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Digital-Finance-Introduction

BSC Intensive Course: Digital Finance - FinTech & Crypto/DeFi

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Created 2026-01-28
Last Updated 2026-03-25
Last Push 2026-02-16
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Notebooks

This repository contains 16 notebook(s):

Notebook Language Type

| NB01_Money_Ledgers | PYTHON | jupyter |

| NB02_Payment_Analysis | PYTHON | jupyter |

| NB03_Open_Banking_API | PYTHON | jupyter |

| NB04_Credit_Scoring | PYTHON | jupyter |

| NB05_Cryptographic_Operations | PYTHON | jupyter |

| NB06_Blockchain_Simulation | PYTHON | jupyter |

| NB07_Blockchain_Transactions | PYTHON | jupyter |

| NB15_Layer2_Simulation | PYTHON | jupyter |

| NB08_Smart_Contracts | PYTHON | jupyter |

| NB09_AMM_Simulation | PYTHON | jupyter |

| NB10_Stablecoin_Analysis | PYTHON | jupyter |

| NB16_ZK_Proofs | PYTHON | jupyter |

| NB11_DeFi_Exploits | PYTHON | jupyter |

| NB12_DAO_Governance | PYTHON | jupyter |

| NB13_Robo_Advisor | PYTHON | jupyter |

| NB14_Innovation_Scorecard | PYTHON | jupyter |

Datasets

This repository includes 6 dataset(s):

Dataset Format Size

| audit_day1.json | .json | 109.3 KB |

| audit_day2.json | .json | 74.07 KB |

| audit_day3.json | .json | 90.02 KB |

| audit_day4.json | .json | 105.44 KB |

| audit_day5.json | .json | 88.01 KB |

| audit_day6.json | .json | 92.5 KB |

Reproducibility

This repository includes reproducibility tools:

  • Python requirements.txt

Status

  • Issues: Enabled
  • Wiki: Enabled
  • Pages: Enabled

README

Digital Finance: From FinTech to Crypto/Blockchain/DeFi

A 6-day intensive BSC-level course designed to give students from any disciplinary background the conceptual vocabulary, mental models, and hands-on intuition needed to understand how digital technologies are restructuring financial services.

By the end of this course, you will be able to critically evaluate digital finance products, understand the mechanics behind them, and form informed views on where the industry is heading.

Course Overview

What This Course Covers

This course explores two distinct innovation philosophies reshaping finance:

  • FinTech (Platform Finance): Improving the existing financial system from within using APIs, data, and platform economics
  • Crypto/Blockchain/DeFi: Rebuilding trust infrastructure from scratch using cryptography and decentralization

Rather than treating these as separate, the course shows how they are converging and why both approaches matter.

Course Structure

Duration: 6 intensive days Total Topics: 24 across 6 days (4 per day) Hands-on Sessions: 14 Colab notebooks Prerequisite: None (designed for mixed disciplinary backgrounds)

The Five Pillars

This course is organized around five foundational pillars:

Pillar 1: Money and Trust in the Digital Age

Understand what money actually is, how trust operates in financial systems, and why friction in traditional finance creates opportunities for digital alternatives.

Pillar 2: Platform Finance and the FinTech Stack

Learn how technology companies unbundle and rebundle financial services through APIs, data-driven models, and platform economics.

Pillar 3: Cryptographic Trust and Decentralized Systems

Build understanding of blockchain mechanics, consensus algorithms, and how strangers can agree on a shared truth without central authority.

Pillar 4: Tokenization and Digital Assets

Explore how programmable digital tokens bridge FinTech and crypto, from stablecoins and CBDCs to real-world asset tokenization.

Pillar 5: Governance, Risk, and Regulation

Develop critical judgment by examining real failures, systemic risks, regulatory approaches, and governance challenges in digital finance.

Day-by-Day Breakdown

Day 1: Why Digital Finance? From Friction to Innovation

Topics: 1. What Is Money, Really? Trust, Ledgers, and the Double-Spending Problem 2. The Financial System's Pain Points: Where Friction Creates Opportunity 3. Two Philosophies of Change: FinTech vs. Crypto/DeFi 4. Landscape Overview: A Map of Digital Finance

Key Outcomes: - Understand the fundamental distinction between FinTech and crypto approaches - Identify core frictions in traditional financial infrastructure - Map the digital finance landscape - Hands-on: Simulate a simple ledger system

Pillars: 1 (primary), 2 and 3 (introductory)

Day 2: Platform Finance How FinTech Reshapes Financial Services

Topics: 1. Digital Payments: How Money Actually Moves 2. The API Economy and Banking-as-a-Service 3. Data-Driven Finance: Lending, Scoring, and Algorithmic Decision-Making 4. Platform Economics: Network Effects, Winner-Take-Most, and FinTech Business Models

Key Outcomes: - Trace a digital payment from initiation to settlement - Understand how APIs enable non-banks to offer financial services - Analyze algorithmic bias in credit scoring - Evaluate FinTech business model sustainability - Hands-on: Explore payment transaction data, interact with banking APIs, build a credit scoring model

Pillars: 2 (primary), 1 (reference)

