Crypto

Dec 21, 2015

Bitcoin versus Derivatives: which one should you worry about? [Infographic]

It puts things in perspective when you realise that bitcoin, right now, is the size of a bacteria sitting on a microbe of a flea’s skin, with the flea sitting on the back of the dog that’s walking with the man who is driving a car along a highway, where the highway cuts across a…

Dec 11, 2015

2015 was the year of the blockchain

The world is still very confused about bitcoin. For example, some press are still writing the old stories about the phenomena as an investment: Man buys $27 of bitcoin, forgets about them, finds they’re now worth $886k. It makes for a good headline, but reinforces the view that bitcoin is just some basketcase currency, rather…

Dec 1, 2015

The Waterfall Effect: why blockchain is still a decade from mainstream

I’m often asked how quickly the changes I outline will take place, and my answer is between 10 and 20 years. The building of the real-time, almost free financial network on the internet using blockchain and mobile will take about a decade at least before it becomes mainstream. Oh, that’s a way off. Can we…

Nov 24, 2015

Things worth reading: 24th November 2015

Things we’re reading today include … Spanish lender BBVA ‘buys 30pc stake in UK bank Atom’ HSBC To Cut 2,000 Jobs In Commercial Bank Unit Bankers are still paid too much – Deutsche Bank’s Cryan Samsung Pay now works with Chase Bank UK ‘failing to stop corrupt money’ UK still a safe haven for dirty…

Nov 20, 2015

Welcome to the Whitechapel Think Tank

At the start of 2015, I was honoured to be invited to join a new group called the Whitechapel Think Tank. The group was initiated by Jeremy Wilson, Vice Chairman of Barclays Corporate Banking and John Edge, Managing Partner, RRVIG. The first meeting called together UK Government, Treasury and the Bank of England, Barclays thought…

Nov 5, 2015

The end of a ‘bank account’ as the digital me takes over

I had a really interesting conversation with Chris Barker, Head of Digital and Engineering for Royal Bank of Scotland. As usual, the conversation moved around data analytics, deep learning, artificial intelligence, building enterprise data systems, separating content from processing, re-platforming the back-end infrastructure and core systems and more. I’ll write more about that stuff tomorrow,…

Nov 2, 2015

What does the blockchain mean for our payment systems?

I don’t know about you, but I’m completely confused about blockchains, sidechains and such like. I admit it. It’s beyond me and, if it’s beyond me, gawd knows how normal folk will make it out. The reason it’s so confusing is that we’ve recently seen the rise of blockchain companies like R3, Ripple, Erethreum, Eris…

Oct 30, 2015

#Money 2020 is to Fintech what #Sibos is to banking

Having attended Sibos since way back when, I was sad to miss it this year. I got double-booked to be in Vegas at the Venetian to keynote with BAI RD2015. Surprisingly, I’ve been back in Vegas (why is it always Vegas, and not Las Vegas?) to speak at Money2020 just 10 days later. Money2020 is…

Oct 9, 2015

What happens if your Digital Identity is compromised?

I’ve been asked the same question twice this week in two separate conferences (one in Vienna, the other in San Francisco): “how will we deal with the corruptive forces when we are all on the net?” The second questioner clarified what she meant by referencing the film Enemy of the State, where Will Smith gets…

Oct 7, 2015

Another example of why banking is not the same as music

I attended a great meeting in Austria with Google yesterday. There were a number of Google Vision presentations and discussions, along with nice vignettes from Accenture and Raiffeisen Bank. One slide particularly caught my attention however, as I’ve just started to see a cycle in Fintech and this slide from Google’s Creative Evangelist (really?) Jeremy…