Chris Skinner's blog

Shaping the future of finance

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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 Donald Trump watched a 13-year-old girl give birth to a baby girl who was then…

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…

The big deal is PQC

Hartmut Neven, Founder and Lead of Google Quantum AI, has recently written a critical perspective on securing the “Quantum Era”, alongside his colleague Kent Walker, President of Global Affairs for Google and Alphabet. What do these guys know that you don’t? Perhaps, most critically, the fact that the near-term revolution of computing – quantum –…

Why bank branches still matter

Many have argued for years that branches are dead. Many in the fintech world believe that people don’t need branches. Some think that the pandemic proved that customers can bank fine without them and that many now prefer digital. Wrong. A bit like cash, the pandemic forced a change of behaviour. Less cash was being…

Elon Musk: “I am an alien” #Davos

I just watched The Life of Chuck based upon a story by Stephen King (strongly recommended). Throughout the film, it constantly references Carl Sagan’s Cosmic Calendar. The Cosmic Calendar compresses the 13.8-billion-year history of the universe into a single calendar year, where January 1 is the Big Bang and December 31 is the present*. At…

Is your attitude to money shaped by your genes or your learning?

I’ve been talking with many friends about genetic versus environmental development. Back in the day, this was a big discussion in my Sociology classes. How much of your personality is genetic versus environmentally developed? Is it nature or nurture? This is a question raised regularly by psychologists and researches and, as a father of twin…

Stop “living within a lie”, Mark Carney #Davos

Everyone has been hailing Mark Carney’s speech at Davos as one of the GOAT speeches of the 21st century. It forced me to take out 15 minutes to listen to it, and yes, it is a great speech. Well worth the time. Mark Carney is Prime Minister of Canada, and the former Governor of the…

Quantum computing: a threat or opportunity?

  I often talk about quantum computing and how it could break the encryption keys of our current financial system, including bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. In fact, the first time was seven years ago, when I referred to The Quantum Resistant Ledger. Even way back then, there was a company working on ideas to avoid encryption…

How will we trade with aliens?

Waking up today, I am shocked to see the headlines about aliens wrecking the world’s financial markets. Apparently, various American politicians have kind of confirmed that aliens are real, admitting to an 80-year cover-up including Dulce Base in New Mexico and Area 51, Nevada. The reason this came up today is that, if confirmed true,…