Research, Education, and Thought Leadership

Research Papers

A Comprehensive Approach to Crypto Regulation by Sarah Hammer and Brett Hemenway Falk
Regulation of cryptocurrency is a key policymaking issue of our time. There are many challenges associated with developing and applying legal frameworks to cryptocurrency, as the technology, business practices, and uses of cryptocurrency vary significantly from traditional financial services.

Taming the Wild West: Achieving Public Policy Goals through Crypto Standards by Sarah Hammer and Brett Hemenway Falk
A continued challenge in policymaking related to cryptocurrency is the potential lack of central entity or traditional intermediary that would be the subject of regulatory authority.

Buying Bitcoin by Robert Gutmann, Jonathan Knehr, Phillip Rapoport, Ross L. Stevens
Using live trade execution data from an institutional money manager, the paper measures the real-world costs and challenges a trader faces when demanding significant liquidity of Bitcoin.

The Blockchain Ecosystem by Sarah Hammer

Research Fellows

Waleed Y.W. Haj Hasan

Waleed Y.W. Haj Hasan is a Research Fellow at the Stevens Center for Innovation in Finance and a Fellow at the Wharton Initiative on Financial Policy and Regulation. He is simultaneously pursuing his doctorate in Economic Analysis of Monetary Law and Policy at Penn Carey Law. Waleed is an attorney and counselor-at-law in the state of New York and was previously an associate attorney (corporate) at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP for two years. He earned his LL.M., with the Wharton Business and Law Certificate, from the University of Pennsylvania (2020) and his LL.B. (Hons.) from the University of Edinburgh (2019). Waleed holds several teaching assistant positions at, both, the Law School and the Wharton School. During his doctorate, Waleed interned at the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) for six months. He previously externed at the New Jersey Office of the Attorney General and interned at Baker Botts LL.P.

Waleed Y.W. Haj Hasan’s working papers:

• Of Interest: The Legal Recognition of the Time Value of Money, alongside its Nominal Value, in Common Law
• Cryptocurrencies: A Sui Generis Form of Money?
  • Presented findings as part of an inter-agency Financial Working Group at the U.S. CFTC.
• Innovative Disruption: The Syntopical Strength of an Agile, Adept, and A Priori Regulatory Framework for Digital Assets
• Decentralized Autonomous Organizations: Structuring Considerations and Related Regulatory Trends

Brett Hemenway Falk

Brett Hemenway Falk is a research professor in the Department of Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the director of the Crypto and Society Lab, which focuses on 1) privacy and security in digital environments, 2) facilitating transparency and trust. He has published extensively in the fields of cryptography, coding theory, and network analysis. Professor Falk also teaches a highly popular course on Blockchain technology for Penn’s Master’s in Computing and Information Technology program. He received his Sc.B. in mathematics from Brown University and his Ph.D. in mathematics from UCLA.

Brett Hemenway Falk’s working papers:

• Proactive Secret Sharing with Constant Communication
• DORAM revisited: Maliciously secure RAM-MPC with logarithmic overhead
• Two variable polynomial congruences and capacity theory
• A Comprehensive Approach to Crypto Regulation
• See more publications here.