Ariadne Plaitakis

Deputy Director, Regulation, Policy, & Research

Gates Foundation

Ariadne Plaitakis leads efforts to promote evidence-based policymaking, regulatory innovation, and cross-sector research that can advance safe, equitable access to digital financial services in low- and middle-income countries.
Ariadne joined the Gates Foundation in 2022 as the team’s senior program officer for regulation. In that role, she managed grantmaking for regulatory and capacity-building efforts. She currently serves as deputy director for regulation, policy, and research.
Ariadne has more than two decades of international experience in digital finance and payments regulation, open banking, financial inclusion, data protection and privacy, e-commerce, competition law, and consumer protection. Before joining the foundation, she was a senior financial sector specialist at CGAP, where she led research on open banking, interoperability, and competition in digital financial services. Earlier, she served as a senior associate at BFA Global and as general counsel and head of regulatory affairs at Mondato, a digital finance consultancy.
Ariadne is a UK-qualified solicitor. She has an M.A. in jurisprudence from the University of Oxford and a B.Sc. in foreign service from Georgetown University. She is fluent in French, German, and Greek.

Speaking at

12:00–1:30pmThu 25 JunGFTN InsightsRoundtable Room 2, Ground FloorOpen
Blueprint for Digital Assets

Building a Practitioner's Guide for Tokenization in Finance: Working Group Members Convening

GFTN InsightsRoundtable Room 2, Ground FloorOpen
About this session

The problems that constrain tokenization at scale do not belong to one working group, one institution, or one regulatory perimeter. Cross-ledger settlement, stablecoin licensing fragmentation, FMI readiness in developing markets, and the legal enforceability of smart contracts are structurally connected with each a precondition for the next, each requiring actors across infrastructure and regulation to work from the same evidence base.
This session brings both working groups together for the first time in person. Working Group 1 (Interoperability and Infrastructure) and Working Group 2 (Regulation, Trust, and Governance) will each present their problem statements before presenting to the Oversight Panel. The purpose is to establish shared understanding of the initiative's full scope, test framing with peers who approach the same challenges from different vantage points, and sharpen the asks that each working group will direct to the Oversight Panel in the session that follows.
About the initiative
GFTN has launched _Tokenization in Finance: Evidence and Implementation Pathways_, a structured, multi-stakeholder initiative convening two working groups drawn from leading financial institutions, infrastructure providers, and market participants to assemble a practitioner-oriented evidence base spanning spanning digital money and payment rails through to tokenized real-world assets, securities, funds, and capital markets infrastructure. At Singapore FinTech Festival in November 2026, the initiative will publish a practitioner guide designed to give financial institutions a structured basis for sequencing their digital asset strategies, and to equip regulators and finance ministries in emerging and developing economies with implementation pathways they can draw on directly.
2:00–3:30pmThu 25 JunGFTN InsightsRoundtable Room 2, Ground FloorOpen
Blueprint for Digital Assets

Building a Practitioner's Guide for Tokenization in Finance: Oversight Panel Convening

GFTN InsightsRoundtable Room 2, Ground FloorOpen
About this session

Tokenization is reshaping financial infrastructure across many economies. The decisions that are being made now on architecture, standards and governance will determine whether that infrastructure serves developed and emerging and developing economies, or leaves some behind. Ensuring that outcome requires senior public sector voices at the centre of these conversations.
This session brings both working groups and the public sector Oversight Panel together for the first time. Working group leads will present their confirmed problem statements on what the evidence shows, and receive feedback and recommendations that working groups will pursue to build the practitioner's guide that will publish at Singapore FinTech Festival in November 2026.
About the initiative
GFTN is launching _Tokenization in Finance: Evidence and Implementation Pathways_, a structured, multi-stakeholder initiative convening two working groups drawn from leading financial institutions, infrastructure providers, and market participants to assemble a practitioner-oriented evidence base spanning spanning digital money and payment rails through to tokenized real-world assets, securities, funds, and capital markets infrastructure. At Singapore FinTech Festival in November 2026, the initiative will publish a practitioner guide designed to give financial institutions a structured basis for sequencing their digital asset strategies, and to equip regulators and finance ministries in emerging and developing economies with implementation pathways they can draw on directly.
4:00–5:30pmThu 25 JunGFTN InsightsRoundtable Room 3, Ground FloorOpen
Securing the Future

Defending the Chain: Financial Crime in a Tokenized System

GFTN InsightsRoundtable Room 3, Ground FloorOpen
About this session

Blockchain has created a new attack surface - from bridge exploits and mixer obfuscation to cross-chain layering that outpaces the tools regulators were given to fight it. As institutional capital flows onto on-chain infrastructure, the stakes of getting AML, sanctions screening, and transaction monitoring wrong have risen sharply.
This session brings together compliance leads, blockchain analytics practitioners, and regulators for an unfiltered conversation about what financial crime looks like in a tokenized system, what the current toolset can and cannot catch, and where the industry needs to move before the next major exploit exposes the gap.
Participants will examine the specific failure modes: how privacy-enhancing technologies complicate sanctions screening, why cross-chain bridges remain the highest-risk chokepoint in institutional flows, and what travel rule compliance actually looks like when assets move between permissioned and public infrastructure. The discussion will also touch on how intelligence is shared - or not - across institutional networks, and what it takes to make that collaboration work at scale.
The roundtable will also confront a harder structural question - whether the AML frameworks inherited from fiat finance are architecturally capable of governing a system where settlement is atomic, pseudonymous, and borderless by design, and what a purpose-built compliance regime for tokenized markets would need to look like.

Featured speakers

Hosted by

Ariadne Plaitakis

Speaking at

Building a Practitioner's Guide for Tokenization in Finance: Working Group Members Convening

Building a Practitioner's Guide for Tokenization in Finance: Oversight Panel Convening

Defending the Chain: Financial Crime in a Tokenized System