This week’s main blog discussions include …
Innovators, Imitators and Idiots
Warren Buffett observed years ago that every market eventually sorts itself into three groups: innovators, imitators and idiots. It is deliberately unfair but, like most good aphorisms, it contains more than a grain of truth. The innovators invent something genuinely new. The imitators wait until the innovators have proved there is money to be made and…
Tokenized deposits: Old wine in new bottles?
I just came across a useful paper on the SUERF website: Tokenised deposits: old wine in new bottles? by Alistair Milne of Loughborough University The paper focuses upon whether tokenised bank deposits are actually doing anything new? His answer is sometimes, but nowhere near as much as the hype suggests. The starting point is the…
Who does your algorithm serve?
I recently asked a simple question on LinkedIn. Ever since Elon Musk bought Twitter, has X become less useful? The responses were fascinating, not because everyone agreed, but because almost nobody talked about the technology. Instead, they talked about how the platform made them feel. One person wrote that they had built their career on…
How PayPal, Netflix, X, Facebook and YouTube lost their way
There was a time when the biggest technology companies knew exactly what they were. Twitter was where the world talked. Facebook was where friends connected. YouTube was where anyone could broadcast themselves. Netflix was where you watched great television without adverts, schedules or interruptions. PayPal was the easiest way to pay online. Each company had…
How cryptocurrency is developing into trust infrastructure
You’ve been thinking about cryptocurrencies all wrong. Every few months someone declares that cryptocurrency is dead. In fact, there’s a website dedicated to recording every one of those predictions. The latest panic is bitcoin’s price falling below $65,000 and Coinbase reporting weaker revenues. A few months earlier everyone was predicting Bitcoin would hit $200,000.
Chris M Skinner
Chris Skinner is best known as an independent commentator on the financial markets through his blog, TheFinanser.com, as author of the bestselling book Digital Bank, and Chair of the European networking forum the Financial Services Club. He has been voted one of the most influential people in banking by The Financial Brand (as well as one of the best blogs), a FinTech Titan (Next Bank), one of the Fintech Leaders you need to follow (City AM, Deluxe and Jax Finance), as well as one of the Top 40 most influential people in financial technology by the Wall Street Journal's Financial News. To learn more click here...