Panel Discussion: Crisis in Digital Currencies

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Digital currencies are in crisis.

While many people never adopted digital currencies, millions of people around the world have invested in different digital currencies, and many have lost money.

The value of bitcoin dropped in late 2020 and has not recovered, and many other digital currencies are extremely volatile. In November 2022, cryptocurrency exchange FTX declared bankruptcy. FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested in December 2022. In 2021, the US Federal Trade Commission reported fraud schemes cost investors more than $1 billion in cryptocurrencies.

What does the future hold for digital currencies? On April 6, 2023, a panel of monetary and business experts discussed the current digital currency crisis.

Panel Participants:

  • Diane-Laure Arjaliès
  • Doug Cumming
  • Hubert Pun
  • Stephen Williamson


The panel was presented by the DAN Department of Management & Organizational Studies, the Department of Economics at Western University, and the Ivey Business School.


Douglas Cumming is DeSantis Distinguished Professor of Finance and Entrepreneurship at the College of Business, Florida Atlantic University. Douglas Cumming has published over 200 articles in leading refereed academic journals (including 40 in the Financial Times top-50 journals) in finance, management, and law and economics, such as the Academy of Management Journal, Economic Journal, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies, and Journal of International Business Studies. In 2022, Douglas was listed by Clarivate as one of the top 92 most cited researchers in the world in the business and economics category.

Diane-Laure Arjaliès is an Associate Professor at the Ivey Business School, Western University, where she leads the Sustainable Finance Lab. She explores the potential role of blockchains in the building of financial instruments for social and environmental good. Previously, she studied the role of utopias in the workings of cryptocurrencies, from Bitcoin to alternative time monies (available here). She is now investigating the impact of web 3.0 (cryptos, NFTs) on the video gaming industry, focusing notably on the differences between North American and Asian gamers.

Hubert Pun is the PhD Program Director and an Associate Professor at the Ivey Business School at Western University. He received the Western Faculty Scholar Award for his research contribution to blockchain business application. This award "recognize[s] mid-career faculty members with an international presence in their discipline who are considered all-round scholars." His research interests include co-opetition, counterfeiting product, and how blockchain can be used as an enterprise solution.

Stephen Williamson is currently the Stephen A. Jarislowsky Chair in Central Banking at the University of Western Ontario, and holds a Bank of Canada Fellowship. He is a member of the Monetary Policy Council of the C.D. Howe Institute. He has held positions at the Bank of Canada, the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, and the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, as well as academic positions at Queen’s University, the University of Western Ontario, the University of Iowa, and Washington University in St. Louis.