A library of snippets
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Nationwide believes that simply having the choice of coming into a branch is helping it win customers of all ages. Its famous promise to keep all of its sites open until 2028 at least means it is literally the “last bank in town” in 135 locations around the UK. Nearly 200,000 more customers have used its branches year-on-year, and 40 per cent of Isas are opened in person (these tend to carry much higher balances than Isas transferred online).
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For an hour yesterday (June 5, 2025), we were treated to the spectacle of the US House Judiciary Committee, both Republicans and Democrats, listening – really listening, it seemed – to four experts defending strong encryption. The four: technical expert Susan Landau and lawyers Caroline Wilson-Palow, Richard Salgado, and Gregory Nejeim.
The occasion was a hearing on the operation of the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act (2018), better known as the CLOUD Act.
The lawmakers reserved particular outrage for the UK’s audacity in demanding that Apple provide that backdoor access for *all* users worldwide. In other words, *Americans*.
From: Nephology – net.wars.
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The Genius Act, caught in this muddle, gives the benefits of federal financial regulation to a particular payments technology — distributed ledgers — that is, the blockchains that underlie stablecoins. “You don’t a need distributed ledger to [solve the problems with payments] but we are writing regulation for distributed ledger technology” only. What would a modern payment company that did not use a public blockchain look like? Like Stripe, but with access to the Fed’s payment rails:
From: Still more on stablecoins.
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A better regulatory regime would give payments companies access to the Fed’s payment rails without allowing them to take and invest deposits, rather than creating a new, narrower, less-regulated form of deposit-taker — based on only one of many possible technologies — just for the sake of facilitating payments.
From: Still more on stablecoins.
This is an argument for a US equivalent to the European Payment Institution (PI), something I have argued for many times before. A Federal Payment Instutiton charter that
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Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol (MCP) focuses on connecting AI models to external tools and data. Google’s Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol aims to standardize communication directly between agents. The AGNTCY collective is building a comprehensive infrastructure suite, envisioning an “Internet of Agents”.
From: Comparing MCP, A2A, and AGNTCY in the AI Agent Ecosystem | by Omar Santos | May, 2025 | Medium.
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Davis build apps that would regularly execute a method called “IsDLEnabledinAD” which stands for “Is Davis Lu enabled in Active Directory”. Once that method failed, his apps would wreak havoc on the systems of his employer.
From: Fired “Kill Switch” Programmer Faces 10 Years In Jail: What Went Wrong? | by Jan Kammerath | Medium.
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At this year’s Davos — or more properly the 54th Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland — it was impossible to escape AI. Every conversation — whether it was about hydrogen production or loyalty schemes, horse training or ethical investment — touched on AI. Central to these discussions was the shift toward “agentic AI,” which has real implications for the world of fintech.
From: A-Commerce Is Coming: Agentic AI And The “Do It For Me” Economy.
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The UK’s stance on encryption and data access could influence its reputation as a tech-friendly hub. The government’s actions may deter tech companies from investing in the UK, potentially slowing down the growth of the country’s digital economy. However, if the UK can strike a balance between security and privacy, it could position itself as a leader in responsible tech innovation. This could attract investments from companies looking to operate in a regulatory environment that values both security and individual rights.
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The answer to that question is that the ownership and disposition of stablecoins, unlike the ownership and distribution of bank deposits, is anonymous. This is a highly valuable feature for those who want to engage in money laundering, extortion, purchase of illegal drugs, and so on. In other words, the only economic reason for stablecoins is to facilitate criminal activity.
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While stablecoins present novel tech, the notion that they will supplant established retail banking relationships is a bunch of “hooky”. Big banks aren’t just watching from the sidelines; they are best positioned to integrate this new rail, much like they’ve absorbed countless payment innovations before.
From: Stablecoins: Bank Strategy – Just Another Rail | Noyes Payments Blog.
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Snippings