Fintech News & Insights

Fintech at Cornell hosted a Cornell Convenes roundtable on the tokenization of real world assets in April 2024 in New York City. At the gathering, cross-industry experts offered insights, predictions, and recommendations for improving security of this dynamic sector. Click here for the Tokenization of Real World Assets Report.

Michael Schlein, President and CEO of Accion, a global nonprofit dedicated to financial inclusion, was the first in-person guest lecturer in Professor Will Cong’s EMBA elective “Introduction to Fintech, Finnavation, and Finalytics.” This intensive course features cutting edge research, practitioner and policy insights, and student projects advancing innovation in workplaces and startups. Schlein’s talk, titled “Harnessing Innovation and the Capital Markets for Financial Inclusion,” stressed that fintech will be essential to providing financial access to populations around the world.

“Gold is the reserve asset of choice for many countries. But nothing hinders the U.S. from declaring bitcoin as a strategic reserve asset today,” writes Susan Joseph in the Tabb Forum on July 24. Countries hold reserve assets to manage balance of payments, influence exchange rates, and maintain economic confidence and stability. Joseph and Craig Warmke of Northern Illinois University argue that the U.S. would do well to support the use of bitcoin as a reserve currency, not least because of its permissionless and censorship-resistant qualities. Read Joseph’s full piece here. 

The Journal of Portfolio Management has named Professor Maureen O’Hara the Portfolio Management Research “Quant Researcher of the Year” for 2023. This award recognizes a researcher’s history of outstanding contributions to the field of quantitative portfolio theory. Read about O’Hara’s PMR award here.

“Regulators fear the anonymous nature of Bitcoin,” Susan Joseph writes in Tabb Forum on April 8, “however, their concerns can be alleviated through innovative solutions like tracking activity and leveraging AI/machine learning to detect anomalies before requiring identification.” Read Joseph’s full piece, and the report it summarizes, here.

Through projects in investment and engineering teams, weekly discussions, new member education, and corporate events, the Cornell Fintech Club (CFC)fosters a community for fintech at Cornell University.

Email: cornellfintechclub@gmail.com

Follow the club on LinkedIn

Pietro Bini and Artem Streltsov (pictured), both Fintech at Cornell student fellows and members of the Digital Economy and Financial Technology (DEFT) Research Lab, are recipients of distinguished alumni doctoral student awards. Bini has been named the recipient of the Byron E. Grote MS ’77 PhD ’81 Johnson Professional Scholarship. Streltsov is one of two recipients of this year’s Harold L. Bache Doctoral Award in Finance. Bache, Class of 1916, specified that the scholarship should focus on research which would strengthen financial institutions and lead to an academic career.

The Initiative for CryptoCurrencies and Contracts (IC3), a collaboration based at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech in NYC, announces the addition of Will Cong to its cohort of faculty fellows, joining members from Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, Cornell Tech, EPFL, ETH Zurich, UC Berkeley, University College London, UIUC, SMU, and the Technion.

The Center for Hospitality Research (CHR), with leading acquirer Worldpay and commerce platform FreedomPay, commissioned a study examining the state of digital payments infrastructure in the hospitality industry broadly. Their findings were published by CHR in Implementation vs. Rewards of Tech Investment.

In a panel led by Fintech@Cornell executive director Susan Joeph, Cornell cryptocurrency experts debated the pros and cons of digital currencies’ purpose, privacy, governance, and stability. Read more here.

Prompted by President Biden’s Executive Order on Ensuring the Responsible Development of Digital Assets, the initiative hosted a June 6, 2022 Cornell Convenes roundtable in Washington DC. The product of that cross-industry discussion reflects nuanced opinions from the regulatory, academic, and industry perspectives. Release details here. Click here for the full 2022 Digital Assets Report.

Will Cong has been named Top Ten Quant Professors for 2022 by Rebellion Research. This asset management firm applies machine learning and AI to investment decision-making tools.

Bloomberg.com, reporting on The Merge, consulted Johnson professor and Fintech at Cornell faculty director Will Cong on the implications of this “next generation of Ethereum.” Noting that individuals need only load three programs and stake their own ether to activate validator software, Cong predicts the move will make entry more accessible.  Read more here. 

Maryam Farboodi, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will present. More webinars in this monthly series can be found here.

The European Financial Management Association has given its 2022 Best Paper Award to Value Premium, Network Adoption, and Factor Pricing of Crypto Assets, co-authored by Cornell’s Will Cong and Andrew Karolyi with Tsinghua University’s Ke Tang and Weiyi Zhao.

Staking, Token Pricing, and Crypto Carry by Cong with Zhiheng He and Ke Tang, received the 18th Annual Conference of the Asia-Pacific Association of Derivatives (APAD) Best Paper Award.

Also this month, Tax-Loss Harvesting with Cryptocurrencies, authored by Cong with Wayne R. Landsman, Edward L. Maydew, and Daniel Rabetti, received the best paper prize from the 15th International Risk Management Conference as well as the CIRF-PBFJ Research Excellence Award at the 8th China International Risk Forum.

The Cornell FinTech Club is the first all-encompassing, undergraduate-led club that aims to create spaces and opportunities for students in fintech through weekly discussions, an education series, and corporate speaker events. Club events are open to undergraduate and graduate students, to help foster a community for fintech at Cornell University.

Fintech at Cornell, in collaboration with eCornell, will host this Keynote webinar, featuring Chris Giancarlo, former Chairman of the US CFTC and current senior counsel at Wilkie Farr & Gallagher, in conversation with Johnson Graduate School of Management professor Maureen O’Hara, moderated by Rob Krugman, Chief Digital Officer of (Fintech at Cornell sponsor) Broadridge. Register here.

Fintech at Cornell Faculty Director Lin William Cong has received the following honors for his work this month:

• Asseth-Kaiko Prize for Research in Cryptoeconomics – Best Paper and Talk on Crypto-Wash Trading;
• 4th UWA Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Conference, Best Paper (1st Prize), for work on Tax-Loss Harvesting.