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Daniel Joseph Aronoff
Economist working at the intersection of market design, cryptography, and digital currencies
I am a Research Affiliate in the MIT Department of Economics and a Research Associate at the Laboratory for Economic Analysis and Design at MIT, where I work at the intersection of economics and cryptography. My current research focuses on two domains: the design of algorithms for financial market trading infrastructure that generate efficient multilateral netting, and the design of smart contracts with differential privacy to improve trading outcomes.
I am a Collaborator at the MIT Media Lab Digital Currency Initiative, where I work in three areas: the design of distributed consensus protocols for blockchains, the design and analysis of stablecoins, and the econometric study of transaction fees and block rewards on the Bitcoin blockchain. I also research mechanism design to improve the performance of markets for environmental offsets.
I earned a BSc in Philosophy and Economics, with first-class honours, from the London School of Economics, and a PhD in Economics from MIT.
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Research areas
- Financial market structure
- Cryptography
- Digital currencies
- Environmental market design
Recent updates
Latest updates
- "Conservation Priorities and Environmental Offsets: Markets for Florida Wetlands" by Daniel Aronoff and Will Rafey announced as forthcoming in The American Economic Review.
- Macro Musings podcast: Neha Narula, Anders Brownworth, and Daniel Aronoff on Understanding Stablecoins in the GENIUS Era
- RepoMech: A Method to Reduce the Balance-Sheet Impact of Repo Intermediation (arXiv: 2512.23842v1)
- The Hidden Plumbing of Stablecoins: Financial and Technological Risks in the GENIUS Act Era
- Presentation on "SoK: Fully-homomorphic encryption in smart contracts" at IFCA DeFi'26.
- SoK: Fully-homomorphic encryption in smart contracts (Cryptology ePrint Archive)
- A Smart-Contract to Resolve Multiple Equilibrium in an Intermediated Trade
- AI-Driven, Post-Quantum Data Privacy Research Spotlight: Daniel Aronoff & Madars Virza · MIT-ILP conference, Securing the Future: AI-Driven Post-Quantum Data Privacy
- Incorporating Cryptographic Methods in Economics · MIT-ILP NextGen Security Conference
- R&D Fintech Innovation · 2023 MIT Research and Development Conference
- Rethinking Currency with Daniel Aronoff · Invited lecture, Rethinking Economics NL
- ADESS: A Proof-of-Work Protocol to Deter Double-Spend Attacks
- A Theory of Accumulation and Secular Stagnation
- The Financial Crisis Reconsidered
- Mechanism Design for Hashrate Externalities: Implementing Optimal Security in Proof-of-Work
- Conservation Priorities and Environmental Offsets: Markets for Florida Wetlands
- Double-Spend Counterattacks: Threat of Retaliation in Proof-of-Work Systems
- DeFi for the Securities Industry
- AI-Driven, Post-Quantum Data Privacy Research Spotlight
- Incorporating Cryptographic Methods in Economics
- R&D Fintech Innovation
- Rethinking Currency with Daniel Aronoff
- SCBX Cryptography Use Cases: Credit Score Averaging with Differential Privacy and FHE · SCBX slide deck
- ADESS: A Proof-of-Work Protocol to Deter Double-Spend Attacks · FICC 2024 Berlin
- A Causal Inference Algorithm for Heterogeneous Treatment Effects · MIT Econometrics Lunch
- Essays on Incentive Designs to Improve Market Performance
- Stablecoins and the Limits of Existing Analogies
- The GENIUS Act is Now Law. What's Missing?
- 1:1 Redemptions for Some, Not All
- Will Stablecoins Impact the US Treasury Market?
- Targeted Nakamoto
- Come the next crisis, don't say you weren't warned
- US antitrust and the moral justification for capitalism
- Cryptocurrency critique can do with more context
- Look beyond the domain of exchanges for crypto's real promise
- Putin’s is only one side of the national character
- Local lenders could help US banks’ discrimination problem
- Banks should not be the gatekeepers of digital currencies
- Netanyahu’s regional policy reflects strategic realities
- Increased spending has inescapable consequences
- Why bitcoin can never be a reserve currency
- It’s right to tread carefully with digital currencies
- Immigrants will be needed as the baby boomers age
- Two opposing forces can be reconciled by Beijing
- Bannon has his finger on the populist pulse
- Biases may invalidate any conclusions drawn on voters' behaviour
- Biases may invalidate any conclusions drawn on voters' behaviour
- A timely warning over Treasury bonds
- Skewed markets prove case for reforms that benefit citizens
- Trump has valid reasons to be concerned about the US trade deficit
- President Trump has legitimate frustrations
- President Trump has legitimate frustrations
- Undervalued exchange rates, Japanese auto imports, and economic policy
- Bilateral imbalances with US were Beijing's policy
- Letter President-elect’s views on trade are not delusional
- Capital formation rate cannot be blamed on after-tax profits
- Mao inflicted horror on the Chinese people
- Competition and redistribution
- Wrestle no longer with the Greenspan conundrum
- Companies look set to be around for a while yet
- Jeb can follow his brother in courting Hispanic vote
- Money multiplier is not fixed but depends on the volume of private credit
- Lord Turner's proposal should be treated with caution
- Savings not intended to be spent are behind stagnation
- An almost brilliant analysis of the American economy
- Monopoly is the enemy of growth
- Another dose of the drug to mask the disease
- Anthropologists will be baffled by bondholder escape
- It is a mistake to put a bridle on bank innovation
- Regulators should not go too far in fixing rules on leverage
- Reload the gun ahead of the next crisis
- Cashing in privacy for security is a perilous path
- Cool outpost portends strife in divided Detroit
- "This time is never different" for deficit spending
- "This time is never different" for deficit spending
- Those who muddle through may inherit the earth
- Hispanics are not lost to the GOP
- Tea Party has middle ground in austerity vs stimulus debate
- Seventies stagnation shows the value of monetary stability
- Bootstrap recovery through self-belief
- A government spending boom won't set us free
- Let those who venture absorb their own losses
- Let those who venture absorb their own losses
- Breakup of union is likely to bring widespread defaults
- Urban sprawl around Detroit is distinctly divided in two
- Public services need competition
- Lending contraction must be tackled
- Debt overhangs stop the banks acting normally
- Demand won't be lifted by greater public spending
- Finance does not explain everything
- Enduring and prescient analysis of conflict
- Keynes can help us make sense of contingent events
- Missed opportunity to tackle chronic surpluses
- Lending restraint is here for a while
- Policymakers should only proceed with more humility
- Go for diversity not dinosaurs
- The mystery of why the $700bn Tarp was given the go-ahead by US Congress
- FT.com letters (uncertain title)
- Beware the fallout from the AIG bail-out
- Private equity buy-outs create value by applying brakes on expansion
- Perennial struggle between China's centre and the provinces continues to resonate
- US has a stake in keeping China stable
- W Europe drawn into a 'banal' nihlism
- US pull-out would intoxicate Arabs
- A high ebb will lead to a low flow
- Working-class support for Republican policies is grounded in rational shift from New Deal
- Economic development, not redistribution, is key
- Keynes' thinking continues to inspire us today
- Deflation increases the chances of business failure in Japan
- The world needs the US to continue promoting trade liberalization
- The resilience of US consumers is rational