The Impacts and Implications of Stablecoins on Payment Networks
Explore how stablecoins impact and transform traditional credit card payment networks. Analyze socio-technical dimensions of digital token integration in finance and identify evolving infrastructure challenges and opportunities.
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Project Description
Project Overview
This project explores stablecoins as digital tokens created by non-bank financial actors and their implications for the credit card payments industry. It focuses on how stablecoins could undermine revenue from traditional payment systems while credit card networks maintain control of payment rails.
What You Will Do
You will conduct a mixed methods socio-technical study of the design, usage, benefits, and challenges of stablecoins, focusing on system-level impacts on credit card payments infrastructure. This interdisciplinary research combines economics, finance, political economy, and technology studies.
Expected Outcomes
The research will generate a knowledge base for relevant stakeholders, including industry actors, consumers, and regulatory agencies. It will clarify how digital token integration intensifies or transforms payment infrastructures and their economic and social effects.
Why This Matters
Understanding stablecoins' impacts is critical as digital tokenization reshapes the financial sector. This research will help anticipate shifts in payment networks and inform policy and industry adaptations in a rapidly evolving digital economy.
Entry Requirements
How to Apply
Eligibility
Supervisor Profile
Prof. Janet Roitman is a leading anthropologist at RMIT University specializing in social studies of finance and digital economies, with a focus on economic regulation, political economy, and Africa. Her research investigates economic and political crises, informal markets, and issues of state power, applying critical socio-anthropological perspectives on finance and governance. She is recognized internationally for her interdisciplinary approach bridging anthropology and finance studies.