Tag Archives: Money

Visa CEO Charlie Scharf: Moving at the speed of money

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“West Coast venture capitalists see Visa as an oligopolistic dinosaur and are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into rivals that use bitcoin. Meanwhile, banks, which collect the bulk of the fees from merchants, are warily eyeing Visa’s efforts to bypass them and forge direct relationships with retailers by offering one-click internet transactions and providing data on consumer behaviour that only Visa possesses.  None of which seems to faze Visa’s chief executive, Charlie Scharf. In time, he says, would-be Visa disruptors all discover—just as internet upstarts PayPal, Square and Uber did—that it is simply easier and more economical to work with his leviathan than fight it.”

http://india.forbes.com/article/forbes-global-2000/visa-ceo-charlie-scharf-moving-at-the-speed-of-money/40423/0

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Ex-Reddit Engineer Is Building a Decentralized Reddit

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“Days after the proposal of billionaire venture capitalist Fred Wilson to create a decentralized social media platform, Ryan X. Charles, ex-Reddit cryptocurrency engineer, has announced in a blog post that he wants to collaborate with others to create a decentralized Reddit.  Charles and the Reddit development team planned to get rid of third-party services and institutions like banks and payment processors by integrating bitcoin as the only payment option for the platform. However, after taking US$50 million in funding, Reddit replaced their management, and Yishan resigned ‘due to exhaustion.’ Reddit shelved Charles’ project and fired him soon after.”

http://cointelegraph.com/news/114785/ryan-x-charles-is-building-a-decentralized-reddit-and-would-love-collaborators

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Risky Loans Shunned by Banks Are Booming in Wall Street’s Shadow

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“Regulators’ efforts to rein in Wall Street’s biggest banks are in danger of backfiring.  Guidelines aimed at strengthening lending standards are shifting the market for high-yield credit to less-supervised loan funds, raising alarm this week from the Financial Stability Oversight Council. Because the funds don’t have depositors, some of their money comes from Wall Street banks, leaving systemically important institutions exposed to risks regulators hoped to avoid.  BDCs and private credit funds [are called] ‘Dodd-Frank banks’ because they’ve grown in the wake of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act’s heightened supervisory scrutiny of regulated lenders.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-22/wall-street-flouts-fed-standards-to-fund-high-risk-loans

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The Future of the Web Looks a Lot Like Bitcoin

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“More and more, it seems, the priorities of these institutions do not align with those of the people they serve. Remember when Facebook toggled the digital levers in its social network to run massive psychology experiments on its users?  When confronted with an intractable problem, we’ve settled for the least egregious option by placing responsibility for our digital data in as few hands as possible. Because, really, the only thing sillier than trusting some central authority with our most precious digital records would be trusting a bunch of strangers with them.  And yet, this is precisely what Bitcoin achieves: a public database that everyone can see, anyone can add to, and no one can destroy.”

http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/networks/the-future-of-the-web-looks-a-lot-like-bitcoin

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Money Will Be Digital — But Will It Be Free?

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“What a strange world we now live in. Total surveillance of every citizen’s transactions, without any basis or suspicion, is not just normal but presented as a virtue, a form of patriotism. Using cash or wishing to retain your financial privacy is inherently suspect, a radical position, soon to be a crime.  Using cash or wishing to retain your financial privacy is inherently suspect, a radical position, soon to be a crime.  A future where all payments are trackable is terrifying, but a world with centralized control over transactions would be even worse. Digital currency with centralized control means the eradication of property as a right.”

http://fee.org/freeman/detail/money-will-be-digital-but-will-it-be-free

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Ending the Ownership of Money

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“The overriding effect that the elimination of cash will have on people will be that they will lose their freedom of monetary movement. They will be subject to government and banking surveillance of every transaction and, increasingly, will be subject to legislation that limits currency movement.  Once this point is reached, governments will be free to move to a stage in which they declare that money is not the possession of the individual or company. It’s the possession of the government and the government ‘allows’ the public to use its currency in order to conduct commerce. As such, individuals and companies had best ‘behave,’ or they might find the privilege taken away and the