Digital money and assets

What I do

I have studied how digital money and tokenization work and what they would mean for payments, monetary policy, and financial stability, including cryptoasset markets, stablecoins, and central bank digital currencies. Below, to help you judge whether I fit your project: my selected work in this field, the methods and tools I would bring to it, my advising and outreach, and my review and teaching. If I do, the Connect page says how to start.

Selected work

Academic journals, chapters, and policy writing

Peer-reviewed articles

"Blockchain Governance in the Wild," with Kevin Werbach, Primavera De Filippi, and Josh Tan. Cryptoeconomic Systems.
Using a questionnaire on governance at 23 blockchain projects, both layer-1 blockchains and decentralized applications, we compare how each makes and carries out decisions, through formal practice (code or company structure) and through informal social norms.
Read the paper · Media coverage: BlockchainGov Newsletter.
"Taxing Blockchain Forks," with Mattia Landoni. Stanford Journal of Blockchain Law & Policy.
A fork raises four tax problems, from deciding which chain is the parent to valuing the new coin. We compare three existing approaches to assets acquired without a purchase. The least problematic is Japan's, which gives the new coin a zero tax basis and taxes the proceeds on sale; treating the new coin as realized income, as the US ruled, is the most problematic.
Read the paper
"Financial Regulations and Price Inconsistencies across Bitcoin Markets," with Sofia Vivanco. Information Economics and Policy.
Every bitcoin is identical, so a lasting price gap between markets must come from the markets themselves. Across 11 exchanges, together 26% of global bitcoin trade volume, we find that exchanges that do not require customer identification to open an account are more likely to deviate from representative market prices, so know-your-customer rules can have a non-negligible effect on the bitcoin market.
Data. Daily bitcoin prices in US dollars from 11 exchanges, together 26% of global bitcoin trade volume, and a bitcoin price index, June 2014 to July 2015, with 22 characteristics of each exchange collected by hand from its own pages, such as whether it requires identification to fund an account.
Methods. Unit-root tests: DF-GLS, KPSS. Cointegration tests of the law of one price: Johansen trace, Pesaran-Shin-Smith bounds. Toda-Yamamoto Granger causality. OLS with robust standard errors and date fixed effects, regressing each exchange's price deviation on its characteristics.
Read the paper

Special issue, co-edited

Co-editor of an Eastern Economic Journal special edition on the economics of cryptoassets. Issue introduction, with Alexandre Olbrecht.

Book chapters

"Digital Currencies and Central Banks," a chapter in The Palgrave Handbook of Technological Finance.
I distinguish digitized currency, digital currency, and distributed ledger technology, set out a taxonomy of six digital currency types, and examine what they mean for central banks: privacy, centralized against decentralized issuance, competition between monies, programmable money, and monetary policy.
Read the chapter
"Private and Hybrid Blockchains and Applications," with Sean Stein Smith, a chapter in The Emerald Handbook of Blockchain for Business.
On blockchains that are not fully public, the hybrid and private models, and their applications.
Read the chapter

Federal Reserve publications

"The Potential Impact of Decentralized Virtual Currency on Monetary Policy" (Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Globalization and Monetary Policy Institute, Annual Report).
What electronic money is (any money, currency, or asset not held in physical form, including representations of a sovereign currency or claims on a real-world good) and what decentralized virtual currency could mean for monetary policy.
Read the paper
"Blockchain Technology Disrupting Traditional Records Systems," with Christoffer Koch (Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Financial Insights).
A high-level overview of the core features that give blockchain technology its disruptive potential in finance and elsewhere, and of its limitations.
Read the paper

