Decentralised Financial Technologies And Web3.0 Economy

Learn to critically evaluate decentralised finance (DeFi) and blockchain applications and strengthen your understanding of digital finance and Web3.0’s impact on your organisation.

Get under the skin of the crypto economy and explore the potential of DeFi technologies. With guidance from Professor Markos Zachariadis and Dr. Aseem Pahuja, this course explores how DeFi and blockchain applications can transform organisations and provide a foundation for new business models and value chains in finance and beyond.

By challenging yourself to think critically and leverage relevant academic theories, you will begin to build a high-level understanding of crypto that will help you interrogate decentralised financial technologies and their applications effectively.

Course Topics:

• Whichever industry you work in, the ‘mechanics of decentralised trust’ affect not just products and services, but challenge entirely how economic activity is organised across businesses.
• It’s therefore essential for decision-makers to have a solid and strategically-grounded understanding of the crypto-economy and its potential to transform organisations and entire industries in financial services and beyond.
• To help decision and policy-makers navigate Web3.0 and DeFi technologies, this course explores theories and knowledge from the fields of economics, strategic management and information systems.
• This practical four-day course will explore a number of thematic segments:
• Introduction to Financial Technologies and Intermediation
• Dissecting blockchain technology and relevant crypto ecosystem
• Regulation and Governance of Web3.0 Technologies
• From crypto to smart contracts and private distributed ledger technology (DLT) systems
• DeFi applications and the future of money
• DLTs Powering the Web3 economy: Metaverse and NFTs (Non-fungible tokens)
• Day one
• Understand the history and fundamentals of money and payments
• Discuss the importance of financial data and value-transfer systems
• Critically evaluate the alternative architectures & organisational structures of payment infrastructures: centralised vs. decentralised
• Discover the basics of cryptocurrencies and DLT/Blockchain Technologies
• Day two
• Dissect blockchain technology: foundational principles and economics
• Understand Bitcoin in practice: consensus mechanism, applications, and ecosystem
• Explore cryptocurrency from a governance, privacy, and regulation perspective
• Articulate challenges facing Bitcoin and crypto
• Day three
• Understand Decentralized Finance (DeFi) fundamentals
• Explore DeFi ecosystem and infrastructure: Ethereum and protocols
• Outline the relevance and potential benefits of stablecoins and central banking digital currencies (CDBCs) in the crypto payments space
• Explore alternative DeFi applications such as Decentralized exchanges (DEXes) and Decentralised insurance, lending and borrowing
• Evaluate DeFi applications in terms of opportunities and challenges
• Day four
• Explore the economics of Web 3.0, digital ownership, and tokens
• Understand what are NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) and how they relate to the Metaverse space
• Investigate how NFTs are disrupting the arts and collectibles market by creating unique, on-chain representations of objects
• Explain how various ecosystems and marketplaces function
• Highlight the key considerations in the NFT economy
• Deliver a presentation critically analysing a topic or case study around the Metaverse, NFTs and Decentralise Finance

• Strengthen your understanding around the crypto economy and its implications for financial services industry
• Develop strong literacy around distributed ledger and blockchain technologies
• Discover the technical terms and key questions to ask about cryptocurrencies and DeFi as well as Web3.0 and the Metaverse
• Gain expert insights through real-world case studies and industry speakers
• Become a member of the AMBS Executive Education Network and benefit from top-class speaker events, regular updates, and networking opportunities with like-minded professionals
• Take time out to reflect on your own skill set and engage with AMBS’s world-class faculty