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. It is clear that there…
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 be difficult as the question…
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 is pursuing a three-pronged approach…
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 of the whole thing in…
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 something new. Enjoy … Terminology…
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 of testosterone fueled animals that…
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, a Meffy award in October…
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 with that statement, but the…
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 economists. NNNNOOOOOOO!!!!! Royal Bank of…
