News and Insights

Autumn 2021: Fintech News, Panels, Roundtables, Research Forums

NEWS 9.8.21: Will Cong quoted in CNN Business story Bitcoin drops below $43,000 on El Salvador’s first day using it.  “The country needs a stable currency system and efficient payment system. To the extent that El Salvador’s government or bank would not create a central bank digital currency, it makes more sense for them to adopt another major stable digital currency, whether it is centrally offered or decentralized.”

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COMING SOON: BLOGS

Ongoing Events:

Fridays, noon-1:20 pm EST: Global Virtual Seminar Series on Fintech. Resuming this fall; Write cfmp@georgetown.edu for details. 

September Events:

September 14, 2021, 1 PM EST: World Online Seminars of Machine Learning in Finance. Speaker: Rama Cont. Click HERE for registration and information.

September 16, 2021, 11 am EST: CBER Forum. Defi: Front-Running, Incentives, and Cyclical Arbitrage. Arthur Gervais, David Siska, and Ye Wang will speak individually. Click HERE to register.

September 24, 2021, 11 am-noon EST: Virtual Seminar Series on Central Banking & Digital Currencies. Rod Garratt will  be the first speaker in this series bringing together central bank researchers, academic economists, and policy makers to discuss policy-relevant research related to digital payments, digital currencies, and central banking. Click HERE to register for the series.

September 24, 2021, 4-5 pm EST: Fintech at Cornell panel discussion. Diversity in Digital Currency:  Fintech’s Opportunities, Pitfalls, Next Steps. This conversation on diversity and inclusion in fintech, including de-fi, digital assets, and stablecoins, will include Cornell SC Johnson College of Business dean Andrew Karolyi; Susan Joseph, Executive Director of the Fintech at Cornell Initiative and longtime champion of legal and business approaches to improving diversity in the fintech space; and Dante Disparte, the Chief Strategy Officer and Head of Global Policy for Circle. Click HERE to register

October Events:

October 7, 2021, 11 am EST: CBER Forum. Transaction fee Mechanism Design. With Tim Roughgarden. Click HERE to register.

November Events:

 November 18-19, 2021: Third Annual Tokenomics Conference. Economists and computer science researchers will share analysis, theory, implementation, and applications of blockchain economics and smart contracts. Hosted by NYU this year, remotely on Zoom. Click HERE for more  details.

December Events:

 December 15-16, 2021: The Hogeg Blockchain Research Institute Conference. This inaugural conference is on theoretical and empirical research centered on applications of blockchain technology in economics and finance, with 8 paper presentations, best paper and best discussant awards. Hosted by Coller School of Management, Tel Aviv University. Click HERE for more details.

Ongoing/Past:

The Initiative continues to assemble the FinTech Fellowship Group, composed of affiliated Cornell faculty members, external research fellows, student research fellows, and pre-doctoral research fellows. We are honored to have world-renowned fellows from around the globe to join our effort in building a research portal for FinTech and business data science. So far, over twenty fellows have joined us — including Daron Acemoglu, Darrell Duffie, and many more, representing Harvard, Columbia, MIT, Princeton, Wharton, and other leading institutions. A full announcement and current list is being assembled here.

July, 2021: Fintech at Cornell faculty director Will Cong, featured in Motley Fool’s Exclusive NFT Q&A With Outside Experts, shares his perspective on authentication and tokenization, as related to ownership utility and possibilities, asset ownership, value, more.

May 2021: The Inaugural Fintech at Cornell Roundtable was hosted and moderated by Cornell SC Johnson College of Business Dean Andrew Karolyi, and offered presentations by faculty and industry leaders, including representatives of Fintech at Cornell’s four inaugural sponsors: Moody’s Analytics, TCS, Fiserv, and Broadridge Financial Solutions. Features included Cornell’s Eswar Prasad (Brookings Institution) and Will Cong (Faculty Director of Fintech at Cornell) and roundtable sharing by Vivekanand Ramgopal (VP and head of TCS Financial Solutions), Andrew Wu (Michigan Ross Fintech Initiative), Evgeny Lyandres (Hogeg Blockchain Research Institute, Tel Aviv University), Sunil Sachdev (Fiserv), Ashit Talukder (Moody’s Analytics), and Rob Krugman (Broadridge Financial Solutions). Click here for more details about participants and topics.

April 2021

4/8/21: Fintech at Cornell Executive Director Susan Joseph participated in the webinar Level-Setting Bitcoin, Blockchain, and Digital Currencies: Operational and Investment Opportunities for Family Enterprises, hosted by the Smith Family Business Initiative as one of its Connected Conversations. Watch here:https://vimeo.com/411562831.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Big Data in Finance Research Forum – April 29, 2021. Fintech at Cornell and Stanford Advanced FinTech Lab co-hosted this series exploring the methodology, applications, and socioeconomic implications of AI and big data.  Wei Jiang of Columbia University spoke with Francesco D’Acunto of Boston College on the topic: From Man vs. Machine to Man + Machine: The Art and AI of Stock Analyses.

Watch the ABFR Series Now

Crypto and Blockchain Economics Research (CBER) Conference  April 16 and 17, 2021 – 10:00 am EST – Fintech at Cornell co-hosted this event with Management Science and FinHub, the University of Toronto Rotman’s Financial Innovation Lab.

March 2021

Continuing Law Education (CLE) webinar discussion Being Secure About Your Security Token Offering & Other Crypto-Observations, featuring Fintech at Cornell Executive Director Susan Joseph and Barry Seeman of Bear Run Partners, LLC. Hosted by Cornell Law School.