Blockchain and cryptocurrencies
Masterclass
by Professor Olivier Bossard
Tuesday| 1st of March 2022 | 5:00PM - 06:30PM
The history of money throughout the centuries has been paved with innovations, from the first paleo-currencies 3000 BC and the first gold coins 600 BC, we moved to fiduciary currency in the 10th century, scriptural money and eventually electronic money in the 20th century.
In 2013, with the emergence of a new revolutionary technology, the Blockchain, we then moved to a completely new chapter of the history of money, about to be decentralized and dissociated of any central control body.
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The Bitcoin is the first application of this disruptive technology, although likely to be doomed to fail because of its lack of scalability and low adoption rate. New cryptocurrencies are emerging everyday, with various degrees of success, and accompanied by insane speculation.
However, beyond the hype and the speculation, the blockchain technology is about to disrupt many areas of our modern world, way beyond finance and crypto-currencies, with applications in medical information, legal records and supply-chain to name a few areas of application.
In this masterclass, Professor Olivier Bossard will drive you through this fascinating journey of the history of money, explain in simple words the intriguing blockchain technology, and explore with you its fascinating applications in various industries. Fasten your seat belt!
Olivier graduated as an Engineer from Ecole Centrale Paris (Diplôme d’ingénieur de l’ECP / MSc in Applied Mathematics, 1991). He subsequently spent 3 years in Japan at Yokohama National University, where he specialized in Cryptography, Deep Learning Neural Networks and Artificial Intelligence.
He has been working in the Financial Markets and Derivatives industry for over two decades. He developed and managed the Trading, Structuring and Financial Engineering Departments at four investment banks, based mainly in London, but also Paris, Frankfurt and Hong Kong.
Passionate about teaching, Olivier Bossard has been lecturing at HEC continuously since 1999, in parallel to his banking career. Since 2016, he is now the Executive Director of the MSc Finance at HEC Paris and dedicates his time sharing his experience with the younger generation. He also teaches Finance at Tsinghua University (Beijing) and Hitotsubashi University (Tokyo).
Since 2011, his program has been ranked #1 worldwide for the 10th consecutive year in the Financial Times Global Ranking of Masters in Finance.
His current study fields include: Finance 2.0, FinTech, Cryptography and Blockchain technology, as well as Big Data and Artificial Intelligence applications in Finance.
