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This chapter examines institutional investors’ considerations while investing or otherwise engaging in the cryptocurrency sector, whether exclusively in bitcoin or the broader universe of crypto or decentralized finance assets. Given the rapid change in legal and regulatory oversight and cryptocurrency and blockchain innovation, offering inviolable advice about due diligence and compliance during commercial engagement is exceedingly difficult. However, general guidelines and rules of thumb are available.

Bitcoin’s introduction as the first cryptoasset in 2009 ushered in a new era, representing a seismic shift in the financial markets. Since then, this evolving asset class has generated much interest, excitement, and growth. This chapter begins by providing a brief background of cryptoassets. It then discusses their main types (cryptocurrencies, security tokens, and utility tokens), users (individual investors, major financial institutions, endowments, and hedge funds), and benefits and drawbacks. Next, it sets forth the book’s purpose, distinguishing features, intended audience, and structure. The chapter provides a synopsis of each of the remaining 21 chapters. Although no single book can encompass all changes and iterations of these technologies as they emerge in the marketplace, this book brings together a broad collection of industry expertise and academic analysis to create a book helpful to researchers, academics, and practitioners.

Phenomenologists are among the strongest opponents of logical positivism. Mostly associated with Edmund Husserl, phenomenology is essentially an analytical method or framework for describing and explaining social relationships and psychological orientations. Phenomenologists attempt to account for the subjective qualities which logical positivists and empiricists assume to be unreal or are mistakenly treated as objective observable phenomena. The authors note that phenomenology has been absorbed into the literature and the language of the field especially in terms of how people do and do not relate to bureaucratic organizations and government programs.

What is the role of ethics and values in justice and the role of justice in ethics and values? How do we do them? These questions, ever-present and often unacknowledged, undergird efforts to survive, practice mutual aid, and work to prevent and address harms produced through disasters and environmental change.

Emerging from the teachings of Reverend Richard Krajeski and to honor his call, a group of his mentees, collaborators, and co-conspirators organized a special session at the July 2020 Natural Hazards Workshop, Just Dialogue: An Intergenerational Conversation on Justice, Sustainability, and Abundance. Enough is abundance, as Dick Krajeski, a longtime leader in the hazards community, was known for saying. In this way, he reminded us that that when we live as if we already have enough, we live sustainably and in ways that help lift oppression and reduce inequality and injustice. The session brought together people from diverse and intersecting places of Dick’s life for an intergenerational conversation about hope and healing, and invited the Natural Hazards community to engage in a just dialogue to which we bring our whole, true selves (open and vulnerable) to ask – what are the questions for the Natural Hazards community to be questioning, and to be asking, to motivate change and to move our systems of research and practice toward more equitable futures for all?

This chapter argues that the near-universal exclusion from the academy of the Shakespeare Authorship Question (or SAQ) represents a significant but little-understood example of an internal threat to academic freedom. Using an epistemological lens, this chapter examines and critiques the invidious and marginalizing rhetoric used to suppress such research by demonstrating the extent to which it constitutes a pattern of epistemic vice: that, by calling skeptics “conspiracy theorists” and comparing them to Holocaust deniers rather than addressing the substance of their claims, orthodox Shakespeare academics risk committing acts of epistemic vice, injustice and oppression, as well as foreclosing potentially productive lines of inquiry in their discipline. To better understand this phenomenon and its implications, the chapter subjects selected statements to external criteria in the form of the Association of College and Research Libraries’ 2015 Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education, which provides a set of robust normative dispositions and knowledge practices for understanding the nature of the scholarly enterprise. The analysis reveals that the proscription against the SAQ constitutes an unwarranted infringement on the academic freedom not only of those targeted by this rhetoric, but – by extension – of all Shakespeare scholars as well.

In recent years, sustainability considerations in the real estate sector have moved from being a niche market phenomenon to a mainstream trend. The movement has been accompanied by a shift in the industry’s perception of sustainable buildings. Traditional cost-saving goals are now complemented by a growing interest in the potential for sustainable buildings to tackle broader economic and social sustainability challenges as well as issues related to health and well-being. The real estate industry is increasingly expected to adapt its strategies to incorporate new and more stringent environmental and urban development requirements, to cater to shifting demographics, and to utilize new advancements in construction processes and materials. This chapter explores recent research on sustainable real estate and highlights some of the newest trends in the market. The chapter then examines how policy and technological advancements can enable real estate developers to tackle environmental, social, and economic sustainability challenges. This will be exemplified through a focus on carbon taxation and timber construction. Based on these case studies, the chapter illustrates how today’s sustainable real estate sector – marked by its move beyond a focus on cost savings – requires for building practices to be strongly rooted in global, sustainable development policies.