Crypto

There’s so much rubbish being written about cryptocurrencies, ICOs, blockchain and shared ledgers at the moment that I’m almost tempted to give up on it all. 1 in 10 ICOs is a scam, blockchain is not the same thing as a shared ledger, and no, I can’t tell you if your Grandma should invest your…

I’m making a presentation on cybersecurity this week at our Nordic Finance Innovation meetings. This meant preparing a few new slides from scratch as I don’t have a set deck for cybercrime, and sat and started ideas just as the news dropped about the Equifax breach. You’ll all know about this by now, but over…

I don’t usually tell people that I’m a qualified expert in insurance as it’s not relevant, but I’m mentioning it today as I just presented at a private insurance event. There are lots of interesting nuances in insurance. You and I probably think it’s just that once a year renewal of our auto policy, or…

Gemuel Franco over at Fried.com shared a great infographic on bitcoin with me, so I thought I should share it with you. Checkout the history below and note that the original exchange rate of 1,309.03 bitcoins to a dollar would now equate to circa $5.5 million. Not a bad investment.

Some people talk about FinTech disruption and how payments and banking is being attacked and unbundled by start-ups, but we often look at banking too simplistically. Global banks and investment banks are far more complex creatures than their high street counterparts, which is why we’ve seen far less disruption in corporate, commercial and wholesale banking…

There are a few exchanges I use for trading cryptocurrencies such as Kraken and Coinbase, so I was interested to receive this email from Coinbase last Friday: Dear Coinbase Customer, We are contacting you to make you aware of recent developments in a number of proposals for technical changes to Bitcoin. All BTC stored on…

I was interviewed by UBS’s wealth management team a month ago, when the bitcoin bubble was in full bloom. The price had exploded, tripling in a month. Now that it has burst, the interview seems quite prescient so, here it is … UBS interview with Chris Skinner Cryptocurrencies – digital currencies based on encryption –…

I’m boarding a flight yesterday and murfing (mobile surfing).  Flicking between Facebook apps, twitter, bank account, BBC news and more.  Suddenly I spot a new ICO – Initial Coin Offering – for a new bank.  From Wikipedia: “An initial coin offering (ICO) is a means of crowdfunding the release of a new cryptocurrency. Generally, tokens for the new cryptocurrency are…

I’m being asked this a lot as the value of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have increased ten-fold in the past few weeks.  Good for those who have some.  Bemusing for those who don’t.  There are a range of factors driving the rise in cryptocurrency prices, particularly the craze for Initial Coin Offering (ICOs).  An ICO…

I’ve regularly got into confrontations with digital currency people, especially those who are believers in bitcoin, by saying things they don’t like to hear.  First it was my comment that you can’t have money without government.  They believe the currency is beyond control because it exists on a global network.  My contention is that money…