This week’s main blog discussions include …
The TrustWeb: Revisiting the Origins of Moneykind
Ten years ago, I wrote a series of blogs called The Origins of Moneykind. They accompanied the launch of Digital Human and explored a simple question: where does money come from? Looking back a decade later, I’m surprised how little I would change. What I would change is the ending, because we’ve finally begun to…
The strange story of marmots and crypto
Ten years ago on twitter, I kept getting messages from a guy called Preston Byrne about marmots. Marmots are basically the biggest squirrel in the world. Americans also call them woodchucks, although a woodchuck is a specific type of marmot, meaning all woodchucks are marmots, but not all marmots are woodchucks. They are most populous…
Why animals don’t worry about money
Over a cup of tea this morning, looking out into the garden, something struck me. Animals scale through evolution. Humans scale through institutions. Money is the operating system of institutions. It wasn’t a thought I’d expected to have over breakfast. Well, I was watching the birds in my garden. A robin was hopping around looking…
Fiction in real life: the diary of a Ponzi scheme
Crypto has turbo-charged the Ponzi scheme There is something wonderfully predictable about a Ponzi scheme. It invariably begins with an extraordinary opportunity, usually involving a market, technology or investment strategy that is sufficiently complicated to discourage too many questions. It offers returns that make conventional investing look painfully dull, attracts a charismatic promoter who explains…
Crypto: from speculative asset to a new financial system
Something quite important is happening in cryptocurrency, and it is easy to miss if you spend too much time watching the price of bitcoin. For most of crypto’s relatively short history, the discussion has been dominated by price. Bitcoin goes up. Bitcoin crashes. Ethereum rallies. Ethereum collapses. Somebody launches another token. Somebody loses a fortune….
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...