This program is designed for leaders who manage digital assets and want practical, strategic ways to evaluate them – without needing a technical or coding background, or expertise in crypto. Participants should be comfortable with business reasoning and basic financial concepts.

Typical participants include:

• Payments, fintech and product leaders exploring stablecoins, settlement, tokenization or blockchain-enabled services
• Wealth management and advisory professionals supporting clients, platforms and investment committees
• Financial services and capital markets professionals in banking, brokerage, asset management and market infrastructure
• Risk, legal, compliance, audit and governance professionals overseeing exposure, controls and third-party relationships
• Strategy, operations and treasury leaders assessing pilots, partnerships and operating impact
• Policymakers, regulators and consultants engaging with market structure and consumer and investor protection issues

• Build a solid foundation: Develop a clear, non-technical understanding of how blockchains move value and reach settlement, using Bitcoin as a simple anchor, so you can evaluate claims without relying on jargon
• Communicate clearly across stakeholders: Translate complexity into clear recommendations for clients, product teams, compliance and risk partners and leadership — especially during volatility or rapid change
• Assess use cases with disciplined judgment: Determine when digital assets reduce friction in payments, settlement and market infrastructure, and when they introduce unnecessary complexity, cost or risk
• Evaluate relevant applications (not just “crypto”): Assess stablecoins, smart contracts, tokenization, and market infrastructure as practical systems, identifying what problems they solve, where frictions remain and when blockchain adds more complexity than benefit

Participants learn through hands-on discussions focused on critical decisions they face when digital assets appear in products, client conversations, risk reviews, operating workflows, or strategy discussions.

Throughout the program, participants work through practical scenarios to:

• Make stablecoins and “yield” understandable: Pressure-test stablecoins and products offering yield or returns by examining reserves, redemption mechanics, issuer incentives, and the risk of rapid withdrawals to distinguish cash-like instruments from more fragile designs
• Understand the operational realities: Map on- and off-ramps (how assets move in and out) to see what users and firms actually experience, where risks and costs concentrate, and where failures are most likely to occur 
• Assess tokenized real-world assets in practical terms: Evaluate tokenized treasuries, funds, private credit, and other assets by examining legal rights, transfer restrictions, pricing, liquidity, and settlement mechanics
• Identify concentration points and dependencies: Recognize where trust concentrates and assess the operational, governance and counterparty risks that follow 

Gregor Matvos - Academic Director; Howard Berolzheimer Chair in Finance