Snippings

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Bankman-Fried is the second-highest donor to Democratic causes, but says he donated just as much to Republicans using “dark” money.

From Sam Bankman-Fried’s ‘Secret Backdoor’ Worth $65 Billion, Court Hears:

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The proposed legislation will also unlock the full benefits of a new government identity verification system, known as GOV.UK One Login. As part of the Cabinet Office, the Government Digital Service (GDS) is developing GOV.UK One Login, through close collaboration with other government departments.

Inclusion is at the heart of GOV.UK One Login. The proposed data-sharing legislation will ensure that more people than ever before will be able to prove their identity online and access government services, so that anybody who wants to use online services is able to. Furthermore, the government is committed to realising the benefits of digital identity technologies without creating ID cards.

From Consultation on draft legislation to support identity verification – GOV.UK.

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Writing over at the World Economic Forum for their annual meeting (Davos 2023, the CEO of Chainalysis, Michael Gronager, talks about the web3 technologies having the potential to unlock new use cases in finance that aren’t currently possible due to the illiquidity of traditional assets; to increase transparency and enable community ownership of assets.

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The bank rolled out savings accounts, personal loans and credit cards. Its 2019 credit-card partnership with Apple Inc. signaled its ambitions to be a big player in the business.

Goldman invested billions of dollars in Marcus. But it struggled to bulk up the credit-card business following an early win with the Apple Card. A long-awaited checking account never materialized.

From Goldman Sachs Lost $3 Billion on Consumer Lending Push – WSJ:

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The main attraction of the new model is money. As rising competition and, in the rich world, low and falling interest rates reduce lending margins, banks need to diversify. Tech-based challengers, for their part, want to increase the stickiness of their apps so they can sell more of their core products, or take a cut of the financial wares they distribute for others. As physical branches become irrelevant, finance is exposed to the same network economics that have upended other sectors. Huw van Steenis of ubs, a bank, thinks the pandemic is accelerating a “winner-takes-most” dynamic, where popular platforms attract exponentially more traffic.

Much of the gains could come from the ability to merge and exploit data long siloed within different financial services.

From How the digital surge will reshape finance | The Economist.

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The UK has historically been a major exporter of financial services.The trade surplus generated by the financial services industry was £45 billion in 2021, with related professional services doubling it to some £90 billion. To put this in perspective, the financial services trade surplus is equal to the combined surpluses of the next two leading economies – the United States and Singapore – and greater than the trade surplus of all other UK industries that produce one (TheCityUK, 2022).

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Expanding Financial Inclusion
or Deepening the Divide? 

From :

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The global P2P payment market is expected to grow from $ 2.24 billion in 2021 to $ 2.64 billion in 2022 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17.8%. The P2P payment market is expected to reach $ 4.93 billion in 2026 at a CAGR of 16.9%.

From P2P Payment Global Market Report 2022: Sector to Reach $4.93 Billion by 2026 at a CAGR of 16.9%:

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I have always regarded the price, completely bogus “market cap” and the trading volume (most of which has been revealed to be utterly imaginary) of cryptocurrencies and completely agree with Christian Catalini and Jane Wu that these metrics have “distorted the incentives” and made it easier for the bad actors to blend in, attract capital and execute their scams.

Government 

Office for Science

Research and analysis

Wireless 2030

Polarising views on data sovereignty

From Wireless 2030 – GOV.UK.

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