Academic Essay · FP023 EAP for Maths and Computer Science · University of Warwick, 2025
This essay examines how cryptocurrency and blockchain — technologies built on pseudonymity, decentralisation, and immutability — create a structural regulatory paradox: the very features that make them valuable for financial inclusion and privacy are the same ones that enable money laundering, illicit trade, and the evasion of institutional oversight. Drawing on empirical data, case studies of China and El Salvador, and scholarly literature, it argues that the ethical challenges of these technologies are not accidental but are embedded in their architectural design — and that computer scientists bear a direct responsibility for the social consequences of the systems they build.
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16 pages · Harvard referencing · FP023 module submission