When you place money on deposit you expect to get it back. Many people say that’s the original concept of banking: you pass your funds across a desk into safe […]
We can all see the short-term impacts of the coronavirus pandemic: fear, lockdowns, falls in output, restrictions on travel, frictions in supply chains, growing social tension and unprecedented government intervention. […]
Most of us are so used to the concept that saved money grows by earning a positive rate of interest that the idea of negative interest rates comes as a […]
A leaked Europol report suggests that law enforcement bodies are struggling to deanonymise bitcoin transactions passing through Wasabi, a popular ‘mixer’ service. “Things are not looking good” for criminal investigations […]
Two key European Union laws—the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the fifth Anti-Money Laundering Directive (AMLD5)—are hindering the future growth of financial technology (‘fintech’) and blockchain businesses in the […]
Entrepreneurs are competing in an intensifying race to design the future standards for the transmission of money. Gauge war The western English town of Gloucester was once the frontline of […]
The leading cryptocurrency’s design features cause it to behave weirdly: the more speculators buy bitcoin, the greater the short-term downward pressure on its price. “There are two features of bitcoin […]
In the last decade, everyone has been able to join networks like Airbnb and Uber to rent out their property or labour. The sharing economy now extends to electricity, where […]
If money is ‘the most successful story ever invented by humans’, as Israeli historian Yuval Harari tells us, then the narrative is about to take a fantastical turn. That’s my […]
Hard economic times can spur the adoption of local currencies. Could digital payments give a boost to the trend? In an economic slump, no one has much cash. And if […]