Chris Skinner's blog

Shaping the future of finance

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The US Treasury’s bid for smart regulation

Innovation vs Illicit Finance: Why the Future of Crypto Compliance is Intelligent The US Treasury just produced an interesting document about digital assets, innovation and criminal activity. It’s well worht a read, so download the report here … but, if you can’t be bothered, here is my view. There is a familiar pattern whenever a new…

We are pretty much branchless and cashless now

Thirty years ago, I wrote a strategy report for NCR, where I was working at the time, saying that the future of banking would be branchless and cashless, which was not great news for a company selling cash machines. Now, we live in a world that is nearing branchless and cashless. I’ve written quite a…

The Intelligence Revolution

I just did a webinar sponsored by Xpand IT. Here is a summary: From Physical to Digital to Intelligent: The Third Revolution of Finance Let me start with a simple question. How many of you think we’re living through a period of unprecedented change in finance? We’re not living through change. We’re living through a…

What will money look like in 2050 and beyond?

I wonder what my kids will feel in a financial future of 2050 and beyond. We will probably regale them with stories about using cheques and cash and paper to exchange value. They will probably be amazed that such systems worked, but it’s a bit like me being amazed about how tally sticks worked a…

JPMorgan’s $20 billion bet on AI and digital transformation

  There’s been a lot of talk this week about JPMorgan spending $20 billion on technology in 2026. It sounds huge, and it is, and it’s slightly more than their peer group spend but, bear in mind, this is a bank worth over $800 billion and with revenues of $185 billion, so you need to…

Stripe buying PayPal? Wow!

Two headlines really struck me this morning. The first is that Stripe is now valued at over $150 billion – I’ve been following Stripe’s valuations for over a decade (it was just over $9 billion in 2016) … … and the second is that they are thinking about buying PayPal, which would be immense imho….

The future is right here, right now

In the last day, I’ve been blown away by two developments coming out of China. One is an AI movie sequence that’s only 15 seconds long; the second was the Spring Festival celebration to welcome the New Year of the Fire Horse. If you haven’t seen them, you need to, because both show how technology…

Bored of Jeffrey Epstein? Bear in mind he was a banker … or was he?

I’ve avoided talking about the Epstein files on this blog. The main reason is that it’s appalling how wealth, power and connections can get away with anything they want. The worst part of it, for me, was a report that alleges that Donald Trump watched a 13-year-old girl give birth to a baby girl who…

Is Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, “full of sh*t”?

When the Genius Act was signed off last year by President Trump, I said that it was positioned to keep the dollar as the reserve currency of the world. Now, a new debate arises after Jamie Dimon (Chair of JPMorgan) and Brian Armstrong (CEO, Coinbase) had a spat at Davos. Did you hear about it? Probably…