Day 3: Cryptographic Foundations Building Trust Without Institutions

Topics: 1. Cryptographic Building Blocks: Hashing, Keys, and Digital Signatures 2. Blockchain Mechanics: Consensus, Blocks, and the Cost of Decentralization 3. Wallets, Transactions, and the User Experience Gap 4. Bitcoin and Ethereum: Two Design Philosophies

Key Outcomes: - Verify digital signatures and understand public-key cryptography - Explain how blockchains reach consensus and the trilemma tradeoffs - Understand blockchain transaction anatomy and UX challenges - Compare Bitcoin's and Ethereum's design philosophies - Hands-on: Hash data, generate key pairs, simulate a mini-blockchain, construct real blockchain transactions

Pillars: 3 (primary), 1 (reference)

Day 4: Programmable Finance Smart Contracts, DeFi, and Tokenization

Topics: 1. Smart Contracts: Code as Agreement 2. DeFi Primitives: Lending, Trading, and Yield Without Intermediaries 3. Stablecoins: The Bridge Between Two Worlds 4. Tokenization of Real-World Assets and CBDCs

Key Outcomes: - Understand what makes smart contracts "trustless" (and their limitations) - Explain how automated market makers and DeFi lending pools work - Classify stablecoin designs and assess de-peg risks - Evaluate real-world asset tokenization and CBDC implications - Hands-on: Interact with smart contracts, simulate AMM mechanics, analyze stablecoin stability data

Pillars: 3 (continued), 4 (primary)

Day 5: Risk, Regulation, and the Dark Side

Topics: 1. What Goes Wrong: Failures, Hacks, and Systemic Risk in Digital Finance 2. Regulatory Landscapes: How Governments Respond to Digital Finance 3. Governance in Decentralized Systems: DAOs and the Limits of Code 4. Privacy, Surveillance, and Financial Inclusion: Who Benefits?

Key Outcomes: - Categorize failure modes in digital finance and understand exploit mechanics - Compare regulatory frameworks across jurisdictions (US, EU/MiCA, Asia) - Identify DAO governance vulnerabilities and attack vectors - Articulate the privacy-transparency tradeoff - Hands-on: Analyze on-chain data from DeFi exploits, simulate a DAO vote

Pillars: 5 (primary), all others (reference)

Day 6: Convergence and the Future Where Is Digital Finance Going?

Topics: 1. The Convergence Thesis: When FinTech Meets DeFi 2. AI and Digital Finance: Automation, Personalization, and New Risks 3. Building Your Digital Finance Worldview: A Synthesis Framework 4. What's Next? Open Questions and Emerging Frontiers

Key Outcomes: - Identify FinTech-DeFi convergence examples in practice - Assess AI applications and risks in digital finance - Apply a structured evaluation framework to any digital finance innovation - Contribute informed perspectives on future digital finance developments - Hands-on: Build a Digital Finance Innovation Scorecard, create a robo-advisor model

Pillars: All (synthesis)

How to Use This Course

Viewing Slides

Each day's lecture slides are organized in this repository. You can: - Download slides locally and present/view offline - Open slides directly in a compatible viewer - Reference slides while working through notebooks

Running Hands-On Notebooks

This course includes 14 Colab notebooks that provide guided, hands-on experience with real concepts and tools.

To run a notebook:

  1. Click the Colab link provided for each notebook
  2. The notebook opens in Google Colab (requires a Google account)
  3. Code is pre-written; you interact with it by:
  4. Modifying parameters to see how outputs change
  5. Running cells to observe results
  6. Analyzing data and results
  7. No prior programming experience is required

Topics with hands-on components: - Day 1: Ledger simulation - Day 2: Payment data analysis, API interaction, credit scoring model - Day 3: Cryptographic operations, blockchain simulation, transaction construction - Day 4: Smart contract interaction, AMM mechanics, stablecoin analysis - Day 5: Exploit data analysis, DAO governance simulation - Day 6: Robo-advisor model, Innovation Scorecard capstone

Prerequisites

Knowledge required: None. This course is designed for students from any disciplinary background.

Helpful (but not required): - Basic familiarity with digital tools and web interfaces - General curiosity about technology, finance, or economics - No programming, mathematics, or finance theory assumed

Learning Path

The course is designed to be taken sequentially: 1. Day 1 establishes the conceptual foundation—you must understand this 2. Days 2-4 can be taken independently but build on Day 1 3. Day 5 assumes you've completed Days 2-4 4. Day 6 synthesizes everything and is best taken last

However, if you have limited time: - To understand FinTech only: Focus on Days 1, 2, and 6.1 - To understand Crypto/DeFi only: Focus on Days 1, 3, 4, and 6.1 - To understand convergence: Complete the full course (Days 1-6)

Advanced Topics

The following topics are optional advanced content that extends the core curriculum. They can be included at instructor discretion or used for self-study by motivated students.

