LAW6877: Fintech: Law, Economics, and Criminology of Evolving Finance

This course combines law, economics, and white-collar criminology perspectives on Fintech. It also provides very brief overviews of the dominant philosophical backbone of the largest cryptocurrencies – “decentralized finance” (“defi”). The class is not designed to promote or reject that philosophy or other philosophies, but one cannot understand much of the debate without understanding defi’s key role in shaping cryptocurrencies and its embrace of laissez faire, caveat emptor, and privacy as governing principles. The class focuses on Fintech products that proponents support – and design – expressly as a means of advancing defi. The course does not teach how to code. It introduces technological aspects of crypto, primarily blockchain, sufficient to understand the most important policy and defi philosophy issues that shape the technology employed.The course provides a brief introduction to the most important economic principles essential to understanding conventional finance. It also shows how white-collar criminology and law explain and (sometimes) sanction elite financial predators. The introduction shows why finance is so susceptible to elite fraud and predation, can cause catastrophic harm, and why blockchain technology does not prevent (and sometimes aids) elite financial predators. We study several major fintech frauds and several of the major ongoing legal battles as to the nature of appropriate regulation (if any) of fintech products.

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