Blockchain Training

INTRODUCTION TO BLOCKCHAIN AND DISTRIBUTED LEDGER TECHNOLOGY (DLT)

• The Trust Machine.
• Blockchain Genesis: It Started With Bitcoin
• Blockchain Is Brilliant Technology, Not Speculation: Take Jamie Dimon’s Word For It.
• Distinctive Features: Decentralization, Permissionlessness and Immutability
• The Beauty Of Public Key Cryptography
• Mining But Not As We Know It: Proof Of Work, Proof Of Stake, And Proof Of Importance
• Emerging Types of Blockchain/DLTs And Future Challenges
• New Kinds Of Blockchains – “You haven’t seen anything yet”
• It’s Not All Rosy
• Innovation Bias: Do You Really Need A Blockchain For That?

CODE = LAW?

• No Longer Science Fiction: “Smart” (Data-driven And Self-executing) Contracts
• Applying The “Boolean Logic”: If This, Then That
• Dry” clauses And “Wet” Clauses
• Can You Code A Smart Contract And Put Lawyers Out Of Business?
• Let’s Do It: Coding A Smart Profit-sharing Contract
• Examples Of Code-able Contracts: Payments, Insurance, Derivatives, Supply Chain, And Asset Transfer.
• Decentralised Autonomous Organisations (DAOs): Automating Corporate Governance
• A Tour Of Delphi: What Is An “Oracle” And The Application Program Interfaces (APIs)?
• Kleros”: Using Game-Theory and Economic Incentives To Resolve Disputes in Smart Contracts – Ancient Greek Style.

INSURANCE – “FROM SLIPS TO SMART CONTRACTS”

• Blockchain Insurance Industry Initiative (B3i) Joined By SwissRe, Allianz And Others
• Asset Tracking: Everledger and Provenance
• “Parametric” Products: Property & Casualty (Catastrophe Bonds, Crop Damage) And Life Insurance.
• Fizzy”: Insurance Giant AXA Launches Smart Contracts for Flight Delays
• Real Time Information And Pricing through Internet of Things (IoT)
• Floyd Mayweather’s “Stox” and Other Ventures in Prediction Markets.

FINANCE – “RADICALLY LOWERING THE COST OF TRUST”

• R3 Corda
• Digital Identity and Avoiding “Double Spend”
• ENBD Launches “Cheque Chain”
• Clearing and Instant Settlement: Achieving T+0
• The Digital Hawala: Ripple’s Inter-Ledger Protocol
• Ripple’s Adoption By RAKBANK and First Abu Dhabi Bank (FAB)
• Supply Chain Finance: IBM and Maersk Want to Eliminate the “200 interactions” Required To Ship a Container of Flowers
• Thomson Reuters’ “Oracle”: BloqOne IQ
• Sovereign Interest – Cryptocurrencies pegged to the fiat
  • emCash: The Digital Currency Under Development By Emcredit (Dubai Economy).
  • Project Ubin: Singapore Central Bank Uses Ethereum To Digitise National Currency.
  • The J-Coin For Tokyo Olympics 2020
  • Crypto-Rouble
  • IMF
• Would The Greeks Have Abandoned The Euro Had Cryptocurrencies Existed In 2015?

CRYPTO-FUNDRAISING

• What Is An Initial Coin Offering (ICO)?
  • Entrepreneurial Fundraising From Your Bedroom.
  • Rapid Growth Aided by “Bitcoin Whales” and Community Support
  • Let’s Do It: Create and Promote The Curiositas Coin In Five Minutes
• The Technology Behind A Token
• The Underlying Economics
  • Utility vs Investment
  • Issuer (Centralised) vs Network (Decentralised)
• The Legal Position
  • ICOs – Where Do They All Come From
  • The Crypto-Valley Of Zug, Switzerland And Other Crypto-Havens
  • Review Of An ICO “White Paper”.
  • What Are The Legal Rights Of Token-holders? (Spoiler: Hardly Any)
• The Regulatory Response From The US, UK, China, And Switzerland.
• The UAE Position
• Dubai Financial Services (DFSA) Recommendation
• Abu Dhabi Global Markets (ADGM) Recommendation
• Tales From the Crypto
  • The Case of DAO – “Venture Capital Without The Capitalists?”
  • The Case of Tezos: What Do You Do When You Ask US$20m For Your Product Development And They Give You $!$#$230m? w
  • Dogecoin – A Dog Meme With A Market Cap Of $234m, The “Paris Hilton” Coin, The “Useless Ethereum Coin” And Other Joke Coins.
  • Evancoin.com: The Guy Who Tokenised Himself
  • Humanitarian ICOs: UNICEF Plan To Launch “Donercoin”
• ICOs/Cryptocurrencies In The UAE – A Financial And Legal Review
  • OneGram: “Gold Backed – Sharia Compliant Token”
  • Esanjo: “Tokenization” of Real Estate Management
  • “Rock Ventures Dubai” Crypto-VC Fund
  • The Royal Kingdom Coin
  • Farad Cryptoken
  • Afterschool ICO
  • The Baroness Bitcoin and Dubai Real Estate Transactions in Bitcoin

CRYPTO-VC FUNDS, HEDGE FUNDS AND OTHER INVESTMENT STRUCTURES

• How much money is in the system?
• Who is buying?
• Asset classes
• Viewing cryptocurrency investment as investment into internet protocols
• Analogies with the monetization of other internet protocol suites.
• Deep diving into the scalability of protocol monetization
• Decentralizing monetization of internet protocols
• Demystifying crypto trades
• A walkthrough of a trade process. Pre-trade. the trade. Post-trade
• Managed pools of capital, a snapshot
• What types of funds are there in the market?
• What do these funds invest in?
• The line between hedge funds and VC funds is blurred in the Crypto space
• Where is the alpha generated from?
• What can go wrong? What will go wrong?
• Funds’ success is dependent on: people; infrastructure and investor relations
• What kind of people do you need for a Crypto focused VC/Hedge fund
• Thinking through the infrastructure for a Crypto focused fund
• How is investors relations different for Crypto funds as compared to traditional hedge/VC funds?
• Crypto-kitties and Digital Scarcity
• The “Fat Protocol Theory”: Developers (Not Google) Monetising Protocols and Network Effects
• Decentralised Digital Economy:

DIGITAL ECONOMY

• Digital Storage (Filecoin)
• E-commerce (OpenBazaar and commentary)
• Web Browser (Brave)
• Tokenising Human Attention
• Reward Users for Online Behavior
• Verify followers and ad-delivery
• Track Use of Content

Dimitrios Vourakis is the co-founder of Curiositas where he leads the research practice. He guest lectures on new technologies at London Business School and speaks regularly at events in Middle East and Europe. He has practiced as a technology and finance lawyer in law firms and corporations in London, Hamburg, Athens, Monaco, and Dubai.  Dimitrios is a qualified solicitor (Law Society of England & Wales), an MBA (Finance) from London Business School, LLM (Commercial & Corporate Law) from King’s College London, and LLB (Law) from University of Athens.