Category: fintech

Tokens: Shares with Benefits

~ antonylewis2015 ~ Leave a comment

This short post explores some of the additional value that tokenised assets on blockchains can add, over and above pure financial return.

The assets in question could be shares, or bonds, or other financial securities recorded as tokens on blockchains.  Some assets may not even be not regarded as financial securities, due to what they represent and what is promised to the asset holders – these have been described as “utility tokens”.

Today, people typically buy financial securities purely for their financial return.  A bond, loan, or other fixed income product, will give investors some amount of yield, usually commensurate to the amount of risk the investor is taking by providing their money.

Equity may give you slightly more than just a return: perhaps a vote at an annual shareholder meeting.  However, most people don’t care about these votes.  They just care about the share price going up, and dividends, if any.  The crypto community describes this succinctly as #NumberGoUp.

Yet increasingly, tokens are being used creatively to incentivise and delight token holders.

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Banking When the Bank is Shut – Token Maximalism

~ antonylewis2015 ~ 2 Comments

In this post I describe why freeing financial assets from the books of custodians and returning control of them to their owners as tokens could create significant benefits to an economy. This brings together concepts from traditional finance, cryptocurrencies, and enterprise blockchains.

Opening+hours+of+banks
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The Basics of Bitcoins and Blockchains

~ antonylewis2015 ~ 1 Comment

Last December I was approached by a publisher, Mango, who asked me if I would write a book about blockchain technology.  A little nervously, I agreed, and I’m excited to announce the result of six months of effort:

The basics of bitcoins and blockchains - book cover

The Basics of Bitcoins and Blockchains is an essential guide for anyone who needs to learn about cryptocurrencies, ICOs, and business blockchains.  Written in plain English, it provides a balanced and hype-free grounding in the essential concepts behind the revolutionary technology.

I wrote The Basics for an audience of business people, students, practitioners, and those who are simply interested in this technology.  I tried to make it entertaining even for those who are already working in the cryptocurrency or blockchain industry.  For example, did you know:

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The hype around central banks, digital currencies, and blockchains

~ antonylewis2015 ~ 1 Comment
Central banks and blockchain

There has been a lot of hype around central banks, interbank payments, blockchains, and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), but the narrative has become confusing and often misses the point.  What’s going on?  Actually two independent things are being actively explored:

  1. Decentralisation of interbank payment systems
  2. Wider access to digital central bank money (Central Bank Digital Currencies – CBDCs)

I aim to explain them both in this post.

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A Gentle Introduction to Interbank Payment Systems

~ antonylewis2015 ~ 2 Comments

How do banks pay each other?  In most countries, when banks want to transfer money to each other, perhaps upon instruction from a customer, they don’t put bundles of banknotes in vans, they pay each other digitally.  How does this work?

This post is intended as a primer about payment systems and explains correspondent banking, nostros, real time gross settlement (RTGS) systems and deferred net settlement (DNS) systems.  It supports other posts where I discuss decentralisation of these systems using distributed ledgers.

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Interview on Brett King’s Breaking Banks

~ antonylewis2015 ~ Leave a comment

I was honoured to be invited to Brett King’s Breaking Banks podcast to talk about Bitcoins and blockchains with an Asia angle in the “BITCOIN & BLOCKCHAIN IN ASEAN” episode.

Rob Findlay, CEO and founder of Next Money (formerly Next Bank) hosted the conversation, and Marcus Swanepoel, CEO of BitX also shared his insights.

The full audio episode is here and I recommend subscribing to the podcast if you are in to FinTech.  A transcript of the relevant section is below, edited for clarity:

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Disruptive Innovation in FinTech

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How should incumbents, startups, and VCs think about FinTech, disruption, and blockchains?

Over Chinese New Year I read about Professor Clayton Christensen’s fascinating model for identifying and dealing with disruptive innovation, and attempt to summarise it in this post.

Here we learn the differences and dynamics between disruptive innovation, sustaining innovation, and efficiency innovation. Each of them interact with the others, and the appropriate approaches and defence strategies differ. I then provide my own thoughts on how this framework relates to FinTech for incumbents, startups, and venture capitalists.

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