Adopting Bitcoin Cape Town 2026

Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni is a pioneer of privacy-preserving technology and one of the crypto industry's most influential voices on financial privacy rights. A founding member of the Monero Core Team, he served as Lead Maintainer from Monero's inception until 2019, helping build what has become the world's leading privacy-focused cryptocurrency. He is the co-founder of Tari Labs, creator of the Tari protocol - a hybrid, programmable PoW blockchain that launched its mainnet in 2025, and aims to bring strong privacy guarantees to on-chain decentralized applications. A Bitcoin advocate since early 2011, Riccardo invented OpenAlias and co-created Yat, and holds 19 patents in blockchain and decentralized identity. He is widely regarded as a deeply technical thinker with an uncompromising stance on the right to personal privacy.