Bota Jardemalie
Human Rights Lawyer, Open Dialogue Foundation · Brussels, Belgium
Bota Jardemalie is a Kazakhstani human rights lawyer and political refugee in Belgium, a Harvard-trained, New York-licensed attorney who served as a senior in-house lawyer at Kazakhstan's BTA Bank before becoming a prominent critic of the regime. Granted asylum in Brussels in 2013, she has spent over a decade defending Kazakh dissidents and torture victims while surviving extradition attempts, illegal surveillance, and a foiled abduction plot against her. Through the Open Dialogue Foundation's BTC Coalition she now works on financial exclusion and the abuse of AML and CFT laws, making the case that Bitcoin and financial privacy are essential tools for those the banking system is turned against.
At BTCHEL 2026
- What happens when the state turns off your money? — Day 2, 15:00, Main stage