sell-side firms.
Previously, Josh served as Vice President of Sales at BitGo, where he built the global sales team and led several new initiatives for the firm. Prior to BitGo, he worked at Bloomberg where he led the global new business effort for Bloomberg Tradebook. Josh also served as Head of Business Development at Axiom Investment Advisors, LLC and held several roles at Cantor Fitzgerald, including VP of Business Development for eSpeed (acquired by Nasdaq in 2013). Josh also co-founded the Trior Group, a buy-side advisory business to help optimize execution costs and commission allocation policies.  He holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from Yeshiva University and an MBA from New York University.

Vered Gottesman 

VP Marketing

Vered Gottesman is the VP of Marketing at Curv. Bringing a decade of fintech marketing experience to the role, she most recently worked in e-commerce fraud prevention at Forter. As a VP of Marketing she built and led the team responsible for content strategy, demand generation, events, product marketing, and marketing operations. Prior to Forter, Vered established and grew the marketing function from its infancy at Dataminr where she supported three diverse verticals: government, news, and finance. She has held marketing and communications positions across both the public and private sectors at organizations as diverse as the United Nations and Kind Nut Bars. Vered graduated from Brandeis University with a BA in political science and international relations and holds a master in public policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government with a focus on Business and Government. 

Prof. Jonathan Katz

HEAD OF CYBERSECURITY CENTER, THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND

Head of Cybersecurity Center at the University of Maryland Jonathan Katz is a professor of computer science at the University of Maryland and director of the Maryland Cybersecurity Center. He is a co-author of the widely used textbook “Introduction to Modern Cryptography,” now in its second edition, as well as a monograph on digital signature schemes. He has served as the program chair for the annual Crypto conference and the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, and as a member of the steering committee for the IEEE Cybersecurity Initiative. He currently serves as an editor for the Journal of Cryptology. Prof. Katz holds an undergraduate degree in mathematics from MIT, and a Ph.D. in computer science from Columbia University. He received a NSF CAREER award in 2005, was a member of the DARPA Computer Science Study Group from 2009 to 2010, and received a Humboldt Research Award in 2015.

Ronen Assia

MANAGING PARTNER, TEAM8 FINTECH

Ronen Assia is Managing Partner of Team8 Fintech. For over twenty years, Ronen Assia has been successfully merging technology and design together into useful and accessible products, and defining user experience across various devices and platforms. Most recently Ronen served as eToro’s Chief Product Officer, managing product and engineering, and has helped grow the company into a Fintech unicorn serving 13M users in over 140 countries. eToro pioneered Social Investing, enabling every investor to see, follow and automatically copy the portfolios of other investors in the network. As of January 2020, Ronen serves as board member and non-executive director at eToro. Prior to co-founding eToro in 2007, Ronen designed products ranging from medical devices and household appliances to numerous desktop and web applications. Ronen holds a BA in Industrial Design from Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem and an MA in Product Design from the Royal College of Art, London.

Nimrod Lehavi 

CO-FOUNDER & CEO, SIMPLEX

Serial entrepreneur, hacker, maker, geek, crypto head and utterly unfamiliar with the concept of  “impossible”

Kicking off his entrepreneurial career in the 90’s as a self taught software developer, Nimrod transformed over the years to an experienced leader. A hacker at his core, Nimrod finds solutions to any new and unique challenge. After 15 years solving technical / business / product challenges for an extensive range of different and complex businesses and industries, Nimrod accidentally stumbled upon the bitcoin white paper, and everything changed.

Nimrod began looking for a safe and simple way to purchase bitcoin on his credit card, but no solution existed. So he decided to build it and in 2013 Simplex was born. As the founder and CEO of Simplex, Nimrod leads hundreds of employees throughout the world. Simplex continues to massively expand and evolve to enable the entire crypto ecosystem in growing to its potential.

Nimrod is one of the industry OGs and is a board member of the Israeli Bitcoin Association, since its inception. Nimrod is a thought-leader and regular speaker at leading industry conferences, as well as an advisor to well-selected industry startups. To keep up with Nimrod’s latest insights, follow him on Twitter.