Cryptocurrency Policy For The People
We break down the mechanics of cryptocurrency in a simple and neutral manner.
A Report For the Policy for the People Fellowship
Just Get The Highlights
There's a lot to cryptocurrency, but sometimes you just need the bare bones fundamentals, and you just don't have the time to break down a Wikipedia page! That's where our executive summary comes in!
Executve Summary!
Bit-wha?
If you opened any news site today, you'd most likely find an article or two about cryptocurrencies. Chances are, it'll be about Bitcoin and uses the word blockchain. But does it really EXPLAIN how it all works?
See The Blockchain Comic
So, how does it all fit together?
Okay, notes are one thing, coins are one thing, loans, bonds, assets, fine. But where do cryptocurrencies come into the picture?
Check out The Flowchart
Some Highlights
(As found in our book)
"A total of 1.8 billion people live in 51 countries where cryptocurrencies are at least partially banned."
"This meant an astounding low of 0.15% illicit transaction volume compared to 2-5% of global GDP for fiat."
"While using cryptocurrencies, one is circumventing the fiat system."
"One-third of the global bitcoin computing power shut down due to a single coal mine going down."
"VISA’s rate: 24,000 tps. Bitcoin? 7. Ethereum? 20."
"ICOs are like IPOs but unregulated and without oversight."
"Cryptocurrencies might also create new business for cheap but dirty energy manufacturers."
"If a cryptocurrency coin is economically considered an asset, there are certain financial consequences..."
"Only a meagre 3% felt that being able to use Bitcoin was valuable."
"The semiconductor industry went from pushing hard for cryptocurrency to all but shutting it out."
"Bitcoin is still the go-to by far for illegal activities."
"These two taxes caused a 90% drop in trading volumes over three months, and many cryptocurrency entities moved out of India."
Meet the Authors
Yash Bohra
Yash Bohra is a full-stack software developer and data analyst working at DavaNinja, a pharmaceutical tech startup based in Mumbai. He graduated in 2024 from SRM Institute of Science And Technology with a Bachelors in Computer Science with a Specialization in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. He is passionate about digital privacy and protection of user data. Beyond this, he’s an avid reader and occasional poet.
Heramb Podar
Heramb Podar is a 5th year student at the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee. He is interested in technology as a lever to raise the expected well-being of society and is concerned about the risks different forms of emerging technology bring with them. He does AI policy research with the Center for AI and Digital Policy, a Washington DC- based think tank focusing on national AI policy assessments. He is the co-executive director of Policy for the People, a youth policy non-profit organisation incubated under Harvard Innovation Labs that aims to bring youth voices into policy discussions. He has also been involved as a mentor at the Clinton Global Initiative University, helping young changemakers set up local initiatives to solve community problems. Previously, he also helped run ElfDAO, which raised $37,000 in less than a month to support toy drives for underprivileged children and Reach4Help, a student-run non profit which dropshipped critical aid resources to communities in need in India and Bangladesh during the peak of COVID-19.
Kaliya Young
Kaliya Young is a public interest technologist, widely known as Identity Woman. She has spent the last 20 years of her career focused on one thing: supporting the emergence of an identity layer of the Internet that works for people so they can build thriving communities. In 2005, she co-founded the Internet Identity Workshop (IIW), where OpenID Connect and OAuth were created. She has also led the facilitation of IIW-inspired regional events, such as the Digital Identity unConference Europe, APAC Digital Identity Unconference. Kaliya has been playing a critical role in developing the next generation of standards for decentralized identity, which is in the process of being adopted by institutions like the European Union via the eIDAS2 initiative, the Government of Bhutan, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Kaliya’s boutique consultancy, Identity Woman in Business, is working at the forefront of empowering organizations of all sizes and types to succeed in investing in the new generation of secure, privacy-preserving, and interoperable identity infrastructure. Kaliya graduated from the first cohort of the Masters of Science in Identity Management and Security program at the University of Texas at Austin in 2017. Her master’s report, Domains of Identity: A Comprehensive Framework for Understanding Contemporary Identity Systems, became a book and is a comprehensive framework explaining all the domains of identity where individuals personal data ends up in databases. She also co-authored A Comprehensive Guide to Self-Sovereign Identity and the online course of Getting Started with Self-Sovereign Identity.
Get in touch.
cryptopolicypaper@gmail