Lecture 5: Blockchain, Crypto, DeFi & Tokenisation

From distributed ledgers to MiCA-regulated markets

Prof. Dr. Andre Guettler Director of the Institute
Helmholtzstraße 22, Room 205
andre.guettler@uni-ulm.de
+49 731 50 31 030

Oliver Padmaperuma Doctoral Candidate
Helmholtzstraße 22, Room 203
oliver.padmaperuma@uni-ulm.de
+49 731 50 31 036

5.1 Course objectives

• 5.1 Course objectives
• 5.2 Recap from Lecture 4
• 5.3 Blockchain primer
• 5.4 Crypto markets today
• 5.5 DeFi primitives
• 5.6 Tokenisation
• 5.7 MiCA & regulation
• 5.8 Conclusion of Lecture 5

• Welcome to
• Course Objective
• Course at a glance (1/3)
• Course at a glance (2/3)
• Course at a glance (3/3)
• Assignments / Exams

Welcome to Emerging Technology & Finance

• This is a flipped-classroom Bachelor course: every regular lecture (odd weeks) is followed by a flipped session (even weeks) where all groups present on the same topic. There is no exam to register for — sign up on the course Moodle page by 15 October 2026 so you receive announcements and the token-allocation quiz links.
• Form a group of 4 by the end of Week 1 (Moodle sign-up sheet). Stragglers will be allocated by the lecturers.
• Grading is 100% cumulative across the 6 flipped sessions: each session = 50% peer-allocated tokens + 50% lecturer evaluation. Each group gets 20 fresh tokens every flipped week to allocate to other groups via a Moodle quiz within 5 minutes of the session ending.
• Submission per session: upload your slide PDF to Moodle before each flipped session starts. Ask questions during or right after each session — that is the preferred channel.
• Admin / studies / exam-eligibility questions go to the registrar’s office (Studiensekretariat) at studiensekretariat@uni-ulm.de.
• Course-content questions outside class: email oliver.padmaperuma@uni-ulm.de, CC andre.guettler@uni-ulm.de.
• We also recommend the student advisory service.

Course Objective

Scope

We will:

• Survey six emerging-technology modules at the cutting edge of finance: agentic AI · blockchain & DeFi · fintech business models · RegTech & cybersecurity · CBDCs
• Pair every regular lecture with a flipped session in which every group presents their angle on the topic
• Train critical evaluation, presentation, and peer-judgment skills via a transparent token-based peer-grading mechanic
• Place the technologies in a real-world business and regulatory context (PSD2/3, MiCA, EU AI Act, post-quantum standards)

We will NOT:

• Build production-grade fintech systems or trade live capital
• Cover deep technical implementations (we treat code as supplement, not core)
• Run a separate written exam or final-pitch competition — the cumulative flipped-session grade is the entire grade

Approach

Flipped-classroom alternation (12 weeks)

• Odd weeks (W1, W3, W5, W7, W9, W11): regular lecture introducing the topic
• Even weeks (W2, W4, W6, W8, W10, W12): flipped session — all groups present and allocate tokens
• Groups of 4, formed by end of Week 1

Token mechanic (the grading vehicle)

• 20 tokens per group per flipped session
• Each group allocates them to other groups, weighing insight · originality · clarity · critical depth
• Cumulative across 6 sessions = 50% of final grade · lecturer evaluation = 50%

Course at a glance (1/3)

Foundations of Digital Disruption in Financial Services

Week 1

22.10.2026

What is ‘emerging tech in finance’, how did we get here, where is it going

• Three waves of digital disruption in finance
• Today’s actors: incumbents, challengers, Big Tech, infrastructure
• Regulatory backdrop: PSD2, MiCA, EU AI Act
• Why now: structural drivers
• What this course will cover

Flipped — Digital Disruption in Financial Services

Week 2

29.10.2026

Group presentations · token allocation · discussion

• Recap of the foundations lecture
• Group presentations on digital disruption
• Token allocation & next steps

