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Bank of Montreal, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, National Bank of Canada, Royal Bank of Canada, Scotiabank, and TD Bank have banded together on the plan.

From: Canadian banks join forces on tokenised deposits.

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The UK has made progress in bringing more people into mainstream banking. The FCA’s Financial Lives survey found that the number of unbanked adults fell from 1.1 million in 2022 to 900,000 in 2024. The number using basic bank accounts rose from 3.3 million in 2020 to 4.3 million over the same period.

From: The National Digital ID Is Dead. Britain’s Financial Inclusion Problem Isn’t | Silicon UK Tech News.

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In the UK specifically, an interbank initiative with the Great British Tokenised Deposit (GBTD) is one of the closest decentralised options to offering this. The deposits are, by nature, already a part of the process. They are offered by the banks for consumers and taken from existing bank deposits.  Initiatives like the GBTD are especially beneficial as they avoid exclusivity with any individual bank and instead promote national sovereignty. This creates an environment where deposits are offered, not as bank-specific products, but merely as a digital alternative to the GBP.

From: Why tokenised deposits aren’t the product, they’re the mechanism.

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Nevertheless, let’s establish that a “tokenized deposit” represents both a value and an obligation. The term “tokenized” describes the on-chain form of the deposit, without changing its nature.

Although, drilling deeper, tokenization does change the nature of a bank deposit in one key aspect. Bank deposits are covered by FDIC insurance up to a certain amount. Tokenized versions, at least for now, are not.

What about a “deposit token?” The order of the words is crucial here: “Token” is the noun, with “deposit” describing what backs the token, much like the terms “gold token” or “real estate token.”

You can see how this would be less binding. A deposit token is an on-chain representation of money held in a bank account. It does not have to also represent a contract, as it is not technically a deposit, it is a token that happens to be backed by deposited funds.

From: The key difference between a ‘tokenized deposit’ and a ‘deposit token’ | American Banker.

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An illicit website reportedly spent this week selling driver’s license scans, including the infrared and ultraviolet images banks use to catch fake IDs, before it went offline.

The service, called Nexus, claimed to offer more than 153 million driver’s licenses from people in the United States and Canada along with millions of other identity documents, as cybersecurity journalist Brian Krebs first reported Tuesday.

Krebs traced the images to IDScan.net, a New Orleans identity verification company, by searching the service for the licenses of more than a dozen friends and family, then matching time stamps on the nine he found against their travel and rental records.

From: Bank ID vendor traced to a dark web license sale | American Banker.

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While technology offers clear opportunities to reduce physical costs (personnel, equipment, energy, time, etc.), it’s less clear what impact it will have on the risk-based financial costs (liquidity buffers/spreads, credit spreads, and term premia) that constitute most of a bank’s revenues. As noted above, Philippon’s work shows intermediation costs have been stable for over a century.

From: Risk Tolerance, the Price of Certainty, and the Value of a Bank Charter.

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Critics who complain banks are a “cartel” are therefore making a category error. The banking oligopoly isn’t some sort of market failure: banks are quasi-sovereign entities and restricting access to taxpayer support ensures the rest of the economy operates more squarely on a free-market footing (the oligopoly isn’t a bug, it’s a feature). Companies that want to compete in the payments business (and therefore take responsibility for customers’ liquidity) should do the work necessary to obtain a bank charter. In return, regulators should offer a realistic path for applications to be approved (including considering specialized charters better suited to a more limited business model). Once depositors’ liquidity risk is equalized, competition can shift to areas (e.g., cost efficiency and service quality) where superior technology can be decisive.

From: Risk Tolerance, the Price of Certainty, and the Value of a Bank Charter.

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Amazon already offers “everyday low prices”. The consumer may not get the absolute lowest price, but they will get a low price. Today that makes Amazon a default destination for many shopping trips.

From: Meta Muse is not a game changer – by Andrew M. Dresner.

Amazon does not want to serve as Muse’s fulfillment warehouse only when it has the absolute lowest price.

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For an example of the alternative viewpoint, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently argued that “the world should accept some bad things happening for the benefit of this technology.” That might make sense for a person getting incredibly rich and powerful off the technology while worrying about competition from other companies, including foreign ones. But the rest of us don’t have to agree that these people and their work are so special that, for the first time ever, law and public interest don’t apply.

From: The Plausible Techno-Dystopian Future.

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But while existential risk deserves some attention, fixating on apocalyptic scenarios ignores real-world problems involving the actually already existing AI. We have proven methods to address disruptive technology, but for anyone who opposes the use of those methods, apocalyptic fantasies can be a useful distraction.

From: Fear of Hypothetical AI Scenarios Distract from the Real World Problems and Proven Solutions.

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