Students in Professor Smirnova’s “Money and Banking” course were exposed to a discussion about the block-chain technology from a viewpoint of the computer science as Dr. Phillip Bradford, Computer Science Professor at Stamford, delivered an engaging lecture “Chains that Bind Us” on February 27, 2025.
Professor Bradford connected the history of blockchains to the history of payment systems and functioning of Central Banks in an economy. He helped students understand the appeal of anonymous but verified ledgers of transactions, and linked such economic concepts as money supply, inflation, and economic growth to the development of various blockchain technology based “coins” and their fluctuating value in the market.
Professor Bradford demonstrated his Python codes and showed the “Raspberry Pis”, which he used in his experiment of mining bitcoins.
Dr. Bradford intrigued students with a basic ledger such as shown in Figure 1.
This ledger is itself coded. For example, the first account “CAFEBABE” is a keyword in Java program files. See for example: Java class file – Wikipedia sometimes called a magic number to start Java machine files. Do you see any code for #3 account “FED”?
Such ledgers are in each block of a block chain such as shown in Figure 2.
The curriculum of the “Money and Banking” course focuses on the Federal Reserve System, the central bank of the United States, its policy tools, goals, strategy and tactics, and on the banking system as a participant in the country’s financial system. An exposition of new and emerging technologies that provide alternatives to central banking is an exciting addition to the course. Students are using Dr. Bradford’s book “Chains that Bind Us” (Bradford, 2023) as a supplemental reading material to the required textbook (Mishkin, 2022).
Such multi-disciplinary collaborations among faculty strengthen our learning community at the Stamford campus. Co-authoring papers and presentations, monthly multi-disciplinary colloquia, and visits to classes support diverse interests of our students that will be joining the workforce with career-transferable knowledge and skills.
Bibliography:
Bradford, Phillip G. 2023. Chains that Bind Us. Amazon Publishing.
Mishkin, Frederic S. 2022. Economics of Money and Banking Economics of Money, Banking, and Financial Markets, 13th edition, Pearson.