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This week’s main blog discussions include … The rocky road of cryptocurrencies During May, the floor fell out of the cryptocurrency markets with many losing their life savings. You can question why they had their life savings invested in cryptocurrencies in the first place, but what made the price fall so far, so fast? The…

There are rules and regulations, and then there is leeway and dodges. It’s all down to how the rules are viewed and how they are regulated that counts. This is the big debate in the UK right now. Party animal Boris’s government has received many penalties for breaking the Covid restrictions they themselves created, whilst…

For most of my time working with banks, regulators were about clipping banks’ wings to suit the market. Today they are all about opening markets and enabling innovation. Jason Butcher, an entrepreneur and a friend, recently posted a picture of a tree on LinkedIn and likened it to today’s financial technology world. The diagram depicted the roots…

I just received an interesting report from Simon Kucher & Partners, a marketing strategy consulting firm, about Neobanks. It starts with some basic stats: There are 400 neobanks around the world with over a billion clients Over 50 neobanks launched in 2021 The main focus of Neobanking is UK, Sweden, USA, Brazil and South Korea The…

I’ve been looking at buying a small property using my crypto savings. Practically, this creates an interesting dilemma as the seller wants the money in his bank account, whereas I’m trying to persuade him to sell with a payment to a crypto wallet. He doesn’t trust crypto wallets, and has never used them. So, what’s…

During May, the floor fell out of the cryptocurrency markets with many losing their life savings. You can question why they had their life savings invested in cryptocurrencies in the first place, but what made the price fall so far, so fast? The answer is a combination of things, the core of which is a…

This week’s main blog discussions include … I just woke up to my cancelled culture Growing up, my brother used to try hard to persuade me to attend The Motor Show. He is a petrolhead and the show would be the highlight of his year. I went once. My lasting memory is almost every stand…

Growing up, my brother used to try hard to persuade me to attend The Motor Show. He is a petrolhead and the show would be the highlight of his year. I went once. My lasting memory is almost every stand had women who were dressed in a sexy way to entice the men onto the…

I stumbled across the human library the other day. I’d never heard of it, but the idea is that instead of borrowing a book, you borrow a human and listen to their life story. It’s a conversation over a table, and you learn how they became who they are. You sit with them for thirty…

I was thinking about cryptocurrencies and the fact that most of us have heard of bitcoin and Ethereum. You may have heard of Dogecoin and Shiba Inu. Maybe you even know Cordana and Polygon. But do you know about UNI and Potcoin? Or Putincoin and Trumpcoin? What about Whoppercoin or Catcoin? It seems like madness…