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In this New Year Special I’ll survey the state of the art and present a report card for each of the main  Fintech sectors – P2P, Bitcoin, Blockchain, Money, App-only banks, Insuretech, Digital I.M., Regtech, Payments and a deeper dive into the leading AI of 2017. We also examine the broader context for Fintech – namely US Tech Giants who had a seismic shift in 2017.

No awards as such this year but plenty of honourable mentions and a host of goodies for those of you in search of new ideas.

Topics discussed include: 

• human adaptation – or lack of to the new world
• fatness (Why we Get Fat and What To Do About It, Wheat Belly),  fitness and the dangers of being sedentary (which does rather come with working at a computer…)
• agadmator’s youtube chess channel
• the beneficial impact of grounding/earthing on health/energy
• how social media has been changing under the influence of governmental and PC pressure
• its impact on social discourse and mental health
• Professor Jordan Peterson’s podcast episode on slaying dragons
• identity politics leading to division and divisiveness between and within genders, races, political classes, Brexiter/Remainers etc etc
• over-application of censorship of “anti-terrorism” and “anti-hate-speech” filtering of social media to include plenty of indie media/old fashioned liberal or just plain non-mainstream views; free speech reframed as some eccentric right-wing cause
• will this over-centralisation of power of social media continue or lead to a backlash and more decentralised platforms arising?
• a similar zeitgeist in Bitcoin – designed to be decentralised power has long since aggregated
• Bitcoin and Blockachain assessment
• P2P – quite a detailed assessment of the strategic position of the sub-sector
• the nature of money and inequality; cash is not dying out (contrary to popular belief):

“The San Francisco Federal Reserve.produced a report which looked at cash use in 42 economies across the globe, which together account for 75% of world GDP. Demand for notes and coins continues to match or outpace GDP in all major economies bar Noway and Sweden.”

• app-only banks; Monzo vs Revolut and their relative rate of progress; Nik Storonsky’s epic speech at Lendit Europe 2017
• whingeing about your customers using what you said the service was for & hunt for a profit model
• ING’s success in dating and mating with Fintechs
• HT to ClearBank
• Open Banking
• Startupbootcamp closing down in London; Illuminate Financial going from strength to strength
• Insuretech shich has started to get some momentum – special mentions to Munich Re, Neos, FloodFlash
• Digital Wealth Managers – Nutmeg hits £1bn AUM, Scalable Capital does £1/2bn in just two years and Pension Bee starts the long awaited cutting of online rather old-world fees
• RegTech – Citigroup has 40,000 compliance officers – how many of those will regtech replace?
• Payments
• AI/ML – a deep dive into Google’s Alpha Zero’s amazing exploits
• the importance of Native American phrase “Mitakuye Oyasin” right now
• Fintech report card:
  • P2P – lapsed into an early middle age needs an affair to sex it up
  • Equity Fund Raising – kids vary in terms of classiness, helpful and friendly but will it really make much of a difference even when it leaves school?
  • Bitcoin – dropped out and took lots of drugs – having a whale of a time but dropping out and doing drugs doesn’t predict a great future
  • Blockchain – despite infinite $$$ and infinite press attention its only real use remains bitcoin. Flogging a dead horse
  • App-only banks – a teenager keen on telling its parents how it knows far more than them; needs to get a job and make some money
  • Insuretech – a slow starter, never appeared anywhere in the annual exam list, suddenly got its head down and now appearing in the annual exam prizes
  • Digital I.M. – a hipster on the outside although inside rather more like its parents than it would like to admit
  • Regtech – that kid in the corner who so far shows no signs of greatness
  • Payments – the fat kid who starts losing a bit of weight, gets fitter and starts attracting the attention of the opposite sex for the first time
  • AI – much arousal over status as a sexbomb but still underage in Fintech.

And much much more

A very happy and prosperous 2018 to you all.

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