Digital Assets: Innovation, Risks, and Regulation

Digital assets are fundamentally transforming the global financial system, yet their mechanics and implications remain poorly understood, even among financial professionals. This book offers the first comprehensive and rigorous exploration of the digital assets landscape.

The authors lay the technical foundations of digital assets by examining how blockchains such as Bitcoin and Ethereum function, how smart contracts operate, and how cross-chain mechanisms connect separate blockchains. This book categorizes major digital asset classes, including digital currencies, tokenized securities, and cryptoassets. It investigates the institutional architecture underpinning the digital asset market, from wallets to exchanges like Coinbase. Additionally, it delves into multiple layers of the digital asset ecosystem, encompassing DeFi protocols (e.g., automated market makers, decentralized lending), financial products (exchange-traded products, derivatives), and distinctive market activities, such as economic attacks and corporate Bitcoin treasury strategies. This book also provides a critical analysis of the systemic risks associated with the digital asset market and the corresponding regulatory responses.

This book is an essential reference for financial professionals, regulators, researchers, and graduate students seeking to understand the digital asset market.

Chuanwei Zou is President of Jiangsu Jinke Research Institute on Digital and Technology Finance, Joint Secretary-General of Jiangsu Financial Society, and Honorary Head of Research at Bank of Jiangsu. His research interests cover digital finance, banking, and financial regulation.

Chen Cui is an associate partner at HashKey RWA. Her research covers technology innovation and business models, the economic models and governance mechanisms of application layer blockchain protocols, and global developments in digital asset regulation.

Yixin Cao is an independent researcher in blockchain systems and crypto market structure. With a Ph.D. in Physics from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, she combines data science and economics to study DeFi, transaction behavior, and the evolving logic of decentralized systems.

Puyu Wang is a partner at HashKey RWA. His research and professional focus center on Web3 token economics design and the tokenization of real world assets (RWAs). He specializes in navigating legal frameworks, evaluating tokenization protocols, and unlocking the potential of RWAs as collateral within DeFi ecosystems.

Yaqiang Wang is a research fellow at Jiangsu Jinke Research Institute on Digital and Technology Finance. His research interests focus on the development trajectory of frontier technologies, including AI and blockchain, and relevant governance challenges and policy solutions.