Category Archives: Uncategorized

xxx “This Technology Quarterly will take a more sceptical view. It will point out that, despite a decade of development, bitcoin has failed in its stated objective: to become a usable currency.” From “What to make of cryptocurrencies and blockchains – The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow”. xxx

Despite the fuss about it, the global gold standard only lasted for a century and it collapsed before World War II. Britain had created the standard in its modern form in 1821 and left it in 1931. Ernest Harvey, the Bank’s deputy governor at the time, wrote to Ramsay MacDonald, the prime minister, and PhilipContinue reading “On this day in 1931”

I’m sure that by now you are all familiar with the major data breach that occurred at British Airways earlier this month. It was a “Magecart” attack on the scripts running on the BA web site (the booking page at BA runs 30 scripts, and remember that many of these are minified scripts spanning thousandsContinue reading “POST Breach Airways”

The US Treasury’s report on “Nonbank Financials, Fintech, and Innovation” prepared in response to Mr. Trump’s “Executive Order 13772 on Core Principles for Regulating the United States Financial System” is, I have to say, most comprehensive. It covers a great many aspects of the financial services market, as you would imagine, and covers a fewContinue reading “POST Digital Identity, not Digitised Identity”

xxx The payment service will accomplish this by maintaining a private blockchain that records transactions from Square-managed wallets in real-time From Bitcoin Accepted [Everyw]here: Square Patents Crypto Payment Network. So, basically, if you send cryptocurrency from a Square cryptocurrency wallet to another Square cryptocurrency wallet, Square will credit the recipient in near-real time and takeContinue reading “Bitcoin Accepted [Everyw]here: Square Patents Crypto Payment Network”

The US Treasury’s report on “Nonbank Financials, Fintech, and Innovation” prepared in response to Mr. Trump’s “Executive Order 13772 on Core Principles for Regulating the United States Financial System” is, I have to say, most comprehensive. Payments Treasury recommends that the states work to harmonize money transmitter requirements for licensing and supervisory examinations, and urgesContinue reading “POST The US is Different”

xxx “overdraft and returned-check fees (NSF) [were] $15 billion in 2015… nearly twice what the entire payday lending industry earned in interest and fees in 2015. It also approached the $18.4 billion earned by the entire US banking system on merchant interchange from all debit card and general-use prepaid cards in that year. And itContinue reading “The Ends of the Month: The Elephant in the Room – CFSI – Medium”

xxx “Our cash payments continued to decrease rapidly year on year, so we’ve known for a while that we wanted to go cashless, we just needed the guts to go and do it,” From How small businesses can prepare for the rise of the cashless economy. xxx

xxx Banks maintain that contactless is safe, and card cloning is not cost-effective for thieves. From ‘I went on holiday – so how was my card used for a £600 spree at home?’ | Money | The Guardian. Not cost effective in the sense that it is not possible. If thieves do find a wayContinue reading “‘I went on holiday – so how was my card used for a £600 spree at home?’ | Money | The Guardian”

xxx When economists say that one of the functions of money is to act as a store of wealth and that one of money’s desirable properties is constancy of value (as measured by constancy of average prices), we are entitled to ask: How do you know this? Why should prices be stable? From cwpe1842.pdf. xxx