Blockchain, Distributed Ledgers, and Financial Contracting.

• Position: Conferences

An NBER conference on Blockchain, Distributed Ledgers, and Financial Contracting took place May 2-3 in Cambridge. Research Associates Dean Corbae of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Zhiguo He of the University of Chicago, and Robert Townsend of MIT organized the meeting, which was sponsored by the Puelicher Center for Banking Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. These researchers' papers were presented and discussed:

* Jonathan Chiu, Bank of Canada, and Thorsten V. Koeppl, Queen's University, "The Economics of Cryptocurrency Bitcoin and Beyond"

* Simon Janin and Akaki Mamageishvili, ETH Zurich, and Arthur Gervais, Imperial College London, "FileBounty: Secure and Efficient File Exchange in Rational Adversarial Environment"

* Nick Arnosti, Columbia University, and Matt Weinberg, The Ohio State University, "Bitcoin: A Natural Oligopoly"

...