Banks could be dinosaurs and some of them know it

I have bias. I admit it. I have a certain proclivity to be nice to people who hire me, so this is an upfront statement of subjectivity. I am not objective. Nevertheless, there are certain companies who warm my heart. They tend to be young, …

Data is the new currency

There’s a constant buzz about disruption, which kind of sounds like destruction to me. We have to realize that no one is going to destruct or even possibly disrupt banks. No one. It has not happened in my lifetime of working with technology in banks, …

The long and winding road … to the blockchain

I still talk a lot about blockchain, distributed ledgers, cryptocurrencies and more, but often feel it’s falling on deaf ears. The price of bitcoin flies around in the $7,000 a coin bracket, having risen from a tenth of that amount a year ago; and many …

Why distributed ledgers aren’t working (yet)

I spent a day facilitating a series of roundtable discussions focused upon distributed ledger technologies (DLT). I realised that there’s a lot of confusion around the subject. Hell, even I’m confused most of the time even after dedicating hours to the subject. When is a …

Why Nations Fail

I was recently at a Capital Markets conference in Turkey where the main first day keynote speaker is Professor James A. Robinson from the University of Chicago and co-author of Why Nations Fail, a book that changed thinking about what makes for successful countries and what …

Introducing BANKEX

I’m involved in quite a lot of start-ups, ICOs and funds these days, and recently started a mini-series of interviews with them, as I think it will be of interest to readers of my blog. In the third of this series, I’m interviewing Igor Khmel, CEO …

The latest news headlines …

HSBC closes Marine Le Pen bank account – The Guardian
French far-right leader says she and Front National are victims of ‘banking fatwa’ after Société Générale closes party’s accounts Marine Le Pen , the leader of France’s Front National, has claimed that she and her party are victims of a “banking fatwa” after HSBC closed a bank account she had