History

I just watched Dumb Money, the true story of Gamestop where a wild band of small investors led by Roaring Kitty attacked the big Wall Street short sellers by banging the buck. The more small investors invested, via Robin Hood, the more short sellers lost as the stock rose instead of falling. It’s a good…

I’ve said for a long time that we have these figments of our imaginations particularly countries, borders, time and money. Humans have made all of these up and it is our world order today. Go out to tribes in the Amazon or Papua New Guinea who are untouched by such modern life, and these things…

I thought I had just found a new podcast called Money by David Walliams, the famous British comedian and children’s author. Then I found out it is by David McWilliams, the less famous Irish economist and author of Money: A Story of Humanity. BBC Radio4 selected this as its book of the week recently, and began…

Why do we count to ten? Because we have ten fingers*. That’s one of the things I learned recently which, when someone said it, made absolute sense. That’s why we have ten times table, and everything is broken down this way today … apart from binary 1’s and 0’s, which is probably because technologists only…

With the launch of Gladiator II this week (one of my fave films of all time was the first one), did the Roman Empire end because of the failure of the economy and, specifically, the monetary supply? Some would say yes. In fact, some would say the fall of the Roman Empire was due to…

I found a great interview the other day with Bella Hoare, a partner and director at the world’s oldest privately owned bank, C Hoare and Co. The bank has been run by the Hoare family for 12 generations, and was originally set up as a goldsmiths by Richard Hoare in Cheapside in 1672. Almost twenty…

I know that my blog is focused upon finance, technology and the future, but there are moments where something hits you about the past and makes you consider it. This is one of those days. I wrote some years ago about the creation of Switzerland being based upon the Knights Templar, which created a state…

I’m working with a cryptobank start-up, and we’re looking at options for licensing. Various countries have various attractions, with some more attractive than others. I won’t go into the nuances of the details as it’s all under wraps, but one of the founders turned to me and asked if there might be a good licensed…

The confusion over the origins of money I, like most, thought money was invented to replace barter. I, like most, am wrong. Money has little to do with bartering. Money, in fact, has more to do with how society moved from villages and communities to societies and cities. Going back to the origins of money…

When I wrote Digital Human, I got hauled up for saying that money replaced barter. It is a commonly held belief that humans evolved from nomads to farmers to cities and that, as they became civilised, they bartered bread for meat. However, that proved difficult if the butcher didn’t want meat, so how would that…