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…
I’m watching the news. We’re all locked down. Britain just introduced £5,000 fines for unnecessary travel whilst the TV correspondents interview their counterparts in Dubai who say that they get massive fines for not wearing face masks. What is going on? It’s a really weird world where you are punished for going outside. In some…
The two perennial debates we have in banking are a future that is cashless and branchless. Cash is going down, but is not eradicated; branches are closing fast, but still here. Are they necessary? I raise this as I got two reports from strong and trusted sources in the past week, one that said branches…
Building on this discussion, I got into an online argument with someone who accused my views of being generational, e.g. old people want face-to-face, young people don’t care. They argued that sex will be better in virtual worlds and no one needs to go out anymore. They believe we can live in a purely digital…
I got a couple of reports in my inbox at the same time about the same thing: cybercrime. Putting this in context personally, I got an email from British Airways saying that SITA had been hacked. Dear Customer, We take the protection of your data very seriously (really?). We have been notified of a data…
Bloomberg wrote the other day that “consumers in the world’s largest economies amassed $2.9 trillion in extra savings during Covid-related lockdowns, a vast cash hoard that creates the potential for a powerful recovery from the pandemic recession”. I was pretty riled about this paragraph and headline, as it’s a total mis-hit imho. First who has savings?…
