Overview

This eCourse covers digital assets, cryptography, blockchain, and crypto assets. Digital assets are items of value stored digitally, such as digital art, digital money, or tokenized physical assets. Crypto assets, including cryptocurrencies, are a subset of digital assets. Cryptography enables secure financial technologies like blockchain and is essential for financial professionals to understand. Blockchain, a digital ledger for peer-to-peer transactions, is best known for supporting cryptocurrencies but has broader applications.
Crypto assets, defined by their use of cryptography and blockchain, are evolving from digital payment systems into diverse applications as the crypto ecosystem grows.

Module 1 provides a high-level overview of digital assets.

Module 2 provides an overview of cryptography, covering three key cryptographic tools, and examining the role of cryptography in financial technology (FinTech).

Module 3 provides a high-level overview of blockchain technology.

Module 4 provides an overview of a range of crypto assets, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, stable coins, and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). It explores the key features of these assets and the functionality of the ecosystems they operate in, while also looking at some of the key risks crypto assets pose and how regulation of the crypto universe is shaping up.

Objective

On completion of this course, you will be able to:
- Explain what a digital asset is
- Recognise why cryptocurrencies do not fulfil any of the core functions of money
- Describe central bank digital currencies
- Define secret key cryptography and identify its uses
- Define public key cryptography and list its functions
- Define hash functions and recognize their role in secure messaging systems
- Explain how a blockchain works
- Describe the contents of a block
- Outline the four types of blockchain:
• Public
• Private
• Hybrid
• Consortium
- List the applications of blockchain technology
- Recognize where crypto assets fit into the broader digital asset complex
- Identify different crypto ecosystems and their functions compared with both traditional finance and one another
- Identify key features of Bitcoin and recognize how a typical Bitcoin transaction works
- Identify key features that distinguish Ethereum from Bitcoin, recognize potential real world use cases for Ethereum, and list enhancements associated with Ethereum 2.0
- Recognize other types of crypto assets, including non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and stablecoins, and their key features
- Identify key risks and challenges that crypto assets pose to their users and investors

Content

Module 1 – Digital Assets

Module 2 - Cryptography
Topic 1: Cryptography Overview
Topic 2: Secret Key Cryptography
Topic 3: Public Key Cryptography
Topic 4: Hash Functions

Module 3 - Blockchain

Module 4 - Crypto Assets – An Introduction
Topic 1: Crypto Assets Overview
Topic 2: Crypto Ecosystems
Topic 3: Bitcoin
Topic 4: Ethereum
Topic 5: Other Crypto Assets
Topic 6: Challenges & Risks