Working papers/work in progress

"Bitcoin Reveals Exchange Rate Manipulation and Detects Capital Controls"
The data used to detect currency manipulation and capital controls are low-frequency, costly, lagged, and possibly mismeasured. I show that bitcoin prices, once adjusted for bitcoin-market-specific effects, approximate unofficial exchange rates at a daily frequency, and so reveal both whether a distortion exists and how large it is, including short interventions that would otherwise go undetected. The result also confirms that bitcoin is used to get around capital controls.
Data. Daily transaction-weighted bitcoin prices for 17 currencies on four exchanges, June 2014 to September 2015, with official exchange rates.
Methods. Bitcoin-implied exchange rates, adjusted for bitcoin-market trends using the euro as the benchmark. Cointegration tests of each bitcoin rate against the official rate, Johansen trace and Pesaran-Shin-Smith bounds, to detect capital controls. Toda-Yamamoto Granger causality. Validation against the Chinn-Ito capital-openness index and the IMF's exchange-rate regime classification.
Read the paper · Media coverage: The Telegraph, Bitcoin News, Finance Magnates, Breaker Mag.
"Manufactured Premia: How Universe Construction Creates the Crypto Cross-Section," with Chelsea Canon.
Crypto factor studies often build their universe from the tokens still alive at the end of the sample. We rebuild four published factor families on a point-in-time universe, booking a total loss when a token dies, and run identical code on a twin universe built the published way. The size and volatility premia exist only on the twin; momentum survives honest data but not a 50 basis-point trading cost.
Data. Daily prices, market capitalizations, and trading volumes for crypto tokens, January 2020 to June 2026; each month's 100 largest tokens, using only information available that month; for momentum, every token above $1 million in market capitalization, also chosen point in time.
Methods. Factor portfolios on two universes with identical code; Newey-West t-statistics; trading-cost analysis.
Work in progress
"Are Cryptocurrency Markets Price Efficient? Depends on the Data Source"
Resting

Talks and presentations

Central banks and international institutions

Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, workshop on the financial stability implications of new technology: "How Global Is the Cryptocurrency Market?"
Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas: "Bitcoin Reveals..."
De Nederlandsche Bank: "Bitcoin Reveals..."
FinTech DC, at the IMF, Washington

Academic conferences

American Economic Association: "How Have Cryptocurrency Participants Changed?"; "Cryptocurrencies As a New Global Financial Asset"
Royal Economic Society: "Bitcoin Reveals..."
Western Economic Association: "How Global Is the Cryptocurrency Market?"; "Financial Regulations..."
Southern Economic Association: "Bitcoin Reveals..."; "Cryptocurrencies, Stablecoins, and Central Bank Digital Currency" (panelist, online)
Eastern Economic Association: "Bitcoin Reveals..."
Midwest Macroeconomics Meeting: "Bitcoin Reveals..."
Money, Macro and Finance Conference: "Bitcoin Reveals..."
International Trade and Finance Association: "How Global Is the Cryptocurrency Market?"; "Bitcoin Reveals..."
Society for Economic Measurement: "Bitcoin Reveals..."
Liberal Arts Macroeconomics Workshop: "Bitcoin Reveals..."

University seminars

Texas State University: "How Have Cryptocurrency Participants Changed?"
Lafayette College: "Bitcoin Reveals..."
Hobart and William Smith Colleges: "Bitcoin Reveals..."

Policy and industry forums

Monetarium 2, Washington
DEconomy, Seoul
Wharton Crypto-Governance Group
R3 CordaDay, New York
Chicago University Blockchain Symposium, Northwestern University
Chicago Financial Forum
Chicago Financial Exchange
The Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance's launch of its Global Cryptoasset reports, hosted by CME Group, Chicago
Blockchain and cryptocurrency education sessions at Geekdom, San Antonio

Business economists and business groups

National Association for Business Economics, Dallas chapter
DFW Association for Business Economics
San Antonio Business and Economics Society
San Antonio Texas A&M Club
EconVue: "Stablecoins: The View from Chicago" (panelist)
NABE Chicago: "New Rules & Landscapes: Stablecoins, the GENIUS Act, and the Future of Payments" (panel moderator)

Reports, projects, and applications

Reports

Distributed Ledger Technology Systems: A Conceptual Framework, for the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance.
The field had no common terminology for distributed ledgers. This report supplies one: a framework that splits a DLT system into protocol, network, and data layers, shows how design choices in each lead to different properties and trade-offs, and applies it to six systems, among them Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Ripple.
Read the report · Media coverage: The Register, Crowdfund Insider.
"Cambridge Digital Mining Industry Report: Global Operations, Sentiment, and Energy Use", for the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance.
A survey of 49 digital mining firms, headquartered in 16 jurisdictions and operating in 23 countries, which together held 48% of the Bitcoin network's hashrate. It reports how the industry operates, how miners see the market, and the energy they use and its environmental impact.
Read the report · Media coverage: The Block, CryptoSlate, The Energy Mag, BeInCrypto, Sustainability Online, Crowdfund Insider.
"3rd Global Cryptoasset Benchmarking Study", for the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance.
How the cryptoasset industry changed after the 2nd study in 2018, from data on 280 companies in 59 countries across exchanges, payments, custody, and mining.
Read the report · Media coverage: Cointelegraph, Asia Times, Bitcoin News, Cryptopotato, Crypto.news, Crowdfund Insider.
"2nd Global Cryptoasset Benchmarking Study", for the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance.
Survey data from more than 180 cryptoasset companies and individuals in 47 countries on four industry segments: mining, exchanges, storage, and payments. Among its estimates, the top six proof-of-work cryptoassets use between 52 and 111 TWh of electricity a year.
Read the report · Media coverage: Bloomberg, Cointelegraph, FXStreet, Forbes Italia, CoinGape, Crowdfund Insider.

