Cross-Border Payments
With the talk of PayPal issuing a stablecoin, the idea of cheapening cross-border payments is bound to come up again. But it’s not really about crossing borders, it’s a little more complex than that....
Category: fintech
CBDCs – Asking the Hard Questions
I’ve been following along the CBDC narrative for a number of years. It has been fun watching how the talking points have rapidly evolved. CBDCs seem to be getting closer to reality, driven by...
Money, Programmable Money and Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC)
Note: This article was first published on 19 Aug 2020 on the OpenNodes blog, republished here with permission. The greatest trick played on modern society is calling a whole bunch of different instruments with...
The New Libra Coin – An Unofficial Explainer
I’ve been looking at the design of the new Libra coin (LBR) in the updated Libra Whitepaper. Here’s what I think the differences are between this new “synthetic” coin and the previous iteration of...
Three currency wars, not one
This short blog post describes three different types of currency wars that seem to be happening at the moment. The phrase “currency wars” is not new – typically is has referred to deliberate devaluation...
Tokens: Shares with Benefits
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...
Tokenisation – Innovation in Capital Markets
Here’s what I think is going on with digital assets and security tokens and why it’s the most exciting thing going on in finance right now. There are two parallel streams of innovation: A...
Who legally owns all the shares? Not you.
In this post I explore how legal title to publicly listed shares works in Hong Kong, the USA, and Singapore. Then I relate this to tokens recorded on blockchains.
Banking When the Bank is Shut – Token Maximalism
In this post I describe why freeing financial assets from the books of custodians and returning control of them to their owners could create significant benefits to an economy. This brings together concepts from traditional finance, cryptocurrencies, and enterprise blockchains.
The Basics of Bitcoins and Blockchains
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. It is available on Amazon.
