Chris Skinner's blog

Shaping the future of finance

Digital Bank

Why you should not compare SWIFT and blockchains

I’ve been talking a lot about stablecoins of late and, in a timely fashion, Jas Shah at Fintech: Under the Hood has just landed a great primer all about such things. A Stablecoin Primer: Money for the Digital Age TL;DR Quick Take Stablecoins have evolved from early crypto-pegged concepts to fiat-backed instruments like USDC and…

Is #Tether a #SWIFT challenger?

As blogged yesterday, the GENIUS Act can open the doors for closed-loop networks using stablecoins that circumvent the traditional four-pillar model of issuer, acquirer, merchant and processor. Yes, it could save billions in interchange fees, but there’s another movement in stablecoins trying to change the world. This one is trying to get rid of SWIFT,…

Will the upstarts replace the incumbents?

Is it just me or has the whole digital currency space become hot, hot, hot? Every five minutes, I see stuff about CBDCs – who needs them?; cryptocurrencies – who’s using them?; and stablecoins – what’s that all about? The last one is intriguing me the most at the moment, as I’ve said for years:…

Banking is what we do … but technology is how we do it

A friend turned to me the other day and said: Chris, you always talk about the future and what’s going to change … why don’t you talk about what is not going to change? The question stopped me in my tracks, but it cuts to the core of strategic choices. Start with the things that…

Last century processes in the digital age

I’ve just had two requests for notarised ID documents: one from my accountant and another from a bank. So, I went to the notary to get notarised and they said no. It reminds me of an Amy Winehouse song: I tried to get me a notary and they said no, no, no. The problem arose…

Control the bot, control the relationship

Building on my recent blogs about AI, the AI you, your digital twin and the way the digital world is becoming its own world, I was reminded of the film Transcendence. You probably know this film but, just in case you don’t, the idea is that an AI scientist uploads their mind to the network…

When you have an AI twin, what are you doing?

I just wrote something that was pretty ambiguous when a friend asked what my latest speech is all about. The answer? “Becoming an AI-native bank – digital is so last century – and digital trust in a deep fake world (digital ID)”. The answer is accurate, but I just wrote off digital and then talked…

Yes, you can build a bank from your bedroom (part two)

I was going to change this, but am reposting a LinkedIn update from Leonid Bashlykov, who heads up Crypto at Revolut because it further clarifies the blog I posted last week. The post was titled: Launch a bank from your bedroom which, unsurprisingly, gained a lot of criticism from good luck with that to wait till…

Robots are AI in reality

As everyone who reads me regularly will know, I’m a big sci-fi fan and have blogged regularly about Star Trek versus Star Wars and their view of money. A dystopian or utopian future? Money is the core – Chris Skinner’s blog Today, I’m going off on another trip as I’ve just got hooked on Alien:…

AI is bigger than the smartphone

Twenty years ago, four critical things happened: cloud computing became mainstream; the smartphone was launched; Satoshi Nakamoto released the bitcoin whitepaper; and the global financial crisis killed all trust in traditional financial institutions. All of these things pretty much happened at the same time. Twenty years later, a multi-trillion dollar world has appeared on the…