Agentic AI & LLMs in Finance

Week 3

05.11.2026

From LLMs to agents · applications · failure modes · EU AI Act

• LLMs in finance: architecture, training, capabilities
• Agentic AI: from answers to actions
• Applications: RAG, robo-advisors, AML, trading agents
• Failure modes: hallucination, drift, prompt injection
• Governance: EU AI Act and high-risk obligations

Flipped — Agentic AI & LLMs in Finance

Week 4

12.11.2026

Group presentations · token allocation · discussion

• Recap of the agentic AI lecture
• Group presentations on real LLM and agent deployments
• Token allocation & next steps

Blockchain, Crypto, DeFi & Tokenisation

Week 5

19.11.2026

From distributed ledgers to MiCA-regulated markets

• Blockchain primer: ledgers, consensus, smart contracts
• Crypto markets: BTC, ETH, stablecoins
• DeFi primitives: AMMs, lending, derivatives
• Tokenisation of real-world assets
• MiCA framework and EU enforcement

Course at a glance (2/3)

Flipped — Blockchain, Crypto, DeFi & Tokenisation

Week 6

26.11.2026

Group presentations · token allocation · discussion

• Recap of the blockchain & DeFi lecture
• Group presentations on real protocols and deployments
• Token allocation & next steps

Fintech Business Models

Week 7

03.12.2026

Neobanks, embedded finance, BNPL, Open Banking, Big Tech in finance

• Neobanks: N26, Revolut, Monzo, Chime
• Embedded finance & BaaS
• BNPL: Klarna, Affirm, regulatory pushback
• Open Banking & PSD2 outcomes
• Big Tech in finance

Flipped — Fintech Business Models

Week 8

10.12.2026

Neobanks, embedded finance, BNPL · group presentations · token allocation

• Recap of the fintech business-models lecture
• Group presentations on real companies and unit economics
• Token allocation & next steps

RegTech, Cybersecurity & Privacy-Preserving Compute

Week 9

17.12.2026

Industrialising compliance · cyber-threat landscape · ZKPs, MPC, federated learning · post-quantum

• RegTech overview: industrialising compliance
• KYC/AML automation in production
• Cybersecurity threats in finance
• Privacy-preserving compute: ZKPs, MPC, federated learning
• Post-quantum cryptography & the migration

Flipped — RegTech, Cybersecurity & Privacy-Preserving Compute

Week 10

07.01.2027

Group presentations · token allocation · discussion

• Recap of the RegTech & security lecture
• Group presentations on vendors, incidents, and emerging tech
• Token allocation & next steps

Course at a glance (3/3)

CBDCs & the Future of Money

Week 11

14.01.2027

Wholesale vs retail design · Digital Euro · e-CNY · programmable money

• What’s a CBDC: wholesale vs retail
• The Digital Euro state of play
• China’s e-CNY and small-country implementations
• Programmable money: feature, threat, or both
• Stablecoins as private money: tension with CBDCs

Flipped — CBDCs & the Future of Money

Week 12

21.01.2027

Final session · group presentations · token allocation · course wrap-up

• Recap of the CBDCs lecture
• Group presentations on real CBDC projects
• Token allocation, final standings, and course retrospective

Assignments / Exams

Flipped-Classroom Presentation Series 100% of your grade

Six in-class group presentations across six emerging-tech topics, graded cumulatively. Each session: 50% peer-allocated tokens + 50% lecturer evaluation.

Group of up to 4.

Submit by emailing oliver.padmaperuma@uni-ulm.de, CC andre.guettler@uni-ulm.de. Subject pattern: Emerging Technology & Finance_assignment-1-flipped-classroom-presentations_surname1_surname2_…

21 January 2027

5.2 Recap from Lecture 4

• 5.1 Course objectives
• 5.2 Recap from Lecture 4
• 5.3 Blockchain primer
• 5.4 Crypto markets today
• 5.5 DeFi primitives
• 5.6 Tokenisation
• 5.7 MiCA & regulation
• 5.8 Conclusion of Lecture 5

• What the flipped session surfaced

What the flipped session surfaced

• The deployed-LLM cases that withstood scrutiny — usually summarisation, occasionally compliance — vs the trading “agents” that were marketing in disguise.
• Concrete failure modes the cohort identified: hallucination in citations, calibration failures in customer-facing chat, prompt injection in agent flows.
• The single AI-Act question that came up most: where exactly does credit decisioning end and credit explanation begin?

