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SUMMARY:IC Colloquium : Blockchains and distributed ledgers in retrospecti
 ve and perspective
DTSTART:20161212T161500
DTEND:20161212T173000
DTSTAMP:20260408T034008Z
UID:d93c97765b87f4e71cb4336ca88f4e9b83d8277505f7481555866ac7
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:By : Alexander Lipton - MIT Connection Science and NYU Courant
  Institute\n\nVideo of his talk\n\nAbstract :\nA few historical examples o
 f blockchains and distributed ledgers are given and it is shown what can g
 o wrong with them. A modern version of monetary circuit theory is presente
 d and it is explained why the circuit needs a (block)chain! Money creation
  by the banking system as a whole and by individual banks is analyzed and 
 the role of central banks as the glue which keeps …nancial system togethe
 r is emphasized. Various types of blockchains and described and it is expl
 ained which blockchains are needed to satisfy di¤erent needs and requirem
 ents. A few fun facts about Bitcoin are presented. Bank money\, Bitcoin an
 d P2P money are com-pared and contrasted. X-Road in E-stonia is described.
  Potential role of distributed ledger technology similar to X-Road for E-B
 anking is outlined. The applicability of smart contracts for solving deliv
 ery vs. payment co-nundrum is studied. Public vs. private blockchains are 
 considered and various potential use cases for distributed ledgers are sum
 marized: (A) post-trade processing\; (B) global payments\; (C) Trade …nan
 ce\, (D) rehy-pothecation\; (E) syndicated loans\, real estate transaction
 s\, VAT\, etc. It is shown why governments should issue digital cash and h
 ow they can do\nit. Potential implications of digital cash are outlined\, 
 including coexis-tence of narrow and free banking. It is argued that Bitco
 in cannot play the role of electronic cash. Chaum vs. Nakamoto approaches 
 to digital cash are compared and contrasted. Theoretical and practical asp
 ects of distributed ledgers are considered.\n\nBio :\nAlexander Lipton is 
 a Connection Science fellow at MIT Media Lab\, adjunct professor of mathem
 atics at NYU Courant Institute\, an advisory board member at the Oxford-Ma
 n Institute\, and a Scientific Committee member at UCL Centre for Blockcha
 in Technologies. He is actively involved with several start-up FinTech com
 panies including a challenger bank and a robo-advisor. In the end of May\,
  he departed from Bank of America Merrill Lynch where he served for ten ye
 ars as a managing director. During this time\, Alex worked in various seni
 or managerial roles including quantitative solutions executive and co-head
  of the Global Quantitative Group. Earlier\, he was a managing director an
 d head of Capital Structure Quantitative Research at Citadel Investment Gr
 oup in Chicago\; he has also worked for Credit Suisse\, Deutsche Bank and 
 Bankers Trust. While working full time as a banker\, Alex held several pre
 stigious academic appointments\, including visiting professor of quantitat
 ive finance at Oxford-Man Institute\, visiting professor of mathematics at
  Imperial College London\, and visiting professor of mathematics at the Un
 iversity of Illinois. Before switching to finance\, Alex was a full profes
 sor of Mathematics at the University of Illinois and a consultant at Los A
 lamos National Laboratory. He received his undergraduate and graduate degr
 ees in pure mathematics from Moscow State University.\n\nHis current profe
 ssional interests include digital banking\, FinTech\, including distribute
 d ledger and other applications of cryptography in banking and payment sys
 tems. His scientific interests are centered on quantitative development of
  modern monetary circuit theory\, mechanisms of money creation\, interlink
 ed banking networks\, balance sheet optimization\, and related topics.\n\n
 In 2000\, Alex was awarded the first Quant of the Year Award by Risk Magaz
 ine. Alex is the author of two books (“Magnetohydrodynamics and Spectral
  Theory” and “Mathematical Methods for Foreign Exchange”) and the ed
 itor of five more\, including\, most recently\, “Quant of the Year 2000-
 2014\, All Award-Winning Papers”. He has published more than a hundred p
 apers on hydrodynamics\, magnetohydrodynamics\, astrophysics\, chemical ph
 ysics\, and financial engineering. His book “Financial Engineering - Sel
 ected Works of Alexander Lipton” will be published by WSPC in 2017.\n\nA
 lex is a founding patron of the 14-10 Club at the Royal Institution (joint
 ly with David Harding). Alex is an avid collector of military optics and i
 s currently working on a book on the history of military binoculars.\n 
LOCATION:BC 420 https://plan.epfl.ch/?room==BC%20420
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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