I’ve not talked much about bitcoin on the blog lately*, but I have tweeted a lot about it. The key take-away? It’s not going away. People have said bitcoin is dead thousands of times. In fact, there’s a website dedicated to the subject, tracking and tracing the death of bitcoin: Most Recent Death: Cryptocurrencies –…
I read Jamie Dimon’s shareholder letter with interest this week. His message does not read like a shareholder letter from a banker … Banks “are facing extensive competition from Silicon Valley, both in the form of fintechs and Big Tech companies (Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and now Walmart), that is here to stay. As…
I blogged the other day about a $3 trillion spending spree, that I just didn’t see happening. The points I made were: it is the higher income families who have been most comfortable during this lockdown, along with essential workers who have seen no change in pay; but who has savings? most people have had…
Last year, I blogged about the view of Deutsche Bank regarding the future of payments. They produced three reports: Part I: Cash: The Dinosaur Will Survive… For Now Part II: Moving To Digital Wallets And The Extinction Of Plastic Cards Part III: Digital Currencies: The Ultimate Hard Power Tool … that were well worth a…
I am involved in a number of activities, one of which is a not-for-profit called The Portrait Foundation. This is a bit of a pivot, but it’s all about encouraging creativity in children, as it is the human and emotional skills that children should learn today. Children should not be taught all the things machines…
In a fascinating move Venezuela, which has been a basket-case economy ever since Hugo Chavez died in 2013, has dropped their national currency (the bolivar) and any ties to the US dollar, and decided to link their national currency to bitcoin instead. This follows years of hyperinflation where the bolivar – both the old and…
After discussing 2030 and beyond yesterday, I got into an interesting discussion about 2050 and beyond the other day. It started with looking back 25 years and looking forward 25. Looking back 25 years, I realised that discussions of modular, object-oriented, service-based banking is now really old. I was having those discussions back in the…
I was recently asked to deliver a presentation set in the year 2030. It was challenging, but interesting. The session was recorded, you can watch it here … … or, if you don’t want or cannot watch it, then here’s the transcript. A 2030 retrospective [transcript] Hi, I’m Chris Skinner and I have known BAI…
I was told that living purely digitally was a “generational thing” and this was followed more recently by another person saying that my view about video is also a “generational thing”. Getting more and more irritated with the peer pressure to switch video on #Zoom, when I'd rather just talk like a normal conference call…
Three years ago, I blogged about Ant Group’s strategy for AI, Blockchain, Cybersecurity and more. At the time, I noted: Ant Financial have more blockchain patents than any other company in the world and they have the most live blockchain-based production systems. That was in 2018. By the end of 2020, the situation is even…
