How North Korea stole $1.5 billion of ETH
As Donald Trump orders creation of a strategic cryptocurrency reserve for the USA, North Korea is working hard to hack it. This is demonstrated by the biggest theft of all time – $1.5 billion – by the North Korean Lazarus Group from Bybit. How could this happen? Well, Chainalysis breaks it down nicely into a step-by-step…

The crypto rollercoaster
It is a wild ride with cryptocurrencies. Rising rapidly with Trump’s presidential campaign – after all, he is the crypto President! – things have gone south badly in the last week. It’s kind of that crescendo from zero to hero to zero again. The rises and falls in cryptocurrency values are a real rollercoaster. For…

Why are CBDCs not working?
After many years we have had many discussions of many countries and many banks talking about launching many central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). Today, only three countries have a live CBDC: the Bahamas, Jamaica and Nigeria. Doesn’t that feel a bit strange? Well, most governments are experimenting with CBDCs and SWIFT, to retain their control…

What is the next big thing?
A quantum financial system, or QFS for short Maybe it’s the way my feeds are set up, but every day seems like a headline about cryptocurrency and AI these days. Take my daily things worth reading, and here’s a few examples just from last Monday. On crypto: Trump orders crypto working group to draft new…

Who wants payments on X?
As a long-term and dedicated user of facebook and twitter since the 2000s, it is weird to find that, today, they are no longer useful tools. The feeds are now stacked with Mark Zuckerberg updates, Musk propaganda and worse. The only tool that’s still useful is LinkedIn, although there are issues there too. So it…

You can take a16z out of the UK, but you cannot take the UK out of a16z
Marc Andreessen announced that their office in London, opened only two years ago, would shut down and its got everyone talking. Is London finished? Is the UK’s claim of being a great tech economy over? Will it bring down the government? Well, there are differing views. Many believe it is due to the new Trump…

Things worth reading: 24th January 2025
Things we’re reading today include … Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Financial Technology – The White House Trump Issues Executive Order to Boost Cryptocurrency Industry – The New York Times Trump orders crypto working group to draft new regulations, explore national stockpile | Reuters Davos 2025: Is the cryptocurrency era about to begin? | World…
Big Tech wants Big Gov to protect them (help them make trillions)
On Monday, the crypto-president of America takes office. Bearing in mind that I’ve said several times he will be the crypto-President it is interesting that, in the last few weeks, he will be more than this. He will be the Big Tech President. Here is why. We live in such interesting times. Digitalisation has creeped…

Are you really a smart contract?
Some years ago, I wrote a paper for SUERF. What’s SUERF? SUERF stands for Société Universitaire Européenne de Recherches Financières, which is French for the European University of Financial Research. It is a non-profit, non-partisan organisation that aims to promote discussion and understanding of financial and monetary issues. All well and good. The reason for…

Intelligent Money: Our Future Is Where We Do Not Think About Money, As Our Money Thinks For Us
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