Dallas, United States, Texas, September 28th, 2024, Chainwire

Event Highlights Strategies for Integrating Digital Assets into Traditional Finance Portfolios

On September 19th, the Digital Fusion Summit convened at the W Hotel – Victory in Dallas, Texas, bringing together family offices, institutional investors, and high-net-worth individuals for an exclusive event focused on the burgeoning digital asset class. Hosted on the 33rd Floor Altitude Center, the summit provided a premier platform for education, networking, and strategic discussions at the intersection of traditional finance and digital assets.

Co-hosted by industry leaders Jake Claver and Max Avery of Digital Ascension Group and Syndicately, alongside Jordan M. Hutchinson, President and Managing Partner of Black Ocean Capital & Jest Events, and supported by team members Eric Ascione and Jedidiah Wick, the summit assembled experts to delve into opportunities, challenges, and investment strategies surrounding digital assets.

The event featured a series of panels and discussions addressing critical aspects of the digital asset landscape, including blockchain technology, cryptocurrency adoption, asset tokenization, and fintech innovations.

“What Digital Assets Really Mean for Family Offices: Strategy, Adoption, and Investment Opportunities”—This panel, moderated by Ray Fuentes, explored how family offices can develop effective strategies and assess value propositions in the digital asset space. Panelists included thought leaders such as Jake Claver, Matthew Snider, Erin Friez, and Rustin Diehl, who shared insights on successful investment cases and adoption strategies within blockchain and cryptocurrency markets.

“Professional Service Providers for Digital Assets: Ensuring Security and Compliance”—Moderated by Rachel Wolfson, this discussion focused on the evolution of custody solutions, best practices for digital asset security, and navigating regulatory considerations in the cryptocurrency sphere. Panelists Eric Ervin, Joe Medioli, and John Wingate offered valuable perspectives on the role of institutional custody in driving widespread adoption of digital assets.

“Fintech Companies Providing Liquidity to Private Investments: Opportunities and Challenges”—This panel, led by Ray Fuentes, delved into the potential of tokenizing real assets, legal considerations in asset tokenization, and successful case studies. Industry specialists Lee Mosbacker IV, Connor McLaughlin, Jake Claver, and John Wingate shared their expertise on navigating early-stage investments in digital assets and the tokenization process, highlighting how fintech innovations are reshaping liquidity in private markets.

“Legal Innovations in Blockchain”—Rachel Wolfson moderated this discussion with legal experts Rick Tapia, Rustin Diehl, and Erin Friez to explore the evolving legal frameworks shaping the blockchain and cryptocurrency sectors. The panel examined intellectual property rights, compliance issues, and the impact of regulatory changes on the deployment of blockchain technology and digital assets.

The summit also featured keynote speeches from Joe Medioli of Anchorage Digital and Lee Mosbacker IV of Cyrannus, providing deeper insights into institutional digital asset services and the importance of liquidity in private markets. Their presentations underscored the critical role of secure, compliant, and efficient digital asset solutions in the financial industry’s future.

Sponsors Cyrannus, Anchorage Digital, and Securitize for Advisors played a pivotal role in making the summit possible, demonstrating their commitment to advancing the digital asset ecosystem and supporting the integration of blockchain technology into mainstream finance.

The Digital Fusion Summit successfully bridged the gap between traditional finance and the digital asset landscape, offering attendees a comprehensive view of the opportunities and challenges in this rapidly evolving sector. As digital assets, blockchain, and cryptocurrency continue to gain traction among institutional investors and family offices, events like this are crucial for fostering education, collaboration, and growth within the industry.

The success of this inaugural Digital Fusion Summit sets the stage for future events aimed at uniting traditional finance with the burgeoning world of digital assets. For those interested in attending upcoming events or learning more about opportunities in the digital asset space, the team at Digital Ascension Group welcomes inquiries. To stay informed about future events and explore how your family office or institution can navigate the world of digital assets, please visit www.digitalfamilyoffice.io. The team at Digital Ascension Group looks forward to fostering more insightful discussions and valuable networking opportunities in the digital asset sector.

