Crypto

I received a really interesting report from the law firm DLA Piper last week. The report is focused upon how blockchain is changing the financial services markets around the world, with the aim of establishing the position of major financial institutions with regards to cryptocurrencies and the use of blockchain in their daily operations. The…

I just caught a clip from the BBC about Decentraland, a virtual world where you can buy plots of land and next year become part of a virtual world. This world will be owned by its community, has no central authority, is completely decentralised and will flourish in the net. So far it’s users to…

I haven’t written about blockchain for a while. I guess it’s because I got bored of it. I’m not bored of the promise of blockchain and distributed ledger technologies. Just bored of how much hype there has been and of so many companies claiming to have the latest blockchain breakthrough. However, when I saw this…

I spotted a chart the other day showing the millions of dollars lost on cryptocurrency platforms … Source: The Wall Street Journal Since 2011, there have been 56 cyberattacks directed at cryptocurrency exchanges, initial coin offerings and other digital-currency platforms around the world, according to Autonomous Research, bringing the total of hacking-related losses to $1.63…

Building on yesterday’s discussions of regulating, I got copied on a letter that’s doing the rounds from Sam Woods, Deputy Governor of the PRA (the Prudential Regulatory Authority). It lays out the official position and expectations of the regulator when financial insitutions are dealing with crypto-assets. It makes for interesting reading and you can read…

I find it quite surprising to see statistics around ICOs, such as the fact that $13.7 billion has been raised by ICOs so far this year alone. $13.7 billion! In what? Well, the 10 biggest ICOs this year are: Telegram: $1.7 billion Dragon: $320 million Huobi: $300 million Bankera: $150.9 million Orbs: $118 million Envion:…

I haven’t blogged about cryptocurrencies and blockchain for a while, as it’s been a bit too much for a while. There’s massive coverage everywhere, but what’s the reality? The reality is that a lot of this is nascent change. There are young tycoons making millions, whilst naïve bandwagoners are losing millions. From a $20,000 end…

Conservative MP Eddie Hughes has just written a 36-page white paper extolling the benefits of blockchain for Britain, which was published yesterday Unlocking Blockchain: Embracing new technologies to drive efficiency and empower the citizen, by FREER. FREER is a major new initiative from the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA, a UK think-tank dating back to…

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the guys who are responsible for Basel regulations and act as the global central bank to all the central banks, caught global headlines yesterday by saying that bitcoin will break the internet. Wowser. I couldn’t ignore this and neither should you so here’s a summary of what they said…

Every now and then, someone writes something better than me and, if they’re very nice, they let me republish their content on this blog. Ben Robinson of Temenos is one of those guys. Two years ago, he wrote a great insight into banking business models and, last week, he did it again in a superb write-up…