MIT SDM Systems Thinking Webinar Series
Sascha Boehme, SDM Alumnus and Consultant, Boehme BankIT Consulting
Date: March 9, 2015
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About the Presentation
Bitcoin is far more than just another form of money. It is a crypto-currency and a peer-to-peer network that enables the secure transfer of a unique piece of digital property over the Internet, with no need for a trusted third party. This nascent technology has given rise to previously inconceivable business possibilities, such as instant, free, and secure money transfer, yet Bitcoin is still struggling with price volatility, security concerns, and regulatory hurdles.
In this webinar, SDM alumnus Sascha Boehme will offer a context for understanding how to innovate with Bitcoin. He will discuss:
- Bitcoin’s history;
- its revolutionary system architecture, which combines existing technologies and concepts in an entirely new way; and
- how to think about the challenges and opportunities that arise from Bitcoin’s unique properties.
Whether Bitcoin succeeds or fails, distributed trust networks that enable strangers to conduct transactions remotely without the need for a neutral third party are here to stay.
Understanding the promise and potential pitfalls of this technology is essential to creating new paradigms that will not only spur businesses to evolve, but will provide commercial opportunities to the world’s roughly 2.5 billion unbanked people, opening the path to the alleviation of global poverty and oppression. The speaker will offer other examples.
A Q&A will follow the presentation. We invite you to join us.
About the Speaker
Sascha Boehme is a consultant for Boehme BankIT Consulting specializing in systems engineering for financial institutions. He has worked as an IT consultant for the banking industry in Germany, where he built business intelligence and risk management systems. Previously, he spent 10 years working on the fixed income trading desks of investment banks including UBS, CIBC, and Dresdner Bank in London and New York. His areas of expertise include financial product management and sales, building decision support systems, and business process optimization.
At MIT, Boehme wrote his thesis on “Bitcoin as a Peer-to-Peer Network for International Payments.” He was a teaching assistant for a software systems architecture course, a research assistant at the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, and a finalist in the MIT $100K Pitch Contest with his idea for a peer-to-peer money transfer business.
Boehme recently graduated from the MIT System Design and Management program with an M.S. in engineering and management. He also holds a B.A./ M.A. in business administration from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, where he specialized in banking and finance with a minor in computer science.
About the Series
The MIT System Design and Management Program Systems Thinking Webinar Series features research conducted by SDM faculty, alumni, students, and industry partners. The series is designed to disseminate information on how to employ systems thinking to address engineering, management, and socio-political components of complex challenges.