ContactsBusiness DevelopmentMax AveryDigital Ascension Groupmax@digitalfamilyoffice.ioDirectorJake ClaverDigital Ascension Groupjake@digitalfamilyoffice.io

This article was originally published on Chainwire

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, whose death was announced on Saturday, led the Lebanese group through decades of conflict with Israel, overseeing its transformation into a military force with regional sway and becoming one of the most prominent Arab figures in generations – with Iranian backing.

Hezbollah said in a statement that Nasrallah had been killed, but it did not say how. The Israeli military said earlier it had killed Nasrallah in an airstrike on the group’s central headquarters in the southern suburbs of Beirut on Friday.

Nasrallah’s death deals a huge blow to the group. He will be remembered among his supporters for standing up to Israel and defying the United States. To enemies, he was head of a terrorist organisation and a proxy for Iran’s Shi’ite Islamist theocracy in its tussle for influence in the Middle East.

His regional influence was on display over nearly a year of conflict ignited by the Gaza war, as Hezbollah entered the fray by firing on Israel from southern Lebanon in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas, and Yemeni and Iraqi groups followed suit, operating under the umbrella of “The Axis of Resistance”.

“We are facing a great battle,” Nasrallah said in an Aug. 1 speech at the funeral of Hezbollah’s top military commander, Fuad Shukr, who was killed in an Israeli strike on the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut.

Yet when thousands of Hezbollah members were injured and dozens killed, when their communications devices exploded in an apparent Israeli attack last week, that battle began to turn against his group.

Responding to the attacks on Hezbollah’s communications network in a Sept. 19 speech, Nasrallah vowed to punish Israel. 

“This is a reckoning that will come, its nature, its size, how and where? This is certainly what we will keep to ourselves and in the narrowest circle even within ourselves,” he said.

He had not given a broadcast address since then.

Israel has meanwhile dramatically escalated its attacks, killing several senior Hezbollah commanders in targeted strikes and unleashing a massive bombardment in Hezbollah-controlled areas of Lebanon, which has killed hundreds of people.

Recognised even by his enemies as a skilled orator, Nasrallah’s speeches were followed by friend and foe alike.

Wearing the black turban of a sayyed, or a descendent of the Prophet Mohammad, Nasrallah used his addresses to rally Hezbollah’s base but also to deliver carefully calibrated threats, often wagging his finger as he does so.

He became secretary general of Hezbollah in 1992 aged just 35, the public face of a once shadowy group founded by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in 1982 to fight Israeli occupation forces.

Israel killed his predecessor, Sayyed Abbas al-Musawi, in a helicopter attack. Nasrallah led Hezbollah when its guerrillas finally drove Israeli forces from southern Lebanon in 2000, ending an 18-year occupation.    

‘DIVINE VICTORY’

Conflict with Israel largely defined his leadership. He declared “Divine Victory” in 2006 after Hezbollah waged 34 days of war with Israel, winning the respect of many ordinary Arabs who had grown up watching Israel defeat their armies.

But he became an increasingly divisive figure in Lebanon and the wider Arab world as Hezbollah’s area of operations widened to Syria and beyond, reflecting an intensifying conflict between Shi’ite Iran and U.S.-allied Sunni Arab monarchies in the Gulf.

While Nasrallah painted Hezbollah’s engagement in Syria – where it fought in support of President Bashar al-Assad during the civil war – as a campaign against jihadists, critics accused the group of becoming part of a regional sectarian conflict.

At home, Nasrallah’s critics said Hezbollah’s regional adventurism imposed an unbearable price on Lebanon, leading once friendly Gulf Arabs to shun the country – a factor that contributed to its 2019 financial collapse.     

In the years following the 2006 war, Nasrallah walked a tightrope over a new conflict with Israel, hoarding Iranian rockets in a carefully measured contest of threat and counter threat.

The Gaza war, ignited by the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, prompted Hezbollah’s worst conflict with Israel since 2006, costing the group hundreds of its fighters including top commanders.

After years of entanglements elsewhere, the conflict put renewed focus on Hezbollah’s historic struggle with Israel.    

