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Nevertheless, the rise of an ecosystem of financial services, known as decentralised finance, or “DeFi”, deserves sober consideration. It has the potential to rewire how the financial system works, with all the promise and perils that entails.

From The beguiling promise of decentralised finance | The Economist:

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Finally, freedom to fork is much more practical, and forking is much lower in economic and human cost, than most centralized systems.

Blockchain-based contraptions have a lot to offer the world that other kinds of systems do not. On the other hand, Nathan is completely correct to emphasize that blockchainized should not be equated with financialized. There is plenty of room for blockchain-based systems that do not look like money, and indeed we need more of them.

From On Nathan Schneider on the limits of cryptoeconomics:

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And so we get the fundamental conundrum: the cypherpunk spirit is fundamentally about making maximally immutable systems that work with as little information as possible about who is participating (“on the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog”), but making new forms of governance requires the system to have richer information about its participants and ability to dynamically respond to attacks in order to remain stable in the face of actors with unforeseen incentives.

From On Nathan Schneider on the limits of cryptoeconomics:

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As I wrote in Wired magazine back in 2019, banks will soon have to convince bots – rather than people – that their deal is the best. And bots won’t care which soccer team the bank sponsors or how nice the decor in the branches is or how long the bank brand has been established.

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Losses to authorised push payments fraud topped card fraud for the first time in H1 2021, acccording to new figures from UK Finance.

In previous years the largest fraud losses have been unauthorised frauds mainly committed using payment cards.

This year, however, criminals focused their activity on APP fraud, in which a customer is tricked into authorising a payment to an account controlled by a criminal.

As a result, UK Finance recorded a 71% increase in APP fraud during the first half of 2021 and, for the first time, the amount of money stolen through APP fraud overtook card fraud losses. All told, authorised push payment (APP) fraud losses in the first half stood at £355.3 million, compared to £261.7 million in losses from card crime.

From APP fraud losses overtake card crime in H1 2021:

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the idea of age verification is taking off around the world. Europe’s Audiovisual Media Services Directive requires companies to put measures in place to protect children, a bill in Canada is looking to introduce age verification but has faced privacy concerns, Australia has recommended using digital IDs to access pornography and officials in Utah have been pushing a law that would require new smartphones and tablets to have pre-installed and on-by-default pornography filters. France has also threatened to block pornographic websites that don’t put age-verification systems in place.

From Germany Is About to Block One of the Biggest Porn Sites | WIRED:

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China’s central bank has called for wider acceptance of cash in economic activities and vowed to punish those who refuse to accept cash payments in the wake of a widening gap in access to digital services.

From China central bank urges wider acceptance of cash as payments go digital | Reuters:

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In the case of financial institutions, whose enhanced identity verification instruments are among the most trustworthy and robust on the market, the new wallet opens up a world of possibilities to participate in the new ecosystem, both as identity authentication service providers and, ultimately, as the suppliers of the wallet itself

From Toward a European digital identity:

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Japanese telco NTT Docomo has teamed up with Sony and NXP Semiconductors to trial technology that lets shoppers make NFC payments without having to take their phones out of their pockets.

The system taps NXP’s Ultra-Wideband (UWB) technology which can track user movement and 360 degree positioning with location accuracy of a few centimetres

From NTT Docomo taps UWB for hands-free payments:

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Amazon may be looking to bring the cashierless tech found at its Go convenience stores to Whole Foods supermarkets as early as next year

From Amazon Go’s cashierless tech may come to Whole Foods as soon as next year – The Verge:

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We tried to pay $1 in cash for a soda at Amazon’s cashier-less convenience store of the future, and it took way longer than expected

From What it’s like to pay cash at a cashless Amazon Go store – Business Insider:

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ACLU

Participation in a cashless society presumes a level of financial stability and enmeshment in bureaucratic financial systems that many people simply do not possess. Opening a bank account requires an ID, which many poor and elderly people lack, as well as other documents such as a utility bill or other proof of address, which the homeless lack, and which generally create bureaucratic barriers to participating in electronic payment networks. Banks also charge fees that can be significant for people living on the economic margins.

From Say No to the “Cashless Future” — and to Cashless Stores | American Civil Liberties Union:

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