Chris Skinner's blog

Shaping the future of finance

Introducing the Dimonsaur

For the past decade, Jamie Dimon has regularly been decrying bitcoin as a scam. Here’s a few of his quotes: Jamie Dimon tells Davos that Bitcoin is a ‘pet rock’ that does nothing—except help with fraud and money laundering Jamie Dimon lashes out against crypto: ‘If I was the government, I’d close it down’ JPMorgan…

Are fintech firms friends or foes?

I just received an interesting report released in January by ClearBank and Celent, looking at how electronic money and electronic payment institutions (EMIs and EPIs) work with banks and the financial ecosystem. The findings indicate that these start-up companies fill the gaps where incumbent banks feared to tread, such as offering crypto clearing services. John…

The Willy Wonka World of AI

Is AI a good or bad thing? As I write my daily blog, I’ve realised that it seems to ask a question almost every single day. By way of example, just checkout my blog index and read the titles of the entries. A few recent examples: Is technology making our lives better or worse? Is…

The Finanser’s Week: 26th February – 3rd March 2024

This week’s main blog discussions include … Is a cashless world OK? There has been a movement over the past years to create a cashless world. Is that OK? It’s debatable. One of the big things about cash is that it represents society. In Europe, the euro notes mark major landmarks; in the UK, the…

How does cashless work in the gig economy?

One of the biggest challenges in moving to cashless is that there are a lot people who rely on cash. I hate it when you go to a restaurant and pay by card, because there’s nowhere to leave a cash tip. Sure, there’s a service charge, but will that be given to your host and…

Is a cashless world OK?

There has been a movement over the past years to create a cashless world. Is that OK? It’s debatable. One of the big things about cash is that it represents society. In Europe, the euro notes mark major landmarks; in the UK, the bank notes recognise major figures from Britain’s history; in the USA, legends…

When the network fails, what do you do?

I was driving to pick up my dog the other day from his kennel stay. We had been away on a holiday and the dog was booked into his doggie hotel. Halfway there, and being purely reliant on digital maps, the maps stopped navigating. Maybe I lost the signal or maybe there was no signal…

Why is Coca-Cola important?

It’s a little known fact that Coca-Cola was launched as a way to relieve the anxiety of change, but it’s true. Coca-Cola’s unique formula was developed to replace the addiction of Victorians to morphine and opium. The question is: why were Victorians addicted to morphine and opium? The answer is: the pace of change. Victorians…

Have we created Generative Finance yet?

Question: Have we created Generative Finance yet? Answer: No. Everyone has been talking about Generative AI for the past year or so, particularly after ChatGPT and OpenAI hit the market … and yet a lot finance is still really dumb. Where is the intelligence in finance? And, when we do get AI integrated with finance,…