The Week-4 flipped session was designed to force the cohort to separate substantive AI deployments from marketing language. As you read these recap bullets, notice how the most credible AI-in-finance stories share a structure: a bounded task with a measurable outcome and an honest failure-mode disclosure. Today’s lecture pivots from off-chain AI agents to on-chain programmatic agents — smart contracts. The interesting tension is that LLMs are powerful but opaque, while smart contracts are transparent but rigid; the next decade of finance will be partly about bridging that gap.

5.3 Blockchain primer

• 5.1 Course objectives
• 5.2 Recap from Lecture 4
• 5.3 Blockchain primer
• 5.4 Crypto markets today
• 5.5 DeFi primitives
• 5.6 Tokenisation
• 5.7 MiCA & regulation
• 5.8 Conclusion of Lecture 5

• Distributed ledgers in one slide
• Consensus: PoW vs PoS
• Smart contracts

Distributed ledgers in one slide

• Ledger — an append-only log of transactions; nothing can be deleted, only superseded.
• Distributed — many computers (“nodes”) hold copies; agreement is reached via a consensus mechanism.
• Permissionless (Bitcoin, Ethereum) — anyone can run a node, anyone can submit a transaction.
• Permissioned (most enterprise chains) — only allow-listed parties; better latency, weaker decentralisation.

“Blockchain” is a 1990s data structure made interesting in 2008 by combining it with proof-of-work consensus and a public peer network (Nakamoto 2008).

The technical innovation in 2008’s Bitcoin paper was not the chained-blocks data structure (cryptographers had used Merkle trees for decades). It was solving the Byzantine Generals’ Problem in an open, permissionless setting — letting strangers reach agreement on a transaction order without a trusted third party. Once you grasp that, every subsequent design (Ethereum, modern PoS chains, DAGs, rollups) is a tweak of the same trade-off space: how to balance decentralisation, security, and performance. Read Nakamoto (2008) and Buterin (2014) directly — both are short and accessible.

Consensus: PoW vs PoS

• Bitcoin’s original mechanism.
• Cost-of-attack tied to electricity + hardware.
• Energy-intensive (Bitcoin uses ~0.5% of global electricity).
• Slow finality (~60 min for “settled” Bitcoin).
• Resists state-actor capture if mining is geographically diverse.

• Ethereum since 2022 (The Merge); most new chains.
• Cost-of-attack tied to value of staked tokens.
• Energy use ~0.01% of PoW equivalent.
• Fast finality (~12 min on Ethereum).
• Concern: stake concentration in a few large validators.

The PoW vs PoS debate has settled into a stable equilibrium: Bitcoin remains PoW (and is unlikely ever to change because changing it would break the political coalition that keeps Bitcoin valuable), and almost all newer chains use PoS or close variants. The honest critique of each: PoW’s measurable externality is energy use; PoS’s latent risk is that liquid-staking-derivative concentration (Lido on Ethereum holds ~30% of staked ETH) makes the system economically more decentralised but operationally less so. For a Bachelor finance audience, the takeaway is that consensus design is also a governance design — it determines who can change the rules.

Smart contracts

• Code deployed to the blockchain that executes deterministically on every node.
• Trust-minimised — no party can roll back; no party can selectively execute.
• Composable — contracts call other contracts; this is the “money Lego” thesis.
• Auditable — bytecode is on-chain; source is usually published; execution is publicly verifiable.

“Code is law” — neither true nor false. Smart contracts are deterministic, but their intent is rarely what their code does. See: every major DeFi hack.

