It appears the disappearance of Bitcoin exchange, Mt Gox, is not a problem, at least to those who did not keep their Bitcoins there. Fate of Mt Gox questioned after Bitcoin trading suspended One of the protesters, London-based developer Kolin Burges, said on Tuesday that his faith in Bitcoin as an alternative payment system had not been shaken. “If Gox is finally disappearing, it is bad news for everyone with their money in there, but good news for the rest of the industry.” I would have to disagree and say this is a huge problem for Bitcoin.  As I have … Continue reading The under appreciated problem is looming for Bitcoin

The release of the Fed minutes from 2008 right after Lehman provide a dramatic insight into the workings of central banks at that time. I have covered much of this before but this is the first time we have word for word insight into those dramatic days. First this exchange between Evans and Bernanke reviewing the at that time, 1Bn increase in the Fed balance sheet.  This explains the thinking that central banks have zero risk.  Think Europe in the years following this. Clearly, confidence in the markets is extraordinarily poor and fragile, and that’s another reason that an escalation … Continue reading Some dramatic quotes from the just released Fed minutes over the three weeks following Lehmans Sept 15th 2008

Data is great.  After the post on disaggregation a few minutes ago, here was the reaction on this blog.  Thank you. 21/2 @ 00:38 : Mesquite, Texas, US 21/2 @ 00:38 : London, GB 21/2 @ 00:32 : Ashburn, Virginia, US 21/2 @ 00:29 : Norway, NO 21/2 @ 00:27 : Paris, FR 21/2 @ 00:24 : Mantin, MY 21/2 @ 00:18 : San Francisco, California, US 21/2 @ 00:16 : Norway, NO 21/2 @ 00:13 : Central District, HK 21/2 @ 00:08 : Minneapolis, Minnesota, US 21/2 @ 00:08 : Montréal, CA 21/2 @ 00:07 : Bethesda, Maryland, US … Continue reading Disaggregation of banking is a popular topic

I like two things about whatsapp business model and the simplicity in this points to their success. ruthless dislike and avoidance of advertising (from Yahoo days) focus on mobile only What WhatsApp Did Right, According to Jan Koum Last year, Koum appeared for an interview at our Dive Into Mobile conference, at a time when his company had more than 200 million active users. He talked about the larger opportunity in messaging, how much he hates advertising businesses, and why he wanted WhatsApp to stay an independent company. Of course this singular anti consumer marketing stance requires me to quote … Continue reading What I like about whatsapp business model – simplicity and focus

The Financial Times html5 web app just upgraded on my iPhone.  I say upgraded with some hesitation – the upgrade was anything but graceful.  I will say the end result was positive and I like the upgrade but zero marks to FT for their handling of the upgrade which went like this.  Without warning one of my icons was duplicated.  The new duplicate icon was a shortcut to a safari link – lets call it icon2.  Now it appeared twice – once in its original location, and now strangely the 2nd location was precisely where the FT app used to … Continue reading Basic rules for application upgrades not followed by Financial Times today for their mobile app

There is a general sense among many, myself included that a transformational and structural shift in employment is occurring because of technology impacts.  However it has not been well defined and usually manifests in the shift of labour from established economies to emerging economies such as Mexico, China and those of other emerging Asian countries who exhibited labour costs at 1/10th of established economies. But there is a bigger story.  If it were just a question of labour cost that would be a relatively fleeting change as emerging economies production costs equalise.  Labour costs do not represent structural change.  There … Continue reading Technology is quietly impacting middle class roles beyond manufacturing