Logo
Logo
  • Topics Icon Topics
    • AI Icon AI
    • Banking Icon Banking
    • Blockchain/DeFi Icon Blockchain/DeFi
    • Embedded Finance Icon Embedded Finance
    • Fraud/Identity Icon Fraud/Identity
    • Investing Icon Investing
    • Lending Icon Lending
    • Payments Icon Payments
    • Regulation Icon Regulation
    • Startups Icon Startups
  • Podcasts Icon Podcasts
  • Products Icon Products
    • Webinars Icon Webinars
    • White Papers Icon White Papers
  • Events Icon Events
    • Fintech Nexus Events
    • Fintech Meetup
  • Press Icon Press
  • Search
  • Sign in
Home
philosophy
A to Z
  • Latest
  • Oldest
  • Random
  • A to Z

philosophy

CryptoFractals & reflexivitygame theoryphilosophy
·Apr. 12, 2021

The “fundamental” economic design driving crypto valuation to $2 trillion

Crypto isn’t magic. It’s math. Two trillion dollars worth of math.

We are still, often, asked incorrect questions about the crypto currency markets. Questions like — “but what is the fundamental value?”

You have to unpack the word “fundamental”. That word signals a Warren Buffet view of the world: there are companies out there, they have equity shares well specified by corporate law in a particular jurisdiction, some are expensive while some are cheap, and that bargain shopping can be determined by a spreadsheet analysis of their cashflows relative to others. It’s so fundamental!

The story of such fundamental truth is anchored in our cultural and social history. We can point to the intellectual tradition of rationalism and classical economics, and talk about the theory of the firm, and its production function. We can point to how these things grew out of governance by religion, and natural rights as granted by a deity, and all sorts of other non-empirical hand waving.

Read Full Story
decentralized financeEmbedded Financephilosophy
·Aug. 24, 2020

The absurdity of how the Internet is both beautiful and awful, and the memetic infection of Finance

This week, we get philosophical and look at:

  • Embedded finance and how it will be woven into the fabric of the Internet

  • Applying the philosophies of existentialism, nihilism, and absurdism to Finance

  • Parsing symptoms in decentralized finance (Based Protocol) as artistic protest

  • Finding Dadaist beauty in chaos

Read Full Story
artificial intelligencecivilization and politicsexchanges / cap mktsphilosophy
·Oct. 26, 2020

The AI cluster running on top of the Internet has data mined you, and has some deep fakes to sell you

This week, we look at:

  • Deep Fakes behind South Park creators' new parody, Sassy Justice

  • The AI-created author of the fake Hunter Biden intelligence report

  • GPT-3 winning the love and attention of people on Hacker News

  • How should we react to these robots and their desire to mess with our minds

Unlike equities, the crypto markets were born from machines, and are constructed from code. Hold dear the tokens in which you believe, and stay away from the stories of easy money. Nothing is easy. To win Russian roulette is not good fortune. It is, instead, a grave mistake to play a lethal game. Have you nothing to lose?

And then Brexit. And then Taiwan and China. And then Covid, again. And then, who knows.

From now on and forever, your counterparty is the data center running an AI cluster on top of the Internet. The data center that has already profiled you and knows everything about you. Bring the tinfoil hat.

Read Full Story
ICO / IEOinsurtechIPO / SPACphilosophy
·Jun. 17, 2019

The Ethics of $2B Lemonade, $100B Softbank Visions, and $500MM of Binance IEOs

I've been seeing a lot of Fintech headlines recently that make me raise my hands in the air, and go "Come on, are you for real!?". I imagine a lot of people feel similarly frustrated by Lemonade looking to go public at a $2 billion valuation on $50 million of revenue, Initial Exchange Offerings on crypto exchanges raising over $500 million this year, Facebook's tone deaf Silicon Valley club crypto money, or SoftBank talking about selling its overpriced $100 billion Fintech unicorn fund in an IPO. So other than getting crankier with age (Happy Father's day everyone!), I want to dig a little bit into the concept of fairness, asymmetric information, economic rents, and how this can help disentangle feelings from thoughts on these news items.

Read Full Story
artificial intelligenceFractals & reflexivityphilosophy
·Sep. 11, 2020

The nature of Consciousness, artificial intelligence, and how we see Finance Sep 11, 2020 1

The question of consciousness goes to the root of why we build, what we create, and how we decide what is valuable and what is not. And if we can control our self-conception and the modeling we do of the world, the texture of life becomes better. A recurrent theme in our writing is that systems don’t care about their agents per se. There are many game theoretical equilibria where agents suffer, but systems perpetuate. So figuring out how an agent within a system reflects on happiness is paramount.

Read Full Story
Chinacivilization and politicsCryptoICO / IEOphilosophy
·Oct. 14, 2019

The political limits of commerce — Telegram’s $1.7B US offering and NBA’s $1.5B China deal

I look at the boundaries that Telegram and EOS have crashed into in the US with recent SEC actions and lawsuits, and the melting of Facebook Libra. There have been a number of interesting regulatory moves recently, and the positive headlines of 2017 have become the negative headlines of 2019. How does SEC jurisdiction reach foreign institutional investors? We also touch on the $1.5 billion NBA distribution deal now on the fence in China, and how US companies are under the speech jurisdiction of a foreign nation. How does China reach American protected speech? Through pressure, boycott, and economics.