T3.5: Layer 2 Scaling Solutions [ADVANCED]

Prerequisites: T3.2 (Blockchain Mechanics)

An in-depth exploration of how Layer 2 solutions solve the blockchain scalability trilemma: - Payment channels and the Lightning Network - Sidechains and their trust models - Rollups: Optimistic vs ZK approaches - Bridges and cross-chain communication

Materials: - Slides: day_03/slides/T3.5_layer2_scaling.tex - Notebook: day_03/notebooks/NB15_Layer2_Simulation.ipynb - Quiz: quiz/quiz3.5.html

T4.5: Zero-Knowledge Technology in Finance [ADVANCED]

Prerequisites: T3.1 (Cryptography), T3.5 (recommended)

Introduction to zero-knowledge proofs and their applications in privacy and scaling: - ZK proof properties: completeness, soundness, zero-knowledge - SNARKs vs STARKs: trade-offs and use cases - Applications: private transactions, selective disclosure, ZK-rollups - The future of ZK in DeFi and compliance

Materials: - Slides: day_04/slides/T4.5_zero_knowledge.tex - Notebook: day_04/notebooks/NB16_ZK_Proofs.ipynb - Quiz: quiz/quiz4.5.html

Note: These advanced topics do not modify the core 4-topic-per-day structure. They provide additional depth for students interested in cutting-edge scaling and privacy technologies.

Directory Structure

Digital-Finance-Introduction/
├── README.md                          # This file
├── requirements.txt                   # Python dependencies for local development
├── index.html                         # GitHub Pages site entry point
├── Day-1-Slides/                      # Lecture slides and materials
├── Day-2-Slides/
├── Day-3-Slides/
├── Day-4-Slides/
├── Day-5-Slides/
├── Day-6-Slides/
│
└── Notebooks/                         # Colab notebooks (linked, not stored here)
    ├── Day-1-Ledger-Simulation.ipynb
    ├── Day-2-Payment-Analysis.ipynb
    ├── Day-2-API-Banking.ipynb
    ├── Day-2-Credit-Scoring.ipynb
    ├── Day-3-Cryptography.ipynb
    ├── Day-3-Blockchain-Simulation.ipynb
    ├── Day-3-Transactions.ipynb
    ├── Day-4-Smart-Contracts.ipynb
    ├── Day-4-AMM-Mechanics.ipynb
    ├── Day-4-Stablecoins.ipynb
    ├── Day-5-Exploit-Analysis.ipynb
    ├── Day-5-DAO-Governance.ipynb
    ├── Day-6-Robo-Advisor.ipynb
    └── Day-6-Innovation-Scorecard.ipynb (Capstone)

Course Design Principles

This course was built with these principles:

  1. Purpose-Driven: Every topic has a clear purpose and builds specific competencies. No "important but unmotivated" material.

  2. Accessible: Technical concepts are built from scratch with tangible analogies. All code is pre-written; students interact rather than write.

  3. Hands-On: 14 Colab notebooks provide active learning. Students don't just watch—they explore, modify, and analyze.

  4. Integrated: Topics flow logically from foundations (Day 1) through specialization (Days 2-4) to synthesis (Days 5-6).

  5. Balanced: A mix of lecture, hands-on work, and discussion. Every day includes active engagement.

  6. Critical: The course doesn't assume digital finance is universally good. Day 5 systematically examines failures, risks, and governance challenges.

Technology Stack

The course uses open-source and free tools:

  • Slides: Standard presentation format (can be viewed in any PDF/presentation viewer)
  • Notebooks: Google Colab (free, no installation required)
  • Libraries: NumPy, Pandas, Matplotlib, Seaborn, Web3.py, Scikit-learn, Plotly, YFinance, SciPy
  • Hosting: GitHub Pages (for course website and materials)

For local development or offline use, install dependencies: 

pip install -r requirements.txt

GitHub Pages Site

The course has a dedicated website for navigation and additional resources:

Visit the course website

The website provides: - Course overview and navigation - Direct links to all slides and notebooks - Learning paths for different student backgrounds - Additional resources and readings - Contact and FAQ information

About This Course

Instructor: Joerg Osterrieder Course Level: BSC (Bachelor's level) Duration: 6 intensive days Students: Mixed disciplinary backgrounds (no prerequisites)

This course represents a synthesis of emerging practices in digital finance education. It treats both FinTech and crypto/blockchain/DeFi with intellectual seriousness while developing students' capacity for critical evaluation.

License

This course is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC-BY-4.0) license.

You are free to: - Share the course materials - Adapt and remix the content - Use for educational purposes

Attribution required: If you use, adapt, or teach with this material, please credit:

Digital Finance: From FinTech to Crypto/Blockchain/DeFi, by Joerg Osterrieder, CC-BY-4.0

Getting Started

  1. Review the overview on this page to understand the course structure
  2. Start with Day 1 slides to establish foundations
  3. Work through each day sequentially, alternating between lectures and hands-on notebooks
  4. Use the GitHub Pages site for navigation and direct links
  5. Engage actively with the discussion topics and reflection questions

Questions or Feedback?

For questions about course content, structure, or materials: - Check the GitHub Pages site FAQ - Review the course structure documentation (.omc/plans/digital-finance-course-structure.md)

Last Updated: 2026-01-28 Version: 1.0 (Course Launch)