Chris Skinner's blog

Shaping the future of finance

Future

The Finanser’s Week: 30th June – 6th July 2025

This week’s main blog discussions include … Designing our next banknotes: Notey McNoteFace? The Bank of England launched a platform yesterday for anyone to suggest who should be on Britain’s next generation of banknotes. Here’s the verbatim: As we begin to design the next series of banknotes, we invite you to share your views on potential…

Designing our next banknotes: Notey McNoteFace?

The Bank of England launched a platform yesterday for anyone to suggest who should be on Britain’s next generation of banknotes. Here’s the verbatim: As we begin to design the next series of banknotes, we invite you to share your views on potential themes. Our banknotes have celebrated notable historical figures since 1970, when William Shakespeare…

Everything you do today will be forgotten tomorrow

“All the work I’ve done in my life will be obsolete in a few years.”  Steve Jobs This statement is pretty fundamental to life as we know it. Everything you do is worth nothing tomorrow. It is only worth something today. “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift, that’s why…

If you’re Wise, London has lost its shine

There are many fintechs I follow closely: Stripe, Adyen, Klarna, Nubank, Ant Group to name just a few. London and the UK in general has been at the centre of all of this, and is home to almost 30 fintech unicorns, with many more rising. The thing is that, as these firms mature, things change….

Jamie Dimon on AI, regulators, leadership and stuff

You may not have spotted it but Jamie Dimon, the CEO and Chair of JPMorgan, who was dressed down in t-shirt and jeans, made a recent appearance at a tech summit on AI organised by Databricks. The 40-minute interview is over here on YouTube, and took the form of a fireside chat with Ali Ghodsi,…

Are you fit to lead your bank if you don’t understand tech?

I would love to walk into a bank’s boardroom with my opening slide explaining: “Step confidently into the future of Web3 with Zond, a quantum-resistant Layer-1 blockchain* engineered to transcend today’s security limitations and safeguard your dApps, from DeFi protocols to NFT marketplaces, while powering the next generation of smart contracts in tomorrow’s digital economy.”…

A Utopian or Dystopian future?

I often write about Trekonomics, and how our future world might play out based upon a Utopian or Dystopian future. In a Utopian future, Gene Rodenberry – the creator of Star Trek – envisaged humans exploring space to improve humanity. Star Trek is a Utopian future without money, where people trade on the basis of…

Our Sentient Future

Ten years ago, I was honoured to be invited to the Next Web conference in the Netherlands where I delivered a keynote about sentient banking. The idea is that the bank knows more about your lifestyle and living than you or your partner does. A decade later, thanks to Agentic AI and imminent AGI, we…

Is the creator of the iPhone going to kill the iPhone?

There are hundreds of articles online about “the death of” something, maybe thousands. I’ve written several of them covering everything from the death of cards (debit and credit) and keyboards to the end of branches, cash, banks and more but they are all still here, so let’s not expect their expiration to be too fast….

CBDCs, Stablecoins and Crypto: which will win?

I’m discussing a lot about digital currencies these days, and the future of CBDCs, Stablecoins and Crypto. The conversation generally goes along the lines of central banks issuing digital currencies is really unnecessary. No one wants them and no one trusts them. The whole thing is just a scam for governments to track and trace…