Grid

With Jack Ma disappeared and Alibaba and Ant Group possibly nationalised, China’s government is dictating its future. A bit like my What’s happening in Hong Kong blog – the most read one of 2020 – I now have a Where’s Jack Ma blog. I’m tracking and reading lots online about his disappearance, with many saying he…

The main blog discussions this week include … Happy New Year 2021! Here’s what’s going to happen … After a year where every day felt like Groundhog day – same shit, different day (SSDD) – I’m hoping that 2021 will be different – different shit, every day (DSED). I’m not complaining, but 2020 was pretty…

Andreesson Horowitz’s Chris Dixon shared a presentation about crypto and blockchain during the holiday break.  Interesting, but is it good? Not sure, but I’m not going to make big predictions about tokenisation, regulation and the price of bitcoin in January 2022. Instead, I asked Janis Legler  to do this. Janis is Chief Product Officer…

I was looking for any decent reports on the big tech trends for 2021 and first of all  stumbled upon an interesting report from 2017. This was for the World Economic Forum, who surveyed 800 experts on their views of the key technologies for the future, and found seven major areas to focus upon: Robots…

As regular readers will know, I quite like Global Processing Services (GPS), the payments processing firm behind many of the leading FinTechs I deal with. So, when they sent me their views of 2021 trends for FinTech and payments, how could I resist? Enjoy! Four Predictions for Fintech and Payments in 2021 by Richard Hodgson,…

There are lots and lots and lots of reports and predictions for 2021 in banking. The one I liked the best is the report from Standard & Poor’s (S&P, see end of blog) about the impact of the crisis in 2020 and the outlook for banking in 2021. It’s a difficult discussion, as the only…

After a year where every day felt like Groundhog day – same shit, different day (SSDD) – I’m hoping that 2021 will be different – different shit, every day (DSED). I’m not complaining, but 2020 was pretty awful. Some loved it – more time at home with family – but many hated it – more…

I said I was on holiday, which I am, but noticed a very nice round up of 2020’s biggest Fintech news stories by Abraham A. Tachjian, who writes at ATonFinTech.com. I felt it was a good way to end the year and Abraham kindly said yes, I can share it so … enjoy!   The…

These are my favourite seasonal ecards to wish you a happy holidays, and here’s to a great next year (where was 2020? did it happen?) … From Tom Fishburne, The Marketoonist From Matt Cartoons From Dave Birch From George Lucas

This is my last blog of 2020, so I thought I would look back at the year with a personal view. A terrible year. A year of locked down loneliness for many. In my case, it’s been hard. I am used to being in a different country every other day, flying the world. Since February,…