The tension in smart contracts is between determinism (the code runs exactly the same way every time) and intent (what the developers and users wanted it to do). When those diverge — through bugs, oracle failures, or off-chain dependencies — the contract still executes correctly, just to the wrong outcome. This is why “code is law” is a misleading framing: courts and regulators ultimately decide what counts as a binding obligation, not the EVM. Werbach’s The Blockchain and the New Architecture of Trust (Werbach 2018) is the best framing of this — blockchain is a technology of trust in the protocol, but trust in the application still requires social and legal scaffolding.

5.4 Crypto markets today

• 5.1 Course objectives
• 5.2 Recap from Lecture 4
• 5.3 Blockchain primer
• 5.4 Crypto markets today
• 5.5 DeFi primitives
• 5.6 Tokenisation
• 5.7 MiCA & regulation
• 5.8 Conclusion of Lecture 5

• Three asset classes that matter

Three asset classes that matter

• Digital-gold narrative
• ~$1T+ market cap (verify at lecture time)
• Held by ETFs (BlackRock IBIT) and corporate treasuries (MicroStrategy)
• Settlement asset, not a transaction asset

• Smart-contract platform
• Hosts most of DeFi and tokenisation
• Native staking yield (~3–5%)
• Layer-2 rollups (Arbitrum, Optimism, Base) carry transaction volume

• USDC (Circle), USDT (Tether), PYUSD (PayPal), DAI (MakerDAO), USDe (Ethena)
• Combined supply ~$200B+ (verify at lecture time)
• Most-used “crypto” asset class by transaction volume
• The settlement layer for B2B and cross-border crypto flows

Stablecoins are the most important asset class to understand in 2026 — they are where crypto’s promise of programmable settlement has actually delivered scale. Tether’s daily transaction volume regularly exceeds Visa’s; USDC’s bank-friendly design makes it the institutional choice. The interesting market structure is the competition between stablecoins on different design axes: backing transparency (USDC strong, USDT contested), regulatory compliance (USDC and PYUSD MiCA-compliant; USDT delisted from regulated EU exchanges), and yield (USDe via delta-neutral hedging — clever but new). Bring current numbers to Week 6.

5.5 DeFi primitives

• 5.1 Course objectives
• 5.2 Recap from Lecture 4
• 5.3 Blockchain primer
• 5.4 Crypto markets today
• 5.5 DeFi primitives
• 5.6 Tokenisation
• 5.7 MiCA & regulation
• 5.8 Conclusion of Lecture 5

• The core primitives
• How DeFi composes

The core primitives

• AMM (Automated Market Maker) — Uniswap. Constant-product invariant (\(x \cdot y = k\)); no order book.
• Lending pool — Aave, Compound. Over-collateralised borrowing (typically 130–200% collateral).
• Liquid staking — Lido. Stake ETH, get stETH (a tradeable claim); earn staking yield while keeping liquidity.
• Derivatives — dYdX, GMX. Perpetual swaps primarily; options markets nascent.
• Stable-pool aggregation — Curve. Optimised for low-slippage swaps between pegged assets.

The single most useful concept to nail in DeFi is the constant-product invariant of an AMM. If a pool holds \(x\) units of token A and \(y\) units of token B, the AMM enforces \(x \cdot y = k\) for some constant \(k\). A trader who removes some of token A must add enough of token B to keep \(k\) constant — and the price they pay is determined by that constraint. This is all an AMM does; everything else (concentrated liquidity, hooks, cross-pool routing) is engineering on top. Once you see the invariant, the rest of DeFi composes from these few primitives (Harvey, Ramachandran, and Santoro 2021).

How DeFi composes

1. Deposit ETH into Lido → receive stETH (liquid staked ETH).
2. Deposit stETH into Aave → borrow USDC against it.
3. Swap that USDC into more ETH on Uniswap.
4. Deposit that ETH back into Lido. (Recursive leverage.)

