Regulating digital currencies

Digital currencies have the potential to improve the speed and efficiency of payments and to broaden financial inclusion. The principal goal is to facilitate payments among consumers on a day-to-day basis as an alternative to cash, both domestically and across national borders. Prof. Schwarcz will begin by critically examining and critiquing the ongoing progress to try to develop retail digital currencies, focusing on the two most feasible approaches: central bank digital currencies (CBDC), and privately issued currencies that are backed by assets having intrinsic value (stablecoins). Then will analyze how these digital currencies, as well as generic non-government cryptocurrencies that are not backed by assets, should be regulated and supervised, exploring their similarities and differences.

Steven L. Schwarcz is the Stanley A. Star Distinguished Professor of Law & Business at Duke University and founding director of Duke’s interdisciplinary Global Financial Markets Center. His areas of research and scholarship include insolvency and bankruptcy law, international finance, capital markets, systemic risk, corporate governance, and commercial law.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering (summa cum laude) and a Juris Doctor from Columbia Law School. Prior to joining Duke, he was a partner at two of the world’s leading law firms, Visiting Lecturer at Yale Law School, and Lecturer in Law at Columbia Law School. He also helped to pioneer the field of asset securitization, and his book Structured Finance: A Guide to the Principles of Asset Securitization is one of the most widely used texts in that field.

Schwarcz has also been the Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the University of Oxford, Visiting Professor at the University of Geneva Faculty of Law, Distinguished Visiting Professor at University College London (UCL) Faculty of Laws, the MacCormick Fellow at The University of Edinburgh School of Law, the Liberty Fellow at the University of Leeds School of Law, and an advisor to the United Nations.