I am a digital economist specialized in blockchain. My experience as a professor and researcher has allowed me to serve as an advisor for several Central Banks, companies, start-ups, associations, and international organizations such as the United Nations. My entrepreneurial mind has led to my appointment in many high-ranking, decision-making positions, such as Co-Chair of the Treasury Management and Token Economics Committee of HEDERA Hashgraph (a distributed ledger with a diluted market cap of 3 trillion), and Co-Founder & Chief Strategist of QUANT NETWORK.
I am the Co-Founder and Executive Director of the University College London Centre for Blockchain Technologies (UCL CBT), the world-leading blockchain research hub. I am devoted to understanding the impact of blockchain technologies on our socio-economic systems, while promoting their development and adoption. To do so, I support executives, decision-makers and students interested in the digital world. I provide crucial insights on breakthroughs and open areas of research, while delivering progressive training and educational activities specifically designed for all levels of experience.
I am also a staunch believer in the importance of bridging the gaps between industry and academia. As an author and public speaker, this can be appreciated in my publications and speeches, but also leading UCL CBT, which not only displays a commitment to supporting open value networks but also a strong industry focus.
During my PhD and post-doc at ETH Zurich, I embraced the technology underlying Bitcoin: the blockchain. Blockchain first realized the vision of a decentralized monetary system, as envisioned in the theory of Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek. It positions itself perfectly in the context of competing fiat currencies, because it allows the design and establishment of a new form of governance. This is a decentralized governance structure which allows the coordination of people to achieve common goals and create value, ensuring that the parties involved do not misbehave. In simpler terms, blockchain allows anonymous partners to transact securely without the need for a third party or a central authority, meaning that this technology provides a basis for transaction recording in an incorruptible and transparent manner. This leads me to believe that blockchain can open the way to an authentic sharing economy, where end-users are the only beneficiaries of the market value generated on the platforms.
I am the founder and Chief Wizard of CHATCHECK, a big data company that applies AI on 1+ Billion public chat records on social media, to extract market sentiment regarding both crypto and stock markets.
Part of my work includes one of the most widely-cited taxonomies of types of blockchain technologies, which is useful to deconstruct and analyze the diversity of their designs. This is a crucial step to identifying potential areas of innovation in blockchain main and sub-components, as well as megatrends in the industry, to pinpoint the few dominant design models that have influenced the creation of succeeding blockchains and potentially predict future trends.
During my time at the Deutsche Bundesbank, I founded a research unit on decentralized finance and originated the P2P Financial Systems International Workshop (P2PFISY). P2PFISY is a venue for scientific research bringing together evidence from the industry and the academia, that has positioned itself as the paramount event in the digital finance space reuniting top researchers, regulators. All this has led me to advise several Central Banks throughout the years.
In the same years, I co-founded the FinTech ECUREX, a fully regulated crypto-to-crypto and crypto-to-fiat exchange platform, setting the industry standard for transparency and safety, while increasing accessibility of digital finance marketplaces for professional traders and financial institutions.
My most recent theoretical work focuses on investigating the innovations that blockchain technology has brought to the accounting profession and, interestingly, how transformations in accounting broadened the applicability of cryptography. This work sheds light on the lineages of shared ledger systems, offering a genealogical analysis that traces the Resources-Events-Agents school of accounting, triple-entry bookkeeping and blockchain itself. My colleagues and I show surprising historical connections between apparently separate developments, highlighting the value of blockchain as an accounting device.
Interoperability is the result of a company’s strategic choice. Being aware of this and considering that, in blockchain’s early days, the maximization of value through uniting several products or services was not commonplace, I decided to explore this area and fill the gap. I thus brought to market QUANT NETWORK, an interledger operating system for distributed ledger technologies.
I used to be a senior research economist at the Deutsche Bundesbank, where I worked on digital currencies and P2P lending, and where I initiated the above-mentioned international workshop series on P2P Financial Systems.
Although the benefits of digital currencies are widely known, the possibility of having governments involved in their issues is criticized mainly due to privacy concerns. For this reason, I have published extensive research on Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). My work focuses on designing a digital solution that retains the features of cash while ensuring that transaction counterparties are not known. This is possible thanks to the use of privacy-enhancing techniques such as blind signatures, zero-knowledge proofs, and non-custodial wallets, as well as by appointing the management of operations to the private sector.
The interplay between emerging technologies and financial inclusion has also been a high priority for me. I delivered a multi-year consulting and training program to the Latin American association of Latin American central Bbnks CEMLA (Centro de Estudios Monetarios Latino Americanos), personally educating the teams of numerous central banks on blockchain technology and CBDCs, with a focus on financial inclusion, as one of the central banks’ top priorities.
Being an economist has naturally led me to deeply explore blockchain economics, its emerging models and financial theories, and the implications of distributed ledgers. However, my attention has not been solely directed to financial use cases, but I have investigated how blockchain and digital assets are enabling the new Internet of Value (IoV) in its entirety, including the study of social theories (e.g. self-determination theory) and public policy, to mention a few. IoV is a term that I originated to refer to the varied, financial and non-financial applications of blockchain technology, and to the new business models thereof unlocks. In my work, I have researched the IoV driving forces, as well as its major sources of risk, so as to ensure the secure development of the IoV. A comprehensive overview of this topic can be found in my latest book Enabling the Internet of Value. How Blockchain Connects Global Businesses, which gathers a collection of articles on the topic.
My work aims to provide novel theoretical and practical resources that guide enterprises, governments, and practitioners in developing and adopting blockchain technology. I have worked with the following startups, corporates, and institutions, among others.
Plenary session on Digital Economy of the 2022 China International Risk Forum: https://lnkd.in/dmisyNyb Invited Distinguished Scholar Speaker: Paolo Tasca Topic of Discussion: “Digital Economy: Practice, Research and Education.”
Three Insights on CBDC Solutions from Global Researchers
Three Insights on CBDC Solutions from Global Researchers
Proof-of-stake blockchains – not all are equal
Proof-of-stake blockchains – not all are equal
New UCL Research Report Reveals Energy Consumption Levels of Leading DLT Networks
New UCL Research Report Reveals Energy Consumption Levels of Leading DLT Networks
Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs)
A Crisis Recovery Tool For Governments
Blockchain’s Potential Within The Family Office And Two Investment Applications
Blockchain’s Potential Within The Family Office And Two Investment Applications
The tiny UK start-up founded by UCL scientists now at the heart of Facebook's Libra currency
The tiny UK start-up founded by UCL scientists now at the heart of Facebook’s Libra currency
Rise of smaller rivals throws up fresh challenge to bitcoin
Rise of smaller rivals throws up fresh challenge to bitcoin
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