• DeFi yields can be real (staking, lending fees) or recycled leverage.
• The same dollar can appear in TVL of three protocols at once.
• TVL is not a revenue or risk metric.
• Fee revenue per dollar of TVL is the right comparison.

The composition example matters because it explains why DeFi headlines about “$50B in TVL across protocol X” are often misleading. The same dollar — really, the same ETH — can be counted three or four times across Lido, Aave, and Uniswap. To assess whether a DeFi protocol is productive or just leveraged, the right metric is fee revenue per dollar of TVL. Productive protocols (Uniswap, MakerDAO) have meaningful ratios; leveraged protocols look impressive on TVL and disappointing on fees. This is the most common analytical mistake students make in DeFi presentations (Harvey, Ramachandran, and Santoro 2021).

5.6 Tokenisation

• 5.1 Course objectives
• 5.2 Recap from Lecture 4
• 5.3 Blockchain primer
• 5.4 Crypto markets today
• 5.5 DeFi primitives
• 5.6 Tokenisation
• 5.7 MiCA & regulation
• 5.8 Conclusion of Lecture 5

• What’s actually being tokenised
• The honest case for and against

What’s actually being tokenised

• US Treasury bills — BlackRock BUIDL ($2B+ AUM), Ondo OUSG, Franklin BENJI. The breakthrough product.
• Money-market funds — multiple incumbents (Franklin, BlackRock) on Ethereum and Polygon.
• Private credit — Centrifuge, Maple, Goldfinch. Smaller scale, longer-tail.
• Real estate, art, carbon credits — niche, slow; mostly legal-scaffolding pilots, little volume.

Tokenisation has the most material near-term scale story of any DeFi-adjacent topic — but only at the boring end. Tokenised T-bills work because they replicate an existing low-risk financial instrument with marginal operational improvements (24/7 settlement, programmable interest distribution, native collateralisation). The exotic end of tokenisation — fractional Picassos, tokenised orange groves — is mostly speculative and has produced little durable AUM. When students hype “tokenisation will revolutionise illiquid assets”, the honest answer is that liquidity is hard not because settlement is hard but because price discovery is hard, and tokenisation doesn’t fix price discovery. Cite Harvey, Ramachandran, and Santoro (2021) for the framing.

The honest case for and against

• 24/7 settlement, no T+2 friction.
• Programmable: pays interest automatically; serves as on-chain collateral natively.
• Lower minimum-ticket size in some products (BUIDL ≥ $5M; retail variants ≥ $10).
• Auditable on-chain ownership and transfers.

• Most “tokenised” assets are still managed off-chain — chain is a registry layer.
• KYC and accredited-investor checks largely re-import old gating.
• Most retail benefits already available via low-cost ETFs (zero-fee SPY).
• Custody, legal, tax issues for institutional holders are non-trivial.

The honest case for tokenisation today is operational efficiency for issuers and 24/7 collateral mobility for institutions, not democratisation of access (which is the marketing line). The biggest near-term winners are likely to be money-market and Treasury products, where the settlement layer adds clear value to a well-understood instrument. The biggest near-term losers may be the legacy transfer-agent business — a service that is largely obviated by on-chain registry. Frame the trade-off this way and you’ll outperform 90% of “tokenisation will change everything” pitches.

5.7 MiCA & regulation

• 5.1 Course objectives
• 5.2 Recap from Lecture 4
• 5.3 Blockchain primer
• 5.4 Crypto markets today
• 5.5 DeFi primitives
• 5.6 Tokenisation
• 5.7 MiCA & regulation
• 5.8 Conclusion of Lecture 5

• What MiCA does
• Winners and losers

What MiCA does

• First comprehensive crypto regulation in a major jurisdiction (in force 2024–25).
• Asset-Referenced Tokens (ARTs) and E-Money Tokens (EMTs) — different rules for different stablecoin types; daily-transaction caps for the largest.
• CASP (Crypto-Asset Service Provider) licensing — exchanges, custodians, OTC desks must register with a national competent authority.
• Market-abuse rules for crypto — insider trading, market manipulation, disclosure obligations (European Parliament and Council 2023).

