Category Archives: Uncategorized

I’ve got a new favourite phrase! “Post-functional cash”. Love it.   When I went to the Future of Money dinner at Method the other day, one of the images that stuck with me was this. Post-functional cash. This is something that I’ve written about before, but didn’t have a crystallised concept for so discovering “Post-functionalContinue reading “Post-functional cash”

xxx FHE is a type of encryption that allows direct mathematical operations on the encrypted data. Upon decryption, the results will be correct. For example, you might encrypt 2, 3, and 7 and send the three encrypted values to a third party. If you then ask the third party to add the first and second values, thenContinue reading “POST Woke: Ambient Accountability. Broke: Awful Auditors”

Thomas Phillipon of the Stern School at NYU carried out a very detailed analysis of the US financial sector back in 2014 found that the unit cost of financial intermediation was around 1.87% on average (which is a lot of money). This adds up to a significant chunk of GDP. Indeed, calculation seem to indicate that theContinue reading “POST intermediation and excess”

I think it’s time for another review of terminology and I’ve got a couple of suggestions. Let’s standardise this way: a “neo-bank” is something that looks like bank, but isn’t (eg, my Simple account when I first got it and before they were taken over by BBVA, which is an actual bank, and then shut down),Continue reading “FORBES There are no “challenger banks””

xxx What exactly will the impact of no physical dollars and cents be on our homeless who don’t have access to regular online connectivity? Or for the many Australians who need to flee domestic violence? From Australia: Moving Toward a Cashless Society: xxx

All of this is why when people talk about “challengers”, I think they should be talking about MicrosoftMSFT not Monzo. The challenger banks are, well, banks. Neither fintechs nor incumbent banks have truly transformed the finance industry. They have simply adapted the traditional banking model to a digital model. This is hardly a radical perspective, byContinue reading “Who are the challengers?”

There was a post on Twitter in the midst of the coronavirus COV-19 pandemic that caught my eye. It quoted an emergency room doctor in Los Angeles asking for help from the technology community, saying “we need a platform for frontline doctors to share information quickly and anonymously”. It went on to state the obviousContinue reading “POST 3Ws and a virus”

xxx “countries will form cryptocurrency unions to regulate currencies and platforms, standardise technology and maintain the stability of the system” From “When China and other big countries launch cryptocurrencies, it will kick off a global revolution”. xxx

xxx “Moscow’s support for Instex prompted a warning from US Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin, who attended a G7 financial meeting in France. ‘If you want to participate in the dollar system you abide by US sanctions,’ Mr Mnuchin said, after discussing Iran with his French counterpart Bruno Le Maire.” From “(4) Kremlin throws weight behindContinue reading “(4) Kremlin throws weight behind EU effort to boost Iran trade | Financial Times”

xxx “Innocent people have been questioned by police, had computer equipment confiscated and faced arrest when suspected of serious crimes following errors made by internet service providers (ISPs), telecoms companies, police and other public bodies in gathering intelligence through electronic surveillance.” From “Innocent people arrested following surveillance blunders, IPCO reveals”. xxx