Consulting reports

Co-authored a 150-page report on the macroeconomic, monetary, and fiscal-stability effects of a central bank digital currency, for a client's central bank digital currency project.
Wrote an 80-page report on stablecoins, with data analysis, for a consulting client.

Projects

Co-led the Cambridge Digital Money Dashboard: reviewed the text and data work, and helped lead meetings with stakeholders.

Methods and tools

Models and computational simulation

Computational modeling: dynamic general equilibrium models, built and simulated in MATLAB, that trace a policy change through interest rates, exchange rates, and the rest of the economy. Used in: a client's central bank digital currency project, on the effects of CBDC adoption on interest rates and exchange rates.
Stylized models: simplified models with closed-form solutions, to identify the channels through which digital money and assets change an outcome. Set as homework or exam problems in: Intermediate Macroeconomics; Intermediate Microeconomics; International Monetary Systems; Economic Policy Analysis. Past applications include:
- Payments and money demand: cash versus cards in a Baumol-Tobin model; a fall in money demand traced through prices, interest rates, and the exchange rate; a shift from the bolívar to bitcoin in Venezuela.
- Exchange rates and capital flows: interest parity with crypto as a currency converter; triangular arbitrage among the Turkish lira, Tether, and the US dollar; purchasing-power parity in where bitcoin mining locates; the trilemma as digital money weakens capital controls.
- Runs and taxes: a Diamond-Dybvig run at FTX; tax incidence on crypto miners.

Data and measurement

Data construction and validation

Reconciling prices across sources: daily bitcoin prices from 11 exchanges, compared with a reference price to measure each exchange's deviation. Used in: Financial Regulations...
Collecting what no database holds: 22 characteristics of each exchange, such as its customer-identification rules, gathered by hand from the exchanges' own pages (used in Financial Regulations...), and one day's trading volume for every pairing, on every exchange, of the 50 largest cryptocurrencies.
Matching to official benchmarks: bitcoin prices in 52 currencies matched to official exchange rates from the IMF, BIS, FRED, and a commercial database, with 33 currencies kept.
Validating a new measure: bitcoin-implied exchange rates in 17 currencies, checked against the Chinn-Ito capital-openness index and the IMF's exchange-rate regime classification. Used in: Bitcoin Reveals...
Building large series from APIs: daily price histories for about 38,000 series pulled from an API in Python, used to compute each currency's exposure in the global crypto market.
Cleaning trade-level records: exchange trade records cleaned into exchange-rate series, used to measure the clustering of five-minute price moves.

Econometrics

Unit-root tests (do shocks fade?): DF-GLS, augmented Dickey-Fuller, Phillips-Perron, KPSS. Used in: Financial Regulations... (DF-GLS, KPSS); Bitcoin Reveals... (augmented Dickey-Fuller, KPSS).
Cointegration and error-correction models (do series move together?): Johansen trace, Pesaran-Shin-Smith bounds, VECM. Used in: Financial Regulations...; Bitcoin Reveals....
Granger causality (which series is a leading signal?): Toda-Yamamoto, from a vector autoregression. Used in: Financial Regulations...; Bitcoin Reveals....
Fixed-effects regression (what explains differences across series?): OLS with fixed effects and robust standard errors. Used in: Financial Regulations....

Computational research tools

Validating AI-assisted code: research code moved to LLM-assisted development, with the rewrite validated by reproducing the prior baseline portfolio before features were added.
AI research workflows: LLM research pipelines; multi-agent orchestration with Git-based handoffs; source-grounded LLM assistants; Claude Code and Codex.
Programming and documents: MATLAB and Stata; Git; LaTeX; Python and other languages through LLM-directed development.

Advising and outreach

Leadership and service

Chair and advisory roles

Co-chaired the Emergent Money Systems Working Group of the Cambridge Digital Assets Programme.
Serve as Board Director for Monetary Policy and Executive Committee Advisor at NABE Chicago.
Honorary Non-Visiting Research Fellow, Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, 2018 to 2024.
Faculty advisor to Blockchain Chicago, a University of Chicago student organization, 2021 to 2024.