“We are here paying the price for our front of support for Gaza, and for the Palestinian people, and our adoption of the Palestinian cause,” Nasrallah said in the Aug. 1 speech.

Nasrallah grew up in Beirut’s impoverished Karantina district. His family hail from Bazouriyeh, a village in the Lebanon’s predominantly Shi’ite south which today forms Hezbollah’s political heartland.

He was part of a generation of young Lebanese Shi’ites whose political outlook was shaped by Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Before leading the group, he used to spend nights with frontline guerrillas fighting Israel’s occupying army. His teenage son, Hadi, died in battle in 1997, a loss that gave him legitimacy among his core Shi’ite constituency in Lebanon.

POWERFUL ENEMIES

He had a track record of threatening powerful enemies.

As regional tensions escalated after the eruption of the Gaza war, Nasrallah issued a thinly veiled warning to U.S. warships in the Mediterranean, telling them: “We have prepared for the fleets with which you threaten us.”

In 2020, Nasrallah vowed that U.S. soldiers would leave the region in coffins after Iranian general Qassem Soleimani was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Iraq.

He expressed fierce opposition to Saudi Arabia over its armed intervention in Yemen, where, with U.S. and other allied support, Riyadh sought to roll back the Iran-aligned Houthis.

As regional tensions rose in 2019 following an attack on Saudi oil facilities, he said Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates should halt the Yemen war to protect themselves.

“Don’t bet on a war against Iran because they will destroy you,” he said in a message directed at Riyadh.

On Nasrallah’s watch, Hezbollah also clashed with adversaries at home in Lebanon. 

In 2008, he accused the Lebanese government – backed at the time by the West and Saudi Arabia – of declaring war by moving to ban his group’s internal communication network. Nasrallah vowed to “cut off the hand” that tried to dismantle it.

It prompted four days of civil war pitting Hezbollah against Sunni and Druze fighters, and the Shi’ite group to take over half the capital Beirut.

He strongly denied any Hezbollah involvement in the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, after a U.N.-backed tribunal indicted four members of the group. 

Nasrallah rejected the tribunal – which in 2020 eventually convicted three of them in absentia over the assassination – as a tool in the hands of Hezbollah’s enemies.

By Maayan Lubell and Maya Gebeily

JERUSALEM/BEIRUT (Reuters) -Israel killed Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in a powerful airstrike in Beirut, dealing a heavy blow to the Iran-backed group as it reels from an escalating campaign of Israeli attacks.

The Israeli military said on Saturday it had eliminated Nasrallah in the strike on the group’s central command headquarters in Beirut’s southern suburbs on Friday. Hezbollah confirmed he had been killed, without saying how.

Nasrallah’s death is a major blow to both Hezbollah and Iran, removing an influential ally who helped build Hezbollah into the linchpin of Tehran’s network of allied groups in the Arab world.

U.S. President Joe Biden described Nasrallah’s death as a measure of justice for what he called the Hezbollah chief’s many victims, including thousands of Americans, Israelis and Lebanese, and said the U.S. fully supported Israel’s right to self-defence.

A senior member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, deputy commander Abbas Nilforoushan, was also killed in the Israeli attacks in Beirut on Friday, Iranian media reported on Saturday.

Strikes continued on Beirut’s southern suburbs throughout the early evening on Saturday, according to a Reuters live broadcast, sending large clouds of smoke over the city.

The Israeli military said that in a strike on southern Beirut on Saturday it killed a senior member of Hezbollah’s intelligence, naming him as Hassan Khalil Yassin. Hezbollah made no mention so far of this.

In Israel, air raid sirens sounded across the centre of the country on Saturday – including Tel Aviv – and large bangs were heard after a missile was fired from Yemen and intercepted, according to the Israeli military.

Hezbollah said in a statement that it would continue its battle against Israel “in support of Gaza and Palestine, and in defence of Lebanon and its steadfast and honourable people”.

Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati said his country was facing the threat of danger, without mentioning the death of Nasrallah. His office later announced three days of mourning for the Hezbollah chief.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Nasrallah’s killing would be avenged and his path in fighting Israel would be continued by other militants.

