Apr 28, 2020 - This hour-long webinar is part four in a four-part series on blockchain and pandemics. Don Tapscott opens a discussion with Alex Tapscott and Chris Giancarlo, former Chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, about the potential to turn away from cash and towards a state-backed digital currency. On 28 April 2020, the BRI hosted a webinar featuring Chris Giancarlo, former chairman of the former chair of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission and co-director of the Digital Dollar Project. This is an edited transcript of the proceedings. It distinguishes among three types of cryptocurrencies—distributed (Bitcoin), corporate (L...

Apr 30, 2018 - This research surveys the global landscape of regulatory frameworks, statements, and decisions, on blockchain-based token sales in the jurisdictions of the United States, Canada, Singapore, China, France, Germany, Italy, Estonia, Switzerland, and Gibraltar, with commentary on Malaysia, South Korea, Israel, Russia, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Arab Emirates. Its expert authors look at initial coin offerings and compare how different regulators are categorizing token sales in their attempts to balance the protection of investors with the stimulus of innovat...

Jan 22, 2018 - Blockchain technology could enable cooperative models for organizing capital and capability, exchanging value, and managing risk peer to peer. This research project explores distributed marketplaces for insurance and financial assets, where peers amass large pools of liquidity on the blockchain, smart contracts pay liabilities, and artificial intelligence calculates actuarial risk.

Sep 30, 2019 - This research explores the disruptive effects of blockchain technologies on central banking and the financial services industry. Its author discusses Facebook’s proposed cryptocurrency Libra, and how the other FAANG companies—that is, Amazon.com, Apple, Netflix, and Google—might respond with their own digital tokens. He introduces five transformations—cryptoassets, the tokenization of everything, blockchains as state machines, a new model for identity, and the nine forms of decentralized finance. He examines the challenges that incumbents and innovators face during this transition; and he previews the world of financial services in th...

May 10, 2018 - In this research project, Joel Telpner gives us a guided tour of regulatory risk. Pulling lessons from regulating innovation in telecommunications and the financial markets, he focuses on the extent to which the blockchain represents unprecedented regulatory challenges. He advocates a level-headed approach to determining when regulation is necessary and, in such cases, the form that regulation should take, so as to minimize the unintended consequences. Using illustrations by the legendary political cartoonist John Tenniel and passages from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass: and What Alice Found There, Telpner gives executiv...

Jan 21, 2021 - This research project looks at stablecoins, a new category of digital assets with stable prices in decentralized financial systems. It achieves three goals. First, it examines different ways to stabilize the price of a cryptocurrency. Some are backed by assets with stable value such as US dollars or gold, others are stabilized by algorithms, and some combine those two approaches. Second, it surveys the landscape of stablecoins and analyze the top ten stablecoins by market capitalization. Finally, it suggests ways to use stablecoins for protecting the value of a cryptoasset portfolio.