This paper examines how the digital financial infrastructure that emerged in the wake of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis is being tested and leveraged to meet some of the financial, economic and health challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. The origins of the 2008 crisis and the current crisis are different: the 2008 crisis was a financial crisis that spilt over into the real economy, while COVID-19 is a health and geopolitical crisis spilling over into the real economy. As such, COVID-19 – a pandemic and an existential sustainability crisis – requires different approaches. This paper explores the role of digital finance in this context on two levels. At the macro level, it identifies how digital finance has been used to address areas of systemic risk and underpin wider financial stability.

This paper was authored by Professor Ross Buckley Professor Ross Buckley Scientia Professor of Law, School of Private & Commercial Law, UNSW Sydney (Australia) AIIFL Profile › , Scientia Professor at the Faculty of Law, UNSW-Sydney, Professor Douglas Arner Professor Douglas Arner Kerry Holdings Professor in Law, Faculty of Law, The University of Hong Kong AIIFL Profile › , Kerry Holdings Professor in Law and Director and co-founder of the Asian Institute of International Financial Law at the University of Hong Kong, Andrew Dahdal, Qatar University-College of Law, and Professor Dirk Zetzsche, Universite du Luxembourg – Faculty of Law, Economics and Finance.

Professor Arner discusses about this in Episode 2 of Looking Back, Looking Forward .

The article is available: here .