Organizing

Panel organizer, DEconomy panel on central bank digital currencies (Seoul).
Organized two cryptocurrency sessions for the International Banking, Economics and Finance Association at the Western Economic Association International Annual Conference.

Invitations

Invited to the Wharton Cryptogovernance Workshop and to "Liberty and the War on Cash" (Liberty Fund).

Guest lectures

Graduate: Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies (University of Chicago Law School); Intro to Blockchain (University of Chicago Masters Program in Computer Science).
Undergraduate: Money and Banking (University of Chicago); Fintech (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign); a course on cryptocurrencies (University of Chicago).
Community: Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain, a model class (University of Chicago Fall Family Weekend).

In the media

Review and teaching

Evaluation and review

Refereeing

Refereed work on digital money and assets for 13 journals and 2 research funders: British Journal of Management, Computational Economics, Eastern Economic Journal, Economics Bulletin, Economic Theory, European Accounting Review, European Journal of Finance, Frontiers in Blockchain Research, Global Finance Journal, Information Economics and Policy, Journal of Economic Insight, Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Sage Open; the Czech Science Foundation and the Swiss National Science Foundation.
Served on 5 conference selection committees at 2 academic conferences: the Crypto Asset Lab Conference (three times) and Tokenomics (twice).

Selecting and editing

Co-editor of an Eastern Economic Journal special edition on the economics of cryptoassets.

Assessment design

Evaluated the curriculum of "Digital Assets for Regulators" for the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance.

Courses taught

Except where marked co-taught, I designed and taught these courses, from determining the curriculum to creating the homework and exam problems, and grading them or overseeing their grading. For more details see my academic website.

Ph.D. (topical)

Risk and Benefits of Digitized Money and Assets, Collegio Internazionale Ca' Foscari.
A course on the theoretical models that examine new risk channels from central bank digital currencies, stablecoins, and crypto markets. It assumes first-year graduate macroeconomics and no prior knowledge of crypto markets, banking, or monetary policy.
Topics. Central bank digital currencies and bank stability; their macro-risk consequences; stablecoins and financial risk; open-economy currency competition; and crypto monetary theory in three frameworks, positive and normative. Each topic is taught through its core papers.

Master's (topical)

Cryptoasset Markets, Financial Mathematics, University of Chicago.
A course for students with no prior knowledge of crypto. It covers the technology, the markets, and the players, and tests where the analysis tools of traditional finance work, or fail, in cryptoasset markets.
Topics. Blockchain technology and history; centralized markets and the reliability of reported exchange data; spatial and triangular arbitrage; decentralized finance, automated market makers, and impermanent loss; crypto returns, factor exposure, and momentum; and the roles tokens play in projects. Guest speakers from industry.
Assessment. Five data projects, most done in groups, including a trading strategy written as code to run on an exchange. Students post their code and data to a shared folder, so each learns from the others' work.
Syllabus

Undergraduate (topical)

International Monetary Systems, University of Chicago and Trinity University.
Monetary policy across international markets, global banking markets, and optimum currency areas, and their effects on business cycles and economic development. Students analyze data and policy with simplified theoretical models. The course is writing intensive.
Topics. Exchange rates and foreign-exchange arbitrage; covered and uncovered interest parity; money, interest, and exchange rates; twin deficits and balance-of-payments crises; saving, investment, and the current account, from the accounting identity to a micro-founded model; exchange-rate policy; and central bank digital currencies and cryptocurrencies.
Assessment. Homework that tests analysis rather than recall, in-class quick-response exercises, tests, and policy reports. Each class meeting has its own topic summary and practice problems, written for the course.
Economic Policy Analysis, University of Chicago.
Uses the theoretical, numerical, and empirical methods of the core sequence to analyze macroeconomic policy across taxation, government debt, unemployment, and monetary policy. Its monetary topics start from the three functions of money. The course is calculus- and programming-based (MATLAB or Python).
Topics. Taxation, optimal government debt, and social insurance; money as a medium of exchange, a store of value, and a unit of account; price misperceptions; seigniorage and government debt; monetary policy and interest rates; and the central bank's commitment problem.
Assessment. Homework and three policy analysis briefs, two from set prompts and one on a fiscal or monetary policy of the student's choosing. All slides, handouts, prompts, and questions are written for the course.