Decentralized Finance, Stablecoins, Crypto Governance and Policy - Part 2
This is Part 2 of a Two Part series on Blockchain, Crypto and Decentralized Finance (event notice for Part 1 is at: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/500636).
This talk will discuss the implications of crypto, smart contracts, and stablecoins - with a particular emphasis on blockchain governance and stablecoin policy/governance issues.
This talk begins with the essential elements of modern crypto (minus the technical rigor of Part One): public permissionless blockchains, immutable distributed ledger technology, cryptocurrency, smart contracts, stablecoins, etc.
Crypto blockchain governance shapes the purposes/uses to which the crypto is targeted. Bitcoin’s governance minimizes code changes from present operation/function in order to maintain its primary use today as a proxy for “digital gold.” This is in contrast to transaction speed/volume, smart contract enhancements, and tokenization capability implemented into other crypto that target traditional financial settlement (Visa, MC, Venmo, PayPal, SWIFT, etc.). The so-called “Layer-Two blockchains” and “Channels” that also target transactional speed and cost of crypto-based transactions will also be discussed.
Investment in crypto will be presented at a high level by examining issues such as crypto supply creation/destruction, characterization of crypto as “a currency” vs. “a money” or “a commodity,” the benefits of “staking crypto” from the perspective of investors and blockchain operators, the economics of owning/running a cryptocurrency element (e.g., a Bitcoin miner vs. an Ethereum validator), and more.
Lastly, with the recent passage of the GENIUS Act, stablecoins (crypto pegged to fiat) have the potential to increase crypto acceptance by providing an on-ramp to Layer-One crypto, to provide an alternative to cross-nation settlements, to aid in anti-money laundering efforts, and more.
As the investment thesis for crypto ownership, crypto applications, and crypto business cases (BitMine, “The Ethereum Machine,” etc.) is moving/changing rapidly, nothing presented in this talk should be taken as investment advice (rather, only the opinion of the presenter).
This is a hybrid, approximately 90 minute talk; physical location is in this notice and remote participation via MSFT Teams is provided below in this event notice.
A lengthy Q&A period will be provided for those participants remaining after the ~90 minute lecture.
Slides from Part 1:
Slides from Part 2:
Date and Time
Location
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- 16313 North Dale Mabry Hwy
- Tampa, Florida
- United States 33618
- Starts 12 September 2025 04:00 AM UTC
- Ends 15 October 2025 10:00 PM UTC
- No Admission Charge
Speakers
Michael
Introduction to Blockchain, Crypto Mechanics & Smart Contracts
Biography:
Michael A. Ramalho, Ph.D. is an IEEE Senior Member and a recipient of the 2021 IEEE Florida Council Outstanding Engineer Award. Dr. Ramalho has extensive experience as a director, lead/chief architect, and principal investigator in networking, media signal processing, unified communications, packet-based error correction, acoustic spread-spectrum communication and blockchain/crypto mechanics.
Dr. Ramalho was especially active in Internet Telephony in the Web1 era during which time he ran an Internet Telephony research program at Telcordia Technologies, was co-chair of the Voice Over IP Forum, and was Chief Telephony Technologist at Voxware, Inc. during its IPO. He was the first to introduce lossless codec technology to Internet Telephony, resulting in ITU-T Standard G.711.0.
He has also worked for Bell Telephone Laboratories. He holds a Ph.D. from Rutgers University and a M.Eng.E.E. from Cornell University. He holds over 59 patents. He has authored many standards in the ITU-T, IETF, and IMTC, and many foundational input documents to ETSI, 3GPP, and ANSI Committee T1 standards.
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