MiCA matters as the global precedent: the EU made the political choice to bring crypto inside the regulated perimeter rather than out-compete it. The technical details (which token type triggers which obligations) are less important than the political signal — that EU regulators decided legitimisation serves their interests better than exclusion. Cite European Parliament and Council (2023). The next 2–3 years will be defined by which jurisdictions follow this model (UK is on-track, US is contested) and what enforcement actually looks like — most MiCA enforcement happens at the member-state level, so consistency across the EU is itself contested.

Winners and losers

• Compliant centralised exchanges — Coinbase EU, Bitstamp, Kraken EU.
• USDC (Circle) — EU-compliant disclosure regime; gained share over USDT in EU markets.
• Tokenisation platforms positioned as MiCA-light (RWA issuers, regulated custody).
• Compliance-tech vendors (Chainalysis, TRM, Notabene) benefiting from CASP onboarding demand.

• USDT (Tether) — delisted from regulated EU exchanges for non-compliant disclosures.
• DeFi protocols — unclear MiCA application; many adopting voluntary KYC out of precaution.
• Smaller exchanges — licensing cost (€150k–500k one-off + ongoing compliance) may force consolidation.
• Anonymous-DeFi advocates — losing the political argument in EU markets.

The Tether/USDC divergence is the single clearest case study of MiCA’s effects: USDC met the EU’s transparency standards and gained EU market share; USDT chose not to and was delisted from regulated venues — but kept its global dominance because the regulatory perimeter doesn’t extend everywhere. This is the canonical pattern of MiCA-style regulation: it creates a tier of EU-compliant products that capture institutional demand and a parallel tier of unregulated products that retreat to retail users elsewhere. Whether that bifurcation persists depends on whether other major jurisdictions converge on EU-style rules or pick different ones (European Parliament and Council 2023).

5.8 Conclusion of Lecture 5

• 5.1 Course objectives
• 5.2 Recap from Lecture 4
• 5.3 Blockchain primer
• 5.4 Crypto markets today
• 5.5 DeFi primitives
• 5.6 Tokenisation
• 5.7 MiCA & regulation
• 5.8 Conclusion of Lecture 5

• Course at a glance (1/3)
• Course at a glance (2/3)
• Course at a glance (3/3)
• Further reading
• Prepare before next flipped session (Week 6)
• See you next time
• References

Course at a glance (1/3)

Foundations of Digital Disruption in Financial Services

Week 1

22.10.2026

What is ‘emerging tech in finance’, how did we get here, where is it going

• Three waves of digital disruption in finance
• Today’s actors: incumbents, challengers, Big Tech, infrastructure
• Regulatory backdrop: PSD2, MiCA, EU AI Act
• Why now: structural drivers
• What this course will cover

Flipped — Digital Disruption in Financial Services

Week 2

29.10.2026

Group presentations · token allocation · discussion

• Recap of the foundations lecture
• Group presentations on digital disruption
• Token allocation & next steps

Agentic AI & LLMs in Finance

Week 3

05.11.2026

From LLMs to agents · applications · failure modes · EU AI Act

• LLMs in finance: architecture, training, capabilities
• Agentic AI: from answers to actions
• Applications: RAG, robo-advisors, AML, trading agents
• Failure modes: hallucination, drift, prompt injection
• Governance: EU AI Act and high-risk obligations

Flipped — Agentic AI & LLMs in Finance

Week 4

12.11.2026

Group presentations · token allocation · discussion

• Recap of the agentic AI lecture
• Group presentations on real LLM and agent deployments
• Token allocation & next steps

Blockchain, Crypto, DeFi & Tokenisation

Week 5

19.11.2026

From distributed ledgers to MiCA-regulated markets

• Blockchain primer: ledgers, consensus, smart contracts
• Crypto markets: BTC, ETH, stablecoins
• DeFi primitives: AMMs, lending, derivatives
• Tokenisation of real-world assets
• MiCA framework and EU enforcement

