Farhad Mafie

Bitcoin and other digital currencies related topics continue to grab the headlines and attract attention of many people including a large number of investors. Cryptocurrencies popularity, easy access, and fast adoption rate have made the governments around the world pay attention to their significant political and financial ramifications, and seriously consider issuing their own digital currencies based on their own Central Banks policies and regulations. These digital currencies have been publicized as “Central Bank Digital Currencies” or “CBDC” for various countries with specific challenges and risks related to financial stability, operational resilience, consumer protection, interoperability, privacy, inclusion, money laundering, taxation, terrorist and proliferation financing, cybersecurity, market integrity, governance, legal certainty, etc. In this talk, we will review these topics as well as the state of CBDC around the globe, the pros and cons of going completely cashless, Blockchain role as potential core technology, and political economic implications and challenges of a cashless world.

Biography:

Farhad Mafie, President and CEO of Savant Company Inc., provides Sales (and Sales Enablement), Marketing, and Business Development consulting services globally for high-tech startups in semiconductor and embedded systems. He has over 30 years of experience in high-tech industries including semiconductor ICs & IPs, computer businesses and embedded systems; additionally, he has more than 20 years of teaching experience. In 2017, he also became the CEO of Handycash Inc., a newly formed startup in Switzerland, developing an innovative mobile eCash & payment system based on Blockchain technology that successfully launched its mobile payment solution and private currency in 2020.  As Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing for Microsemi, Farhad worked directly with executive team on M&A projects and successfully integrating over 22 acquired companies. Farhad is also the former Vice President of Marketing/Business Development and Technical Sales Engineering at Toshiba. He had strategic marketing and engineering roles at AT&T Microelectronics/Lucent Technologies, Unisys, Ocean Scientific, and MSI Data. He has a Master of Science and a Bachelor of Science degree in Electronic Engineering from California State University, Fullerton.  In 2003, Farhad designed, developed, and launched the annual International System-on-Chip (SoC) Conference, Exhibits, and Workshops http://www.socconference.com. In 2019, Blockchain Technology Summit was launched to bring the latest blockchain-related technologies, applications, and startups in an exciting and educational Summit for worldwide audience http://www.blockchaintechnologysummit.com.

Farhad is an author and a translator and in 2003, he published “Nader Naderpour 1929-2000 Iranian Poet, Thinker, Patriot”. He is also the Editor-in-Chief for CRC Press on SoC Design and Technologies Book Series. Two New Books: Low-Power NoC for High-Performance SoC Design & Design of Cost-Efficient Interconnect Processing Units.  For more information regarding Farhad’s activities, please visit www.SavantCompany.com & www.FarhadMafie.com.