Hezbollah and Israel have been fighting a conflict in parallel with Israel’s war against Palestinian group Hamas in Gaza since Hamas’ attack on southern Israel last Oct. 7, a conflict that has sharply escalated in recent days.

Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV aired verses from the Koran after Nasrallah’s death was announced. Bursts of gunfire were heard in Beirut and Lebanon’s army deployed tanks in the city centre, according to Reuters witnesses.

Friday’s airstrike – a succession of massively powerful blasts that left a crater at least 20 metres (65 feet) deep – shook Beirut.

The Israeli military said Nasrallah was eliminated in a “targeted strike” on the group’s underground headquarters beneath a residential building in Dahiyeh – a Hezbollah-controlled southern suburb of Beirut.

It said he was killed along with another top Hezbollah leader, Ali Karaki, and other commanders.

“The strike was conducted while Hezbollah’s senior chain of command were operating from the headquarters and advancing terrorist activities against (Israeli) citizens”, it said.

Nasrallah’s death is by far the largest blow in a devastating fortnight for Hezbollah, starting with a deadly attack on thousands of wireless communications devices used by its members.

Days later, Israel significantly ramped up airstrikes in Lebanon, killing several top Hezbollah commanders and hundreds of other people across wide areas of the country.

SUCCESSION

Many Hezbollah supporters were in disbelief on Saturday.

“He was leading us. He was everything to us. We were under his wings,” one supporter, Zahraa, told Reuters tearfully by phone from a school where she had been displaced to overnight.

Hezbollah gave no immediate indication of who might succeed Nasrallah. Senior Hezbollah official Hashem Safieddine has long been regarded as heir apparent. The group has not issued any statement on Safieddine’s status or that of any other Hezbollah leaders – apart from Nasrallah – since the attack.

Hezbollah continued its cross-border rocket fire on Saturday, setting off sirens and sending residents running for shelter deep inside Israel. Israeli missile defences blocked some of them and there was no immediate report of injuries.

The escalation has increased fears the conflict could spin out of control, potentially drawing in Iran, Hezbollah’s principal backer, as well as the United States.

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel’s war was not with the Lebanese people, calling Nasrallah the “murderer of thousands of Israelis and foreign citizens”.

Hezbollah has been waging hostilities with Israel since the eruption of the Gaza war a year ago, when it opened fire declaring solidarity with its Palestinian ally Hamas.

Hezbollah has said it would cease fire only when Israel’s Gaza offensive ends. Hamas and other allies of Hezbollah issued statements mourning his death.

Russia said it strongly condemned Israel’s killing of Nasrallah and called on Israel to stop hostilities in Lebanon.

LEBANON ASKS IRANIAN PLANE NOT TO LAND

Residents fled Dahiyeh, seeking shelter in downtown Beirut and other parts of the city.

“Yesterday’s strikes were unbelievable. We had fled before and then went back to our homes, but then the bombing got more and more intense, so we came here, waiting for Netanyahu to stop the bombing,” said Dalal Daher, speaking near Beirut’s Martyrs Square, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Israel says it has been attacking Hezbollah with the aim of allowing tens of thousands of residents evacuated from northern Israel to return home. In Lebanon, well over 200,000 people have been displaced, around half of them since Monday.

Lebanon’s transport ministry asked an Iranian plane not to enter Lebanese airspace after Israel warned air traffic control at the Beirut airport that it would use “force” if it landed, a ministry source told Reuters. The source said it was not clear what was on the plane, adding: “The priority is people”.

After cutting short his visit to New York, Netanyahu was due to hold a security consultation upon his arrival in Israel on Saturday, an Israeli official said.

Late on Friday, Israeli military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said Israeli air force planes were “patrolling the area of the Beirut airport” and would not allow “hostile flights with weapons to land” there.

Iran Air has cancelled all flights to Beirut until further notice, the airline’s spokesman told local media on Saturday.

Hezbollah has fired hundreds of rockets and missiles at targets in Israel, including Tel Aviv, in recent weeks.