Course at a glance (2/3)

Flipped — Blockchain, Crypto, DeFi & Tokenisation

Week 6

26.11.2026

Group presentations · token allocation · discussion

• Recap of the blockchain & DeFi lecture
• Group presentations on real protocols and deployments
• Token allocation & next steps

Fintech Business Models

Week 7

03.12.2026

Neobanks, embedded finance, BNPL, Open Banking, Big Tech in finance

• Neobanks: N26, Revolut, Monzo, Chime
• Embedded finance & BaaS
• BNPL: Klarna, Affirm, regulatory pushback
• Open Banking & PSD2 outcomes
• Big Tech in finance

Flipped — Fintech Business Models

Week 8

10.12.2026

Neobanks, embedded finance, BNPL · group presentations · token allocation

• Recap of the fintech business-models lecture
• Group presentations on real companies and unit economics
• Token allocation & next steps

RegTech, Cybersecurity & Privacy-Preserving Compute

Week 9

17.12.2026

Industrialising compliance · cyber-threat landscape · ZKPs, MPC, federated learning · post-quantum

• RegTech overview: industrialising compliance
• KYC/AML automation in production
• Cybersecurity threats in finance
• Privacy-preserving compute: ZKPs, MPC, federated learning
• Post-quantum cryptography & the migration

Flipped — RegTech, Cybersecurity & Privacy-Preserving Compute

Week 10

07.01.2027

Group presentations · token allocation · discussion

• Recap of the RegTech & security lecture
• Group presentations on vendors, incidents, and emerging tech
• Token allocation & next steps

Course at a glance (3/3)

CBDCs & the Future of Money

Week 11

14.01.2027

Wholesale vs retail design · Digital Euro · e-CNY · programmable money

• What’s a CBDC: wholesale vs retail
• The Digital Euro state of play
• China’s e-CNY and small-country implementations
• Programmable money: feature, threat, or both
• Stablecoins as private money: tension with CBDCs

Flipped — CBDCs & the Future of Money

Week 12

21.01.2027

Final session · group presentations · token allocation · course wrap-up

• Recap of the CBDCs lecture
• Group presentations on real CBDC projects
• Token allocation, final standings, and course retrospective

Further reading

• Nakamoto (2008) — the original Bitcoin whitepaper (8 pages, read it).
• Buterin (2014) — the Ethereum whitepaper (longer, but the first 3 sections are core).
• Harvey, Ramachandran, and Santoro (2021) — DeFi and the Future of Finance — the textbook framing.
• Werbach (2018) — The Blockchain and the New Architecture of Trust — the institutional / political framing.
• European Parliament and Council (2023) — the MiCA regulation text; focus on stablecoin and CASP definitions.

Prepare before next flipped session (Week 6)

1. Pick your Week-6 angle from the presentation series brief.
2. Bring on-chain evidence — TVL, fee revenue, transaction counts, audit reports — not just narrative.
3. Anticipate the counterargument — DeFi presentations always face a “but the yields are recycled leverage” probe. Have a defended answer.
4. Upload slide PDF to Moodle before 14:00 next Thursday.

See you next time

Reminder

• Next session: Lecture 6 — Flipped: Blockchain, Crypto, DeFi & Tokenisation on 26 November 2026.
• Each group presents (6 min + 2 min Q&A).
• Slides due on Moodle before 14:00.

References

Buterin, Vitalik. 2014. “A Next-Generation Smart Contract and Decentralized Application Platform.” https://ethereum.org/en/whitepaper/.

European Parliament and Council. 2023. “Regulation (EU) 2023/1114 on Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA).” Official Journal of the European Union, L 150/40. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2023/1114/oj.

Harvey, Campbell R., Ashwin Ramachandran, and Joey Santoro. 2021. DeFi and the Future of Finance. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Nakamoto, Satoshi. 2008. “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.” https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf.

Werbach, Kevin. 2018. The Blockchain and the New Architecture of Trust. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.