CoinDesk has announced the full programme of this year’s Consensus blockchain summit taking place in New York on 2-4 May. This is the second time the company is launching the conference.

This year, headline speakers include Lawrence Summers, Glenn Hutchins, Jack Markell, Balaji Srinivasan and David Rutter, reads CoinDesk website.

Delaware Governor Jack Markell will introduce the so-called Delaware Blockchain Initiative – the programme of attracting blockchain companies and unleashing the potential of the technology in the state. Apart from Markell’ announcement, the initial part of the conference includes an introductory word of CoinDesk team lead Ryan Selkis and a short presentation on the current state of the blockchain technology by Garrick Hileman from the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance.

Glenn Hutchins, the head of the investment company Silver Lake, will make a report titled “Why Bitcoin Still Matters”. The topic is especially important today, as the growing popularity of the blockchain technology seems to have driven attention away from the cryptocurrency.

David Rutter, the head of R3 consortium, and Balaji Srinivasan, CEO and co-founder of 21, the company creating hardware infrastructure for bitcoin, will take part in the discussion “The Future of Blockchains”.

Srinivasan will also share with the participants some ideas of “How To Get Bitcoin (Without Mining or Buying Bitcoin)”.

Lawrence Summers, Professor and President Emeritus at Harvard University and former U.S. Treasury Secretary, will hold a discussion about “Blockchain in a Global Context”.

Besides all that, the programme lists several dozen speakers including representatives of blockchain firms, major banks (Barclays, Deutsche Bank and Santander), tech giants like Deloitte, IBM and Microsoft, and leading regulating bodies such as the CFTC, the Federal Reserve, FinCEN, the Financial Stability Board and the World Economic Forum.

Some presentations and discussions will be open to everyone, but participants will often have to decide between the topics: some meetings will take place in two parallel panels. One of them will be dedicated to business matters and include discussions of the further influence that blockchain may have on finance, the Internet of Things and insurance. The other panel will host discussions of the technological and political aspects of blockchain. It will cover such issues as the scalability of blockchain, the means of regulating new crypto-technologies and how the state can employ them.

Andrew Levich