Digital Assets, DeFi & the Tokenised Economy

Why this course

In the twelve months to July 2026, digital assets stopped being a parallel financial system and started becoming the plumbing of the main one. The GENIUS Act gave the United States its first federal stablecoin law. The EU's MiCA regime reached full enforcement and immediately opened a review to catch up with tokenisation. The UK and US launched a Transatlantic Taskforce, whose ten-point roadmap commits the world's two largest capital markets to a common approach to tokenised finance. The DTCC (custodian of $114 trillion in securities) ran its first live production trades of tokenised stocks, ETFs and Treasuries alongside JPMorgan, BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, Vanguard, NYSE and Nasdaq.

Learning Outcomes

By completion, participants can: explain how blockchains reach consensus and why that matters commercially; set up and secure self-custodied and institutional wallet arrangements; execute swaps, staking and liquidity provision while quantifying the risks (including impermanent loss); describe the GENIUS, CLARITY, MiCAR and UK frameworks and the July 2026 UK–US roadmap; and critically evaluate a real-world-asset (RWA) tokenisation structure end to end, from legal wrapper to atomic settlement.

Course Structure

Across four modules you will explore:

• Technology — from blockchain basics to practical application of distributed ledger technology
• Applications — decentralised finance (DeFi) and real-world asset tokenisation
• Regulations — navigating rules in the UK, EU, US and beyond
• Ethics — balancing innovation with environmental and social impacts
• Live tools — hands-on insights into dApps, digital wallets, liquidity provision, staking and more

Who Should Attend

• Regulators — government officials crafting policies to understand blockchain challenges
• Regulated entities — banks, exchanges and financial firms learning compliance frameworks
• Participants in financial services — investors, traders and developers mastering DeFi strategies
• Tech enthusiasts and entrepreneurs — from gaming developers to asset tokenisation startups
• Everyone — no finance degree required; this impacts everyone's financial future

Course Agenda

Module 1: Introduction to Blockchain

• What is blockchain?
• Comparing the major networks
• Tokens: fungible, non-fungible and the hybrid future
• Stablecoins
• The regulatory race, 2023–2026

Module 2: Getting on-chain — wallets, custody, security & first transactions

• The custody spectrum
• Security fundamentals
• On-ramps & off-ramps
• Lab: your first secure setup

Module 3: Decentralised Finance (DeFi)

• Decentralised exchanges and AMMs
• Lending, borrowing and collateral
• Staking and liquid staking
• Liquidity provision and the arithmetic
• Lab: DeFi in practice (small sums or testnet)

Module 4: Practical applications and case studies

• The RWA thesis and the numbers
• The tokenisation lifecycle
• The institutions arrive: DTCC, NYSE, Nasdaq and July 2026
• Stablecoins as RWA rails
• The 2026 regulatory map
• Sector by sector
• Risks
• Capstone: evaluate a tokenised proposal

Conclusion

• Recap and key takeaways
• Interactive Q&A session
• Resources for further learning