Chris Skinner's blog

Shaping the future of finance

Most banks will disappear (Part Two)

Yesterday, I stated that most banks will not disappear. Today, I’m in the other side of the ring and saying that most banks will disappear. They won’t disappear as banks. They will just disappear as something we think about. Banking will become invisible. The industry likes to talk about embedded banking, a term that is…

Most banks will disappear (Part One)

Five years ago, Gartner published a report stating that 80 percent of financial institutions would disappear by 2030. Most banks will be made irrelevant by 2030 – Gartner Within 12 years’ time, 80% of financial firms will either go out of business or be rendered irrelevant by new competition, changing customer behaviour and advancements in…

You need balance … it’s in our DNA

I love it when there’s a case study about animal behaviours. Bearing in mind that apes are our closest relations, when scientists try experiments to see how they behave towards money, it is fascinating. This is something I’ve blogged about many times before, with a favourite example being the Capuchin monkeys who discovered that they…

What if we don’t want to be empowered?

I just had a new dawning, but maybe not. The realisation was that the decentralisation of everything – finance, money, government, service, chat – is all down to technology. Centralisation of everything is all down to physicality. It’s like the dichotomy between the State, which is analogue, and Society, which is now digital. This is…

Myths about money

Over the years, I’ve learned a lot about money. I’ve learned about its creation, usage and operation. I’ve learned that it wasn’t invented to replace bartering. I’ve learned a lot. Here’s a few facts about money … The Barter Economy was a myth We believe that money replaced bartering with each other, but that’s just…

The Finanser’s Week: 20th February – 26th February 2023

This week’s blog discussions included … What has the government ever done for us? It made me smile when watching Billions during an exchange between Chuck Rhoades (the Attorney General) and a bitcoin miner in Episode 1 of Series 5 (nerdy). Bitcoin miner: “What’s the dollar backed by, since we went off the gold standard?”…

This week’s FU!

Zelle might be big (in America at least) but could our Quizmaster Rik become an even bigger sensation as his singing streak continues with Japanese Whiskey lubricated lungs? We also got a brief lesson on how to assess the future success of any new technology from The Other Guy and The Wise Guy shared his…

Make My Money Matter – the pressure increases on banks

I’ve been subscribed to Make My Money Matter for a while. It’s a movement started by Comic Relief co-founder Richard Curtis – he of Four Weddings and a Funeral fame – and is trying to put pressure on pension funds to influence financial institutions to only invest in things that protect our future, as in…

The measure of success in everything today is … data enrichment

I’ve said that my old bank is deficient for some time. Specifically, no alerts of transactions so I have to open the app to see when something is paid; no detail of transactions, just something like ABC CORP TX 3201984 on my statement; zero detail about where I’m spending money, just a date and a…

What has the government ever done for us?

It made me smile when watching Billions during an exchange between Chuck Rhoades (the Attorney General) and a bitcoin miner in Episode 1 of Series 5 (nerdy). Bitcoin miner: "What's the dollar backed by, since we went off the gold standard?" Legislator: "Roads, the military, industry, the credit of the federal government, that sort of…