Nader Al-Naji

Nader Al-Naji is Founder and CEO at BASIS. Raised over $133M from top investors including Bain Capital Ventures, Google Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed, Stan Druckenmiller, Kevin Warsh, Foundation, and Wing. Built a team of 14 people, whose backgrounds spanned organizations such as Goldman Sachs, Google, Bridgewater, Bain Capital, McKinsey, Harvard Law, D. E. Shaw, Tower Research, Hudson River Trading, and top-tier universities. Led development of a fully-functional system built on the Ethereum blockchain; validated code via two separate third-party audits. Developed relationships with journalists and acted as spokesperson for the company, appearing on Fortune, CNBC, BusinessInsider, WSJ, FT, Bloomberg, Forbes, TechCrunch, and many others. Also spoke at conferences, including a talk at the IMF. Worked with multiple law firms including Sullivan and Cromwell, Wilmerhale, WSGR, MWE, Paul Hastings, and Sidley to push regulatory compliance initiatives and design our system to fit within existing regulatory frameworks. After a deep analysis of the regulatory landscape, taking into consideration a tightening of securities regulation in particular, we decided to shut down and return capital to investors. Full story available on basis.io. Coordinated an acquihire of the company, setting up a competitive process to give all of our staff a soft landing.