Today we're joined by Brett King, founder and executive chairman of Moven, one of the world's original digital banks, and Lex Sokolin, global head of fintech at ConsenSys. Lex and I discussed Moven's recent announcement to shutter its B2C business on episode 170 of Rebank. And we're happy to have the opportunity to connect with Brett directly to discuss the decision in more detail.
This week, we engage deeply with Ray Dalio's economic research about American Empire, capitalism, and the structure of money and credit. His clear ideas and model of the macro economy help connect the dots between emerging schools of thought, like Modern Monetary Theory and Market Monetarism, and the scarcity-focused philosophies of Gold and Bitcoin. This exploration will give you tools for understanding the $2 trillion printed by the US government, as well as potential associated impacts on finance and society.
A digital world needs digital money, and a few influential players are actively working to build it. China's BSN initiative and Facebook's Libra embody the East's public sector led approach to building and owning the internet of value and the West's private sector led (and public sector challenged) attempt at cheaper commerce on the web. While the nature of the approaches may be different, the data and privacy considerations are eerily similar. For all of our past episodes and to sign up to our newsletter, please visit bankingthefuture.com. Thank you very much for joining us today. Please welcome Lex Sokolin.
This week, we look at Betterment launching a bank account and payments feature. They are not the first, but they could be the best! Still, it feels like the world has moved on. Barriers to entry around digital finance have collapsed, and shifted industry goal posts. Hundreds of companies are integrating API-based solutions that connect to banking and investment entities. Amazon, Google, and Apple are there already. And let's not forget the incredible pressure from the COVID recession: 20MM+ unemployed, $100 billion decrease in global remittances, 1 in 8 banks being unprofitable. Is it time for incremental improvement, or a sea change?
I came upon this announcement by Stephen Wolfram recently: Finally We May Have a Path to the Fundamental Theory of Physics… and It’s Beautiful. Wolfram is a theoretical physicist turned mathematician, computer scientist, and entrepreneur responsible for the rigorous Mathematica software. After a career of building one of the most advanced computational packages ever created, he is returning to the question that endlessly captivates geniuses — what is the equation at the heart of our universe?
Is there one unifying stroke of the pen that can connect conventional physics, general relativity, and quantum mechanics into a single whole? Wolfram is not conventional, and I cannot do justice to his thinking both given its complexity and rigor. He claims to have found one such answer, which I will try to sketch. But what drew my atten
This week, we look at cash -- blockchain cash. The war for money is just starting to ramp up, as Facebook Libra explains its new regulated plan, the Chinese national Blockchain Service network goes live, Ethereum stablecoins reach historic market caps in the billions, and the Financial Stability Board recommends to go heavy on global stablecoin arrangements. In 2008, Bitcoin threw a rock through the window of the financial skyscraper, and today we are starting to see the cracks. As the US government runs out of $350 billion in small business bail-out money and gets ready to print more, where do you stand?
