Mark T. Williams | |
|---|---|
 Boston University Questrom School of Business | |
| Born | August 19, 1963 |
Mark Thomas Williams (born August 19, 1963) is an academic, financial author and risk management expert. He is a faculty member in the Finance Department at Boston University Questrom School of Business where he teaches courses in banking, capital markets and FinTech. In 2018, he was awarded the James E. Freeman Lecturer in Management Chair.
After graduating from University of Delaware, [1] he became a bank trust officer for Wilmington Trust Company and moved to TD Banknorth in 1987. In 1997 he joined Citizens Power LLC, a Boston-based energy trading company and became a senior vice president, Head of Global Risk Management. [2] Since 2002, he has been on the faculty of Boston University as a Master Lecturer. [3]
Williams is a member of the Standard & Poor’s Academic Council, a senior advisor at the Brattle Group [4] and is on the advisory board of Appleton Partners, a Boston-based private wealth management firm. [5] He is also the co-founder of FitMoney, a nonprofit focused on elevating financial literacy in U.S. public schools for kindergarten through 12th grade K-12. [6] In 2018, he was elected to the Board of Trustees for Lesley University located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. [7] In 2020, prior to President Biden's election, he served on his economic policy subcommittee. In 2023, he also served as President of the Boston Economic Club. [8]
Williams is a guest contributor for the Financial Times , [9] [10] [11] [12] Fortune Magazine, [13] Reuters, [14] Forbes.com, [15] and Business Insider . [16] He has also written articles for Bloomberg, [17] the Boston Globe , [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] Foreign Policy magazine [25] and The New York Times. [26] [27] [28]
In 2019, Williams completed a performance study on Major League Baseball Umpire's pitch-call accuracy over 11 seasons (2008-2018) concluding that over 20% of certain pitches were called incorrectly. For the 2018 season, home plate umpires made 34,294 incorrect pitch calls. [29] Error rates remained similar for the 2019 season. [30] In October 2019, he launched Umpscores, an umpire performance evaluation app. [31] This research and findings have helped fuel movement towards “Robo Umps” in MLB and the use of technology assisted umpiring behind Homeplate. [32]
In 2015, he co-authored a report with Harry Markopolos, the Bernie Madoff whistleblower about the potential fraud and growing financial risks associated with the MBTA pension. [33] [24]
On January 29, 2014, he provided risk testimony before the New York State Department of Financial Services hearing on virtual currencies. [34] In the NYSDFS testimony, he stated "as a virtual commodity, Bitcoin remains extremely risky and needs to be closely watched. To transform Bitcoin into a virtual currency would require regulation, centralization, creation of a legal framework and strong regulatory oversight." According to him, these steps would alone not guarantee Bitcoin's chronically high volatility to drop low enough to allow it to become a trusted transactional currency. [34] He raised concerns about Bitcoin, including lack of consumer protection, it being a high-risk virtual commodity, having an artificially inflated price, extreme hoarding, hyped demand, high potential for market manipulation, and fraud. [34] [35] [36]
On April 2, 2014, Williams provided congressional testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Small Business discussing the 10 major risks associated with Bitcoin. [37] He was a speaker at the World Bank Law, Justice and Development (LJD) Week October 2014 [38] where he discussed virtual currencies and the regulatory and legal challenges of new peer-to-peer technologies in financial services. [39]
During Congressional Testimony, [40] Williams stated bitcoin was 7 times more risky than gold, 8 times more risky than the S&P 500, and 15 times more risky than the U.S. dollar. [41]
In December 2013, after Bitcoin peaked at $1,200, Williams forecasted that it was in a bubble and would trade for less than 10 dollars, an over 90% drop by mid-2014. [42] In 2014, Bitcoin prices dropped by over 70% to $344 but never reach $10. [43] [35] [44] In January 2018, Williams further cautioned investors about the cryptocurrency hyper asset bubble, stating it is fraught with uncertainty and high risk. Prices can also be manipulated, and exchanges that trade them tend to have little to no regulation and consumer protections. [45]
Digital currency is any currency, money, or money-like asset that is primarily managed, stored or exchanged on digital computer systems, especially over the internet. Types of digital currencies include cryptocurrency, virtual currency and central bank digital currency. Digital currency may be recorded on a distributed database on the internet, a centralized electronic computer database owned by a company or bank, within digital files or even on a stored-value card.
A cryptocurrency exchange, or a digital currency exchange (DCE), is a business that allows customers to trade cryptocurrencies or digital currencies for other assets, such as conventional fiat money or other digital currencies. Exchanges may accept credit card payments, wire transfers or other forms of payment in exchange for digital currencies or cryptocurrencies. A cryptocurrency exchange can be a market maker that typically takes the bid–ask spreads as a transaction commission for its service or, as a matching platform, simply charges fees.
Virtual currency, or virtual money, is a digital currency that is largely unregulated, issued and usually controlled by its developers, and used and accepted electronically among the members of a specific virtual community. In 2014, the European Banking Authority defined virtual currency as "a digital representation of value that is neither issued by a central bank or a public authority, nor necessarily attached to a fiat currency but is accepted by natural or legal persons as a means of payment and can be transferred, stored or traded electronically." A digital currency issued by a central bank is referred to as a central bank digital currency.
