Dax Hansen
Partner, Perkins Coie
A Seattle payments and digital asset lawyer who, by his own account, inherited his firm's small electronic financial services practice as a fifth-year associate and built a fintech practice from it, he was billed at Proof of Talk Paris 2026 as Partner, Perkins Coie, weeks before that firm combined with Ashurst to become Ashurst Perkins Coie.
Why the room needs them.
Dax Hansen practises payments, fintech and digital asset law from Seattle, and spoke at Proof of Talk Paris 2026 as Partner, Perkins Coie. He was a panellist on "Institutional DeFi: The Use Cases Worth the Risk". Chambers ranks him Band 1 for blockchain and cryptocurrencies in its FinTech 2026 guide, USA nationwide, and he is now one of two global sector leaders for financial services at Ashurst Perkins Coie, the firm formed when Perkins Coie and Ashurst combined on 28 June 2026.
Years of shipping.
Lines that keep proving correct.
“It was small and fledgling, but I got so interested in all of these areas of the law and started just advising companies, making FinTech law. FinTech wasn't even a category and I just made it up.”
“I specialized in that intersection of technology and money and money and technology never go out of style. And so I've just ridden that wave my entire career.”
“You don't have to have any preexisting background or social demographic profile. You just have to be curious and you have to dig in and figure something out.”
What they have built, written, and backed.
Built
- The fintech industry group at Perkins CoieHis firm bio says he founded it, and a firm release of 11 December 2024 names Joe Cutler as its chair and Hansen as its founder. On The First Buck Podcast he described the starting point: the firm's small electronic financial services practice, which he inherited as a fifth-year associate after the junior partner running it left to build Amazon's payments business.
- "Treatment of Bitcoin Under U.S. Property Law", March 2017A 24-page Perkins Coie white paper written with associate Joshua L. Boehm, surveying how US state property law treats bitcoin, with sections on the Uniform Commercial Code and on special versus general deposits. A copy sits in the materials of a Wyoming Legislature interim committee.
- Oatman Flats Ranch and Oatman FarmsA 665-acre farm on the Lower Gila River in Arizona, bought in late 2018 and organically certified in 2019. The farm's own site says it became the first Regenerative Organic Certified farm in the American Southwest on 26 May 2021, and describes a product line built on heritage crops: wheat berries, stone-milled flour, mixes and vanilla extract.
The next Proof of Talk is in Abu Dhabi.
Louvre Abu Dhabi, 3–4 December 2026. Admission is by application, and the room is capped at 2,000.
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