Fintech: Blockchain in the New Economy

This course will cover the emergence of the peer to peer economy in which buyers and sellers, borrowers and lenders and other partners to transactions deal directly with one another, bypassing intermediaries such as retailers and banks. Students will be introduced to different types of peer to peer markets and will learn the theory and application of different financial instruments and technology infrastructures that facilitate the operation of the peer to peer economy. These include digital currencies, cryptographic tokens, Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) and blockchains. Students will learn how these new instruments and technologies are disrupting traditional ways of doing business, successful and unsuccessful, applied in the peer to peer economy. Students will learn how different sectors of the economy can function without intermediaries while depending on consensus and distributed ledgers. The course will start by explaining the nature of money and traditional payment and banking systems. It will then study the emergence of stateless, decentralized, cloud-based digital currency systems since 2009, and progress to investment products, derivatives, and innovations such as initial coin offerings within the peer to peer economy. Other related issues to be discussed include marketing, smart contracts, investment risk and return, governance, and regulation.