DIGITAL AF Seoul 2026  ·  Speaking slots

Privacy, law and AI,
on a stage that is
not another panel.

DIGITAL AF is a four day cultural festival in Seoul during Korea Blockchain Week: a contemporary art show, a hackathon, an esport tournament, a TCG activation and a closing night, in one former industrial space in Gangnam. The talks sit inside that, in front of a room that came for the culture and stayed for the argument. We are opening three slots to speakers introduced by Serotonin, and we want them pointed at the three subjects that will actually be in the room this September: privacy, legislation, AI.

Timing is not incidental. On July 29 the Korean FSC announced a government backed Digital Asset Basic Act merging ten separate crypto and stablecoin bills into one framework, with the government and ruling party text expected in September and the law targeted before year end. KBW 2026 itself opens with a private institutional forum for policymakers and financial institutions. We open our doors days later, five minutes from COEX.

Sep 29 / Oct 02, 2026 ARC Gangnam, Seoul During KBW Sep 29 / Oct 01 After Frieze Seoul Sep 02 / 05
The room, honestly
Venue capacity
700 standing
Legal maximum. ARC Gangnam, 7 Gangnam-daero 30-gil, Seocho-gu.
Realistic talk audience
100 to 200
Seated and standing in the main hall. We would rather tell you now than on the day.
Who is in it
KBW crowd, builders, artists
Founders, investors and operators in Seoul for KBW, plus the local art, gaming and music scenes.
Already on stage
MIT, Borget, Chlagou
MIT keynote, Sebastien Borget and Samy Chlagou on the AAA game talk, Hadone closing the week.
The open slots
Tue Sep 29 · 10:00 Keynote 30 min + 10 Q&A

Legislation. The Digital Asset Basic Act, read out loud.

Korea is about to consolidate ten bills into one framework, with stablecoin issuance, exchange entry rules and user protection inside it. Everyone will have an opinion in Seoul that week and almost nobody will have read the text. We want the talk that does: what the bill actually changes for anyone building, how it compares to MiCA in practice rather than on a slide, and what it makes illegal that people are doing today.

Speaker profile
Policy lead, general counsel, regulatory head, or a founder who has genuinely shipped under MiCA or the Virtual Asset User Protection Act and can speak from operating experience.
Language
English. Korean very welcome here, we can arrange interpretation.
Trade off
It is 10:00 on day one. Highest symbolic value, smallest room of the three.
Tue Sep 29 · 12:00 Fireside or panel 40 min

Privacy. The feature everyone praises and nobody ships.

Korea runs real name trading accounts. Models are trained on data nobody consented to. Every chain is a public ledger of behaviour and every agent is a new place your data leaks. We want the honest version: where privacy is a genuine engineering constraint, where it is marketing, and what a builder is willing to give up for it. Works best as a fireside between an operator and someone from the other side, a lawyer, a researcher, or one of our exhibiting artists, whose whole practice is about surveillance and attention.

Speaker profile
Privacy or ZK engineer, data protection lead, or a founder who took a commercial hit to keep a privacy guarantee. We will pair them if it makes the conversation better.
Language
English.
Note
Runs into lunch and the afternoon press day, so the room fills as it goes.
Fri Oct 02 · 16:00 Talk 30 min + 10 Q&A

First million with AI. How to make yours.

Already on the published programme, no speaker attached. Deliberately practical: what somebody actually built with AI, what it earned, what it cost, what broke, and where the regulation now standing up around agents and training data is about to change the maths. No forecasts, no market maps. The most shareable slot of the week if the speaker is willing to show real numbers.

Speaker profile
Operator who has monetised an AI product and will talk about it with figures, not a research lab.
Language
English.
Trade off
Friday Oct 02 is outside KBW, which ends Oct 01. Part of the international crowd will have flown home. The upside is the finissage and closing party the same evening, so the people who stay are the committed ones.
What the speaker gets
House rules
What we need back

Four lines per candidate

  1. Name, role, company, one link.
  2. Which slot, and a working title.
  3. Three sentences on the angle. Not a bio, an argument.
  4. Confirmation they are physically in Seoul on that date.

Names for the August 18 announcement: by August 14. After that we keep taking proposals on a rolling basis until September 5, which is the last date that still leaves time to promote a speaker properly.

digitalaf.xyz@gmail.com  ·  Full programme