Humour

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…

About a year ago, Barb MacLean started a fun FinTech playlist where, each week, she picks out the top FinTech comments of the week and adds a music track to the column. If you’re not aware of it, subscribe here. It made me think, whilst out for a walk the other day, about creating a…

In our final FU before Christmas, we made it a jolly one and, before you watch this week’s show, how about a little quiz for yourself? The fastest growing service ever launched achieved over a million users in five days. Who or what is it? Central banks cannot go bankrupt. However what made the Belgian…

I grew up with Mills & Boon, where old ladies wrote sexy stories about men on horses who would rip off the bodice of a young woman and deliver his sword. These days it seems to be Hello! that fills this vacuum, with Princess Kate flying on an economy flight and described as such: Who…

I am regularly asked: what’s the next big thing? Answer: there isn’t one. There are just all the things we can see today that are building to the next big thing. What’s out there today? Web3; the metaverse; cryptocurrencies, digital currencies and CBDCs; artificial intelligence plus; blockchain, smart contracts and distributed ledger technologies in reality;…

I loved the show Frasier back in the day. The pithy, pathetic but pure and pleasing ways of Niles and Mr. Crane warmed the cockles of my heart. One of my favourite episodes was Door Jam. Niles and Frasier had been aspiring to join the elite club. Here’s what happened: Frasier opens a letter and…

Today marks the day that celebrates the Queen being the monarch of Britain for the last 70 years, She was crowned on June 2 1952. To celebrate this event, the Daily Mail has published 70 facts about money which puts her reign in perspective from a financial view. Worth a share: Cash The Queen was 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…

In a surprise announcement the world’s most valuable bank, PJ Margon Choice (PJMC), has announced that their long-standing leader, John Demon, is standing down to be replaced by Tim Blomfjord, the founder of Mongo. In the press release there are some interesting nuances as Demon states: “I realised that now is the time to leave…

We had a big debate in our NFI group the other day about whether technology is improving our lives or making things much more complicated. It used to be that you could walk around without a mobile or laptop and life wasn’t bad. Today, we have to have WiFi and the network 24*7 or we…