In an unprecedented time of disruption, Web3 in Financial Services cuts through the noise to ensure financial service professionals are equipped with the knowledge needed to benefit from Web3. Web3 in Financial Services explains what Web3 means for finance, outlining its key use cases and exploring the unique business opportunities and challenges it presents. It clarifies key developments such as custody, stablecoins, CDBCs and tokenized deposits, payments, asset tokenization, DeFi and digital identity. Investigating how organizations are testing and adopting these emergent technologies, the book is supported by cutting-edge, real-life examples from incumbents and challengers alike, including Fidelity Digital Assets, J.P. Morgan ONYX, Coinbase, Anchorage Digital, Circle, Ripple and Aave. The book reviews what's at stake for major ecosystem players such as banks, investors and regulators and appraises the changes still needed to enable more mainstream adoption of Web3. Web3 in Financial Services answers pressing questions such as: what does Web3 really mean for financial services and what are the use cases with potential for disruption? What are the innovations that companies are actually doing within this space? And how do organizations need to adapt? This is an essential read for finance and fintech professionals, bankers and investors who need to grasp the essentials of Web3, blockchain, digital assets and decentralisation and its ramifications for financial services.

The internet has undergone a remarkable metamorphosis since its inception. From the static web of the early days (Web 1.0) to the interactive and social web (Web 2.0), and now to the decentralized, intelligent, and immersive web (Web3), the evolution has been nothing short of astounding. This radical transformation has ushered in a new era in the digital realm, one that promises to reshape how we learn, communicate, transact, and interact with the world. Decentralizing the Online Experience with Web3 Technologies offers an exploration of the Web3 era, a transformative phase in the evolution of the internet. Beginning with the foundational understanding of Web3's core concepts, technologies, and tools, readers embark on a journey through the driving forces fueling its growth. The book demystifies blockchain technology, elucidating its basics and the practicalities of wallets and transactions. It delves into the world of cryptocurrencies, particularly Ethereum, and explores the disruptive potential of Decentralized Finance (DeFi). This knowledge empowers a diverse audience, from students to professionals and researchers across information technology, business, education, media, social sciences, and humanities.

This book, written jointly by an engineer and artificial intelligence expert along with a lawyer and banker, is a glimpse on what the future of the financial services will look like and the impact it will have on society. The first half of the book provides a detailed yet easy to understand educational and technical overview of FinTech, artificial intelligence and cryptocurrencies including the existing industry pain points and the new technological enablers. The second half provides a practical, concise and engaging overview of their latest trends and their impact on the future of the financial services industry including numerous use cases and practical examples. The book is a must read for any professional currently working in finance, any student studying the topic or anyone curious on how the future of finance will look like.

Web3 is a term which refers to the third generation of the World Wide Web; it is a decentralized internet architecture that uses blockchain technology, smart contracts, and other decentralized technologies to create a more secure and transparent internet.Concepts, Technologies, Challenges, and the Future of Web 3 is led by researchers with a valuable mix of industry and academic experience. The book delves into the concepts of decentralization, trustlessness, and interoperability and explores the challenges of Web3, including scalability, security, and regulatory compliance. It examines the current and potential future use cases of Web3, such as decentralized finance, supply chain management, identity verification, and decentralized social networks. “The core building blocks of Web3” is not just for researchers, academics, and students in computer science and related fields but also for developers, entrepreneurs, and businesses looking to build applications and services in the Web3 space. It offers a clear understanding of the technical and conceptual frameworks underpinning Web3 and the challenges and opportunities in the decentralized web. Moreover, the book is valuable for policymakers, regulators, and legal professionals interested in understanding the regulatory frameworks and legal implications of Web3. It provides insights into the potential impact of Web3 on governance, regulation, and law, highlighting the need for new policy frameworks to address the challenges and opportunities presented by the decentralized web.

This is the second edition of the book Token Economy originally published in June 2019. The basic structure of this second edition is the same as the first edition, with slightly updated content of existing chapters and four additional chapters: "User-Centric Identities," "Privacy Tokens," "Lending Tokens," and How to Design a Token System and more focus on the Web3. //Part one outlines the fundamental building blocks of the Web3, including the role of cryptography and user-centric digital identities. Part two explains Web3 applications like smart contracts, DAOs & tokens. The last two parts of the book focus on tokens as the atomic unit of the Web3, explaining the properties and functions of money and outlining the emerging field of decentralized finance (DeFi) that might power a potential future digital barter economy. Use cases such as asset tokens, purpose driven tokens, BAT (Basic Attention Token), social media tokens (Steemit, Hive and Reddit), privacy tokens, and stable tokens are explored, including the role of CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Currencies) and Facebook's Libra.//Tokens - often referred to as cryptocurrencies - can represent anything from an asset to an access right, such as gold, diamonds, a fraction of a Picasso painting or an entry ticket to a concert. Tokens could also be used to reward social media contributions, incentivize the reduction of CO2 emissions, or even ones attention for watching an ad. While it has become easy to create a token, which is collectively managed by a public Web3 infrastructure like a blockchain network, the understanding of how to apply these tokens is still vague. This book attempts to summarize existing knowledge about blockchain networks and other distributed ledgers as the backbone of the Web3, and contextualize the socio-economic implications of the Web3 applications such as smart contracts, tokens, and DAOs to the concepts of money, economics, governance and decentralized finance (DeFi).//The industry keeps referring to “Blockchain” as different from “Bitcoin,” creating an artificial divide that is often misleading. There seems to be too little understanding about the fact that Bitcoin is a blockchain network, which is (a) globally managed by people who mostly do not know each other, and (b) enabled by the consensus protocol that (c) incentivizes all network actors for their contributions with a native token. The governance rules are tied to the minting of a native blockchain token. The Bitcoin token can, therefore, be seen as the currency of a distributed Internet tribe, called the Bitcoin network, where network actors are rewarded with Bitcoins, just as the Ether is the currency of the distributed Internet tribe Ethereum network, or Sia is the native currency of the Sia network. The Bitcoin network and other distributed ledgers all represent a collectively maintained public infrastructure and are the backbone of the next generation Internet, what the crypto community refers to as the Web3.