Snippings

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A European safe asset would complete the long-overdue EU financial architecture: a savings and investment union, unlocking idle private savings; a digital euro that ends our dependence on foreign payment systems; and a credible euro-denominated stablecoin market. Moreover, it would increase the euro’s use as a reference currency for trade and commodity pricing, reinforcing the gains from recent trade deals.

From: Europe’s best bet for financial sovereignty is a true safe asset.

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U-issued bonds would attract long-term capital, reduce financing costs and unlock strategic autonomy

From: Europe’s best bet for financial sovereignty is a true safe asset.

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His nephew David Satin, who had stepped in to help manage Rosenberg’s affairs, was stunned — especially after looking at the cashed checks. “If you look at all the checks that were written, none of them even have close to his signature, not even remotely close,” Satin told ABC7.

From: 90-year-old man scammed out of $814K life savings — but Wells Fargo denies claim. Why you must always flag big withdrawals (even if your bank won’t) – AOL.

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I don’t know if he will remmber this but, but this is what “Singe” Deakins wrote about this back in 2012! He pointed out that due to progressive miniaturistion, devices will become increasingly unobtrusive and specialised.  With advances in interfaces, sensors, raw computing power, battery technology (crucial, of course) and connectivity (my iPhone has NFC, Bluetooth 5G, UWB and WiFi) we will progress towards persistent ambient connectivity where we’ll become seamlessly and deeply intra-connected with things and people in our physical and virtual environments.

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On payments: give payment providers access to Fed master accounts. Insist that all payment systems be interoperable. And decide who should have oversight of governance, design decisions, etc. – historically, this has been the Federal Reserve, but the central bank has a specific set of objectives, mostly linked to financial stability and monetary policy implementation. Banks are understandably reluctant to give up control, which is why a separate overseer could ensure a more level playing field.

From: Stablecoins and the new Gresham’s Law – by Noelle Acheson.

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In the 1970s, Bernard Madoff’s market making firm started creating thousands of fake monthly account statements reflecting artificially high returns using an outdated IBM computer. Clients, regulators and even Madoff’s own sons were fooled by the fake statements for decades, before his Ponzi scheme came to light in 2008.

But where Madoff had to employ 15 people full-time to create the fake account statements, generative AI models like Copilot and ChatGPT create deepfake documents instantly, with a prompt.

From: ‘This is an arms race’: Banks cope with AI-faked documents | American Banker.

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Amazon has launched Pay by Bank for purchases in the UK, enabling shoppers on the site to complete sales and set up Prime membership via direct connections to their bank accounts.

From: Amazon rolls out Pay by Bank in the UK.

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Craig Milligan, 47, of Dumfries, used several aliases – including those of two dead men – to fraudulently open accounts and obtain credit cards.

From: Man who accumulated more than £1million in identity fraud crime jailed for four years. | COPFS.

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In October, hackers stole government IDs of 70,000 Discord users from a third-party service that Discord previously trusted to verify ages in the United Kingdom and Australia.

From: Discord faces backlash over age checks after data breach exposed 70,000 IDs – Ars Technica.

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Enter x402: The Web’s Native Payment Protocol
HTTP has always had a status code for payments: 402 Payment Required. It was reserved in 1999 but never standardized. Until now.

The x402 protocol finally gives meaning to that status code:

Client requests a resource
Server responds with 402 and payment requirements
Client signs a payment authorization locally
Server verifies and settles the payment
Client gets access to the resource
No redirects. No checkout flows. No human intervention. Just HTTP.

Nevermined’s Programmable Extension: nvm:erc4337
Standard x402 handles simple “pay X tokens for this request” flows. But AI agents need more:

Subscription models: “This agent is on our enterprise plan”
Credit systems: “Deduct 5 credits from my balance”
Usage caps: “Don’t let me spend more than $100 today”
Delegated payments: “My company’s smart account pays, not me personally”
That’s why we built the nvm:erc4337 scheme—an extension that makes x402 programmable.

From: Blog Posts.

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