From Hype to Reality: The Future of Cryptocurrencies and Digital Assets

Bitcoin is nearing record highs and the market is buzzing with cautious optimism.
But where does crypto go next?

Join founders, investors, and policy leaders for an evening that cuts through the hype to explore real-world applications, the evolving regulatory landscape, and how investors are positioning for the next wave of growth—all while tackling the challenge of sustainable innovation and responsible scaling.

What we’ll cover:

• Future outlook: key narratives and trends shaping crypto over the next 5–10 years
• Beyond speculation: tokenisation, payments, DeFi, infrastructure, and enterprise adoption
• Investor perspective: how VCs and institutions evaluate opportunities and risks in a shifting market
• Regulation & innovation: balancing consumer protection with the freedom to build

Speakers

• Anil Hansjee – General Partner, Fabric Ventures
• Axel Cateland, Founder & CEO at Kulipa
• Nicole Sandler – Chief Ecosystem Officer, Ubyx & Head of Corporate and Regulatory Affairs, CFIT
• Moderated by Susanne Christi – Chair, FINTECH Circle

Thank you to our partners for the event: Wifirst and Business France.

About La French Tech

We are founders, start-up employees, investors, tech enthusiasts and academics. We all believe in sharing, giving back & inspiring others as a way of changing the world. We help entrepreneurs and French Tech companies grow and build their network in London.

Join us: https://frenchtechlondon.com/

About Wifirst

Wifirst is the European leader in managed WiFi for businesses. The company deploys and operates high-performance, secure and sustainable “as a service” connectivity solutions. With expertise in large-scale projects, Wifirst connects hundreds of thousands of access points to its network every year, serving major corporations and public institutions such as the Accor Hotels, Havas, Deutsche Bahn, Carrefour, Hugo Boss...
Headquartered in Paris, Wifirst is also established in the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, and Germany, operating across 40 countries. In 2023, Wifirst was honoured to be part of the Next40 program, an initiative by the Ministry of Economy that highlights the leading innovators in the French tech scene.
For more information: https://www.wifirst.com/en/

(Photos from previous French Tech London Sustainable Finance events below)

Speakers

Anil Hansjee, General Partner at Fabric Ventures. Anil started his career as a software engineer in capital markets at major banks (UBS, JPM Chase) and then he moved (via investment banking with JPM Chase) into venture capital. He has actively supported the entrepreneurial ecosystem in London since 2006 (co-founding Google's Campus London and the British Computer Society Entrepreneurs Specialist Group) and for these efforts he was awarded a fellowship of the BCS, the Chartered Institute of IT in 2007 and an Honorary Doctorate of Computing in 2011.

He has evolved his vertical focus on financial services and payments from his days at Google and PayPal into blockchain and web3, as a General Partner of Europe's leading open-web investor, Fabric Ventures. Some of his stand-out investments and acquisitions across his career include Shazam, Wise, Tray.io, Stitch, Wagestream, iZettle, Honey, Modulr, Raisin, Railsr, Banked, Tink, Raisin, PPRO, Codat, YellowCard, Ramp.Network, Fiat Republic, Superfluid, Immutable, Sorare, Consensys, Argent and Ledger.

Nicole Sandler, Chief Ecosystem Officer at Ubyx and Head of Corporate and Regulatory Affairs at the Centre for Finance, Innovation and Technology (CFIT). She is an award-winning digital policy expert driving stakeholder engagement and shaping financial regulation in FinTech, AI, and digital assets; formerly Head of Digital Policy at Barclays.

Nicole is on the European Commission’s Expert Group on Regulatory Obstacles to Financial Innovation and participated in the Crypto-asset and Blockchain roundtables at the European Parliament. She regularly speaks on panels, presents at conferences and universities, has articles published and focuses on upskilling and diversity initiatives. Further, she was named in the Financial News ‘Top 20 Most Influential Women in Digital Assets.

Axel Cateland, Founder & CEO at Kulipa. Kulipa is a next-generation fintech enabling crypto-wallets and exchanges to issue their own branded payment cards, bridging the gap between digital assets and everyday commerce. Axel holds an MBA from Columbia Business School, and has built a strong track record in product strategy, banking and payments. 

Before founding Kulipa, Axel led market expansion for digital payments at Mastercard, and supervised the Banking Business Unit at Spendesk, a high-growth fintech backed by over US$300 million.

Moderated by:

Susanne Christi, Chair of FINTECH Circle, Europe's 1st Investor Network focused on fintech investments and a leading fintech innovation platform. She is also a Non-Executive Director at Crown Agents Bank (CAB Payments PLC), Member of RemCo and NomCo and the Chair of the ESG Sub-Committee. In 2024 she was selected among the Top 100 Women in Fintech globally and is an experienced board member at PE owned and public listed companies.

She is also the Co-Editor of the Bestseller "The FINTECH Book" which has been translated into 10 languages and is sold across 107 countries, The WealthTECH Book, The InsurTECH Book, The PAYTECH Book, The AI Book and The LEGALTECH Book (published by WILEY in 2020).