Bitcoin is the first decentralized cryptocurrency. Nodes in the peer-to-peer bitcoin network verify transactions through cryptography and record them in a public distributed ledger, called a blockchain, without central oversight. Consensus between nodes is achieved using a computationally intensive process based on proof of work, called mining, that requires increasing quantities of electricity and guarantees the security of the bitcoin blockchain.
A cryptocurrency, crypto-currency, or crypto is a digital currency designed to work as a medium of exchange through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain it.
Bitstamp is a European cryptocurrency exchange founded in 2011. It is the world’s longest-running cryptocurrency exchange. It allows trading between fiat currency, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, such as USD, EUR, GBP, Ethereum, Litecoin, Ripple, Bitcoin Cash, Algorand, Stellar, and USD Coin. Business operations are conducted from its registered headquarters in Luxembourg City, with a satellite office in Ljubljana.
Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency, a digital asset that uses cryptography to control its creation and management rather than relying on central authorities. Originally designed as a medium of exchange, Bitcoin is now primarily regarded as a store of value. The history of bitcoin started with its invention and implementation by Satoshi Nakamoto, who integrated many existing ideas from the cryptography community. Over the course of bitcoin's history, it has undergone rapid growth to become a significant store of value both on- and offline. From the mid-2010s, some businesses began accepting bitcoin in addition to traditional currencies.
The legal status of cryptocurrencies varies substantially from one jurisdiction to another, and is still undefined or changing in many of them. Whereas, in the majority of countries the usage of cryptocurrency isn't in itself illegal, its status and usability as a means of payment varies, with differing regulatory implications.
Bitcoin ATMs are kiosks that allow a person to purchase Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies by using cash or debit card. Some Bitcoin ATMs offer bidirectional functionality, enabling both the purchase of Bitcoin and the sale of Bitcoin for cash. In some cases, Bitcoin ATM providers require users to have an existing account to transact on the machine.
Ripple Labs, Inc. is an American technology company which develops the Ripple payment protocol and exchange network. Originally named Opencoin and renamed in 2015, the company was founded in 2012 and is based in San Francisco, California.
Circle is a peer-to-peer payments technology company that now manages stablecoin USDC, a cryptocurrency the value of which is pegged to the U.S. dollar. It was founded by Jeremy Allaire and Sean Neville in October 2013. Circle is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. USDC, the second largest stablecoin worldwide, is designed to hold at or near a stable price of $1. The majority of its stablecoin collateral is held in short-term U.S. government securities.
United States virtual currency law is financial regulation as applied to transactions in virtual currency in the U.S. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has regulated and may continue to regulate virtual currencies as commodities. The Securities and Exchange Commission also requires registration of any virtual currency traded in the U.S. if it is classified as a security and of any trading platform that meets its definition of an exchange.
A BitLicense is the common term used for a business license for virtual currency activities, issued by the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYSDFS) under regulations designed for companies. The regulations are limited to activities involving the state of New York or a New York resident. People residing in, located in, having a place of business in, or conducting business in the State of New York count as New York Residents under these regulations. The license was introduced and designed by Benjamin Lawsky, New York's first Superintendent of Financial Services, in July 2014. Chartered entities do not require an explicit BitLicense, but may instead proceed with virtual currency activities via limited purpose trust charters approved by the NYDFS.
Kraken is a United States–based cryptocurrency exchange, founded in 2011. It was one of the first bitcoin exchanges to be listed on Bloomberg Terminal and was valued at US$10.8 billion in mid-2022. The company has been the subject of several regulatory investigations since 2018, and has agreed to cumulative fines of over $30 million.
Bitcoin was designed by its pseudonymous inventor, Satoshi Nakamoto, to work as a currency, but its status as a currency is disputed. Economists define money as a store of value, a medium of exchange and a unit of account, and agree that bitcoin does not currently meet all these criteria.
A cryptocurrency bubble is a phenomenon where the market increasingly considers the going price of cryptocurrency assets to be inflated against their hypothetical value. The history of cryptocurrency has been marked by several speculative bubbles.
Cryptocurrency and crime describe notable examples of cybercrime related to theft of cryptocurrencies and some methods or security vulnerabilities commonly exploited. Cryptojacking is a form of cybercrime specific to cryptocurrencies that have been used on websites to hijack a victim's resources and use them for hashing and mining cryptocurrency.
Diem was a permissioned blockchain-based stablecoin payment system proposed by the American social media company Facebook. The plan also included a private currency implemented as a cryptocurrency.
Christian Catalini is a co-creator of Diem, the Chief Economist of the Diem Association, and the Theodore T. Miller Professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
The general notion of cryptocurrencies in Europe denotes the processes of legislative regulation, distribution, circulation, and storage of cryptocurrencies in Europe. In April 2023, the EU Parliament passed the Markets in Crypto Act (MiCA) unified legal framework for crypto-assets within the European Union.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
| People | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lists | |||||
| Technologies | |||||
| Forks |
| ||||
| History | |||||
| Movies |
| ||||
| Legal entities (not exchanges) | |||||
| Bitcoin in El Salvador | |||||
