Blockchain

I promise to shut up about African developments after this post, for a while anyway, but there’s a definite feeling that Africa may set the standards for a cheaper, easier financial system in the future, as blogged last week.  In fact, when I was asked about Africa as a continent …

ValueWeb makes the contention that you cannot have an internet of things without a real-time and cheap internet of value.  A core part of this is focused upon building a cheap shared ledger structure for digital identity and digital currencies and guess what?  That cheap shared ledger is most likely going …

I regularly attend conferences where several themes crop up around disruption – that word we hate – disintermediation, and the end of banking as we know it.  The problem is I’ve heard it for 30 years and it hasn’t happened … yet.  Will it?  Let’s have a look. The first …

I know many of my twitter followers have seen this news already, but here’s the official announcement of the partnership we are creating with Life.SREDA in Singapore. SINGAPORE-BASED LIFE.SREDA LAUNCHES $100 MILLION BLOCKCHAIN INVESTMENT FUND LONDON, APRIL 18 2016 Life.SREDA, a venture capital fund based in Singapore, has partnered with …

Like a few other guys, I fly around the world almost non-stop. When people ask me where I live, I say British Airways lounge, and George Clooney’s Up in the Air looks like a novice to me.   Yet, even with all of that experience, you now and again encounter an …

After sharing my favourite white papers about blockchain and fintech a month ago, I got a bit of a deluge of offers of more papers, so here’s this month’s update.  If you don’t like to read about them though, you can always listen to this excellent podcast interview with Chris Skinner, …

Flying back from Oslo after the SWIFT Nordics Conference, I was reflecting on the blockchain discussion we had.  I chaired the discussion which was titled: “Blockchain: from hype to real world applications” and was joined by Vytautas Karalevicius from Spectro Finance, Lasse Meholm of Nordea and Colin Kwan from Magnr.  …

We had a great debate at the Financial Services Club last night between digital money sage Dave Birch of Consult Hyperion, and all things bitcoin master Jon Matonis. The debate was about whether blockchain is faster and cheaper, and it was clear from the start that this was going to …

A friend of mine at JPM received an internal email the other day.  It was broadcast to all staff and, as it’s all about blockchain, thought I would share with y’all.  It goes like this … Innovative blockchain technology may provide links to improve client experience (Feb. 09, 2016) J.P. Morgan …

There’s been a large number of white papers produced recently about Fintech and Blockchain, so I decided to collate the most notable ones here.  All links are to file downloads and if I’ve missed any, please let me know. Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System (9 pages, October 2008) The origins …

There are a few friends in my network whose opinions I respect and Professor Michael Mainelli, Chairman of Z/Yen Group is one of those.  He has kindly given me a really insightful paper into blockchain technologies and terminologies.  For the uninitiated, it will enlighten and for the initiated, it will offer …

There’s lots of discussions about financial markets and their different structures.  Retail and commercial banking are likened to farms, whilst investment banking is a jungle.  Retail and commercial banking have dull products likened to chickens.  Look after them and they produce regular and predictable results.  Investment banking is just full …

I don’t normally blog about a particular start-up or specific company, but today’s an exception as there’s a company that’s caught my eye because it’s appearing everywhere.  Literally every tech show I’m attending, they’re there and winning awards.  This company won €30,000 in the BBVA Open Talent Competition last September, …

I just discovered Thomson Reuters predictions for 2016 with two related to Fintech that stand out: There is no Uber of Finance Most Fintech start-ups will partner with or be acquired by banks Interesting.  I have blogged before that the Uber of Finance is the blockchain, so maybe don’t agree …

I’ve been wondering how this year would start and so far the answer seems badly.  What with David Bowie’s death on the same day as I catch man-flu, could it get any worse?  Well yes.  I wake up to the headline: Sell everything ahead of stock market crash, say RBS …