Regulation

It seems to be a week of guest columns, but that’s what happens when you find interesting things online and in your network. Today’s guest is Piotr Jan Pietrzak, Director of International Development at BLIK, the innovative Polish payment system. For followers of my blog, you may remember that I wrote about PEPSI two years…

I was reminded the other day of a quote by Ronald Reagan: “If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.” He said this in the 1980s about the government’s view of the economy, but let’s apply it to cryptocurrencies. Initially irrelevant but now mainstream, many…

Jason Butcher, CEO of CoinPayments, posted this picture on LinkedIn the other day: I like it. The roots of innovation are in policies. The core of innovation is in the tree trunk’s technologies. The product of innovation is from enabling policies and technologies. True. Except it doesn’t work that way. The way it really works is…

I’m not sure if anyone noticed but yesterday was the day that Europe voted not to ban bitcoin. It’s been bubbling for a while, as the EU developed a new Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) framework to protect EU citizens who invest in such assets. In many ways, it’s a good thing as, once a…

So I blog about money laundering and state versus individual, and find two interesting threads that relate to both. First, if you’re a libertarian then think again. The state is going to crackdown. From ZDNet: Cybercriminals managed to launder at least $8.6 billion worth of cryptocurrency in 2021, according to a new report from blockchain…

NatWest, formerly Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), is a good example of a bank with rubbish IT. This was illustrated when I spotted the headline: NatWest fined $300 million for money laundering. They didn’t do the money laundering, but a number of accounts – specifically a jeweller, Fowler Oldfield – did. How did this happen?…

One of my regular rants is that, even with all of this innovation and disruption with technology, no one has really reinvented banking and finance. The nearest we get are companies like Ant Group, PayTM, NuBank and a few others who are offering truly differentiated financial services, but the majority are just sorting out what…

I’ve been watching the headlines related to Joe Biden’s pick for the head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). OCC is an interesting department, as it can issue national bank charters for US banks, and often runs into trouble. By way of example, under the previous Administration, the OCC tried to…

I haven’t blogged much about my friends from Hangzhou (China) lately, as it is all in a state of flux, but what I can say is that the will of the people – President Xi – appears to be strong. If you haven’t seen the latest nuance, Ant Group are now sharing customer data with…

Some years ago, I regularly talked about bankers being criminals. It’s not a popular theme with the banking community but, a bit like a genius, bankers walk that line between good and bad. Genius’s walk the line between amazing and mad. It’s a fine line. Thing is that there are bad bankers. There are bankers…