Read Full Story
Chinacovid pandemicdecentralized financemacroeconomicsphilosophy
·Aug. 3, 2020

The symbolic battle over TikTok, intellectual property, and blockchain-based finance

This week, we look at:

The 10% collapse in GDP across the US & Eurozone, and how it compares with China's second quarter

The geopolitical battle over TikTok, its alleged spying, and understanding the winners and losers of the Microsoft deal

A framework for how to win in open source competition, explaining both Shenzhen manufacturing success and decentralized finance growth to $4 billion

Read Full Story
Chinacivilization and politicsFractals & reflexivityphilosophy
·Nov. 13, 2020

The system versus the individual — a meditation on the American election, Alibaba’s dethroning, and Fintech theater

This week, we look at:

  • The relationship between an individual and a system, and how that applies to the power games of politics and economics. Did Trump change the system, or did the system generate Trump?

  • The difference between fighting and signalling, and what creates fragility and flexibility in governance structures

  • Why the Communist Party stopped Ant Financial's IPO, and how Jack Ma bears a resemblance to Mikhail Gorbachev

Read Full Story
game theoryphilosophyventure capital
·Dec. 16, 2019

Unicorn valuations are bad for your health — the Prisoner’s Dilemma of WeWork and Magic Leap

Why are high valuations bad? You've heard me talk about how the trend of Fintech bundling, and the unicorn and decacorn valuations led by SoftBank and DST Global, are creating underlying weakness in the private Fintech markets. Of course, they are also creating price compression and consolidation in the public markets (e.g, Schwab/TD, Fiserv/First Data) across sub-sectors. But public companies are at least transparent and deeply analyzed. Private companies have beautiful websites, charismatic leaders, and impressive sounding investors. Often when you look under the hood, it's just a bunch of angry bees trying to find something to sting.

Read Full Story
central bank / CBDCdigital transformationgenerational changemega banksnarrative zeitgeistphilosophyvisual art
·Jan. 25, 2021

What 1840s “Free Banking” and the 1910s Cubist movement suggests about DeFi and economic machine evolution

This week, we look at:

  • The nature of innovation hubs, and how close groups of actors within a particular environment can be massively, fundamentally productive. Take for example the 30 million years of the Cambrian explosion.

  • The difficulty of experimenting with banking and money frameworks, the limits of traditional econometrics, and an overview of “free banking” in the 1840s.

  • How evolutionary theory can help us think about selection of economic models, and the hyper-competition and hyper-mutation that we see in crypto. DeFi protocols, like BadgerDAO and ArcX among hundreds of others, are experiments in designing different monetary policies and banking regime experiments in real time.

We have never before had such acceleration in the design space of the economic machine, subject to evolutionary pressures, built by a closely-wound nexus of developers. It is a fortune for the curious.

Read Full Story
Load More

Popular posts

Today:

  • Expect to Apply for BNPL Loan (2)Fintechs Flouting Recession Vibes  May. 8, 2025
  • Breaking Down a Broken Healthcare Payments SystemBreaking Down a Broken Healthcare Payments System May. 29, 2024
  • fort-4019633_1280Banks slowly preparing for AI, open banking: Sopra Digital Banking Experience Report Jun. 3, 2024
  • Ketan AhujaOPINION | The CFPB performs an ancient social function Mar. 6, 2025
  • Photo of Raj Date ex CFPB“Traditional financial institutions do not thrive amidst chaos.” Feb. 27, 2025
  • Fintech Nexus team shotFarewell: Fintech Nexus is shutting down Jun. 21, 2024
  • Members Buy The DipsHerd-Earned Cash May. 15, 2025
  • SimonWu-CaptionCathay’s Wu: Secondaries now “a structural pillar” for VC liquidity, exits Apr. 3, 2025
  • Dispatch from VegasOverheard in Vegas Mar. 13, 2025
  • Cliffhanger economicsCliffhanger economics Mar. 6, 2025

This month:

  • Expect to Apply for BNPL Loan (2)Fintechs Flouting Recession Vibes  May. 8, 2025
  • Aidan CorbettWayflyer’s $5B Bet on Small Business Lending May. 1, 2025
  • Members Buy The DipsHerd-Earned Cash May. 15, 2025
  • Vesey Ventures – Julia HuangWhy agentic AI will spark commerce’s next PayPal moment Apr. 10, 2025
  • LoganAllinThe “Third Wave” Volatility Strategy for Fintech Investors Apr. 24, 2025
  • Climate Tech Funding Momentum Continues…For NowStormy Weather Ahead for Climate Finance? May. 1, 2025
  • USAID’s Role in Global Health FundingWith USAID in shambles, fintechs look to lend lifelines Apr. 24, 2025
  • Reimagining Overdrafts in the Age of Intelligent BankingReimagining Overdrafts in the Age of Intelligent Banking May. 8, 2025
  • Mortgage PerformancesHome Invasion: What Happens if Fannie and Freddie Go Private Apr. 10, 2025
  • Victor Fimbres, CoFounder and CTO, Forage(1)Amidst federal upheaval, lessons from 4 years of benefits-focused fintech May. 6, 2025

  • About
  • Contact
  • Disclaimer
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms
Subscribe
Copyright © 2025 Fintech Nexus
  • Topics
    • AI
    • Banking
    • Blockchain/DeFi
    • Embedded Finance
    • Fraud/Identity
    • Investing
    • Lending
    • Payments
    • Regulation
    • Startups
  • Newsletters
    • Fintech Nexus Daily
    • The Fintech Blueprint
  • Podcasts
  • Products
    • Webinars
    • White Papers
  • Events
    • Fintech Nexus Events
    • Fintech Meetup
  • Fintech Blueprint
  • Advertise
    • Fintech Nexus
    • The Fintech Blueprint
  • Subscribe
  • Contact Us
Start typing to see results or hit ESC to close
lis digital banking USA Lending Club UK
See all results