Thorsten Koeppl

Tokenization involves representing traditional assets as tokens on a digital platform. This financial innovation has the potential to reshape money and markets, but a common approach for comparing system designs and weighing efficiency gains against risks has yet to be defined. We offer such an approach to improve understanding of this expanding technology and guide policy discussions.

We develop a production-network model to capture how decentralized finance (DeFi) has evolved across different sectors of financial services. The model allows us to measure the value added by different DeFi sectors and to study how the connections across the sectors influence token prices.

We analyze the value proposition and limitations of decentralized finance (DeFi). Based on a distributed ledger and smart contracts, DeFi can guarantee the execution of financial contracts, potentially lowering the costs of intermediation and improving financial inclusion.

Why do BigTech platforms introduce payment services? We explore this using a model in which a monopoly platform faces a trade-off between the costs associated with privacy concerns and the revenue from data services. We then analyze the feedback effects between data and payments.

We explore what drives transaction fees in the Bitcoin system and consider whether Bitcoin can remain tamper proof in the long run.

Since the creation of Bitcoin in 2009, over 2,000 cryptocurrencies have been issued. We evaluate how well a cryptocurrency functions as a payment system.