Research, Education, and Thought Leadership

Research Papers

WIFPR White Papers
WIPFR commissions white papers from leading and emerging scholars from a variety of disciplines to create new work accessible to interdisciplinary audiences with relevance to financial policy and regulation.

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

Stevens Center Research Grant Award

Valuing Firms in the Digital Era
Huan Tang

Research Fellows

Waleed Y.W. Haj Hasan

Waleed Y.W. Haj Hasan is a postdoctoral research fellow with the Stevens Center. He has focused his research, including his doctoral thesis at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, in an economic analysis of monetary law and policy. Waleed is an attorney and counselor-at-law in the state of New York and was previously an associate attorney at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP for two years focusing on regulatory, capital markets, and corporate matters. He earned his LL.M., with the Wharton Business and Law Certificate, from the University of Pennsylvania in 2020 and his LL.B. (Hons.) from the University of Edinburgh in 2019. Waleed holds several teaching assistant positions at both the Wharton School and the law school. During his doctorate, Waleed interned at the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) for six months and presented his findings as part of an inter-agency financial working group. He also 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.