The market for cryptoassets: Risks and regulations

Cryptoassets have emerged as a controversial asset class and the market for cryptoassets has been lightly regulated but had experienced an exponential growth since the birth of Bitcoin following the global financial crisis 2008. This online panel will discuss about risks and regulatory challenges relating to the market for cryptoassets. Views will be offered through short presentations of three speakers: Dr Phillip Paech, Dr Marizah Minhat and Christopher Rich, to be followed by Q&As.

Dr Philipp Paech is an Associate Professor of Financial Law and Regulation at LSE. Before joining the LSE, he spent many years at the heart of international legal and regulatory reform of the financial sector, working from 2007-2010 for the European Commission DG FISMA, and from 2002-2006 for UNIDROIT in Rome. He is a qualified lawyer admitted to the Bar of Frankfurt and a CEDR-accredited mediator in the UK. In 2018/19, Dr Paech was the chairman of the EU Commission’s expert group on Fintech regulation, and the main author of its ’30 Recommendations on Regulation, Innovation and Finance’.

Dr Marizah Minhat is an Associate Professor in Finance and Economics at the University of Bradford, where she founded Responsible FinTech Research Group and leads a core module on MSc FinTech programme. As a professionally qualified accountant, she is a Fellow of Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), and a member of Chartered Accountants Australia & New Zealand (CA ANZ) and Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW). She is also an elected committee member of ICAEW Scotland and Tech Sub-Group facilitator. She is also a Visiting Fellow at LSE Law School while completing a research monograph ‘Cryptocurrency Risk and Governance Challenges’.

Christopher Rich is a FMSB’s General Counsel and Head of Standards and has overall responsibility for all FMSB Working Groups and their publications. Since joining FMSB in April 2020 following a secondment from Linklaters, Chris has played a key role in delivering Standards, Statements of Good Practice and Spotlight Reviews on a broad range of topics including the execution of large trades, data sharing in a new issuance context, use of Term SONIA reference rates, LIBOR conduct risks and the development of risk management frameworks for hybrid working. He is also overseeing FMSB’s nascent and ongoing work on ESG, electronic trading and post-trade processes. Prior to joining FMSB, Chris spent nine years at Linklaters in the Financial Regulation Group advising a wide range of investment banks, market infrastructure providers and buy-side institutions on numerous areas of UK and European financial regulation. In the fixed income, currencies and commodities space, he has worked on investigations into misconduct in FX businesses and subsequent remediation exercises. During his time at Linklaters, Chris undertook secondments at RBS, Deutsche Bank and BNP Paribas and has recently completed an Executive LLM in international financial law and regulation at the London School of Economics.

The zoom link is as follows:

This event is organised in coordination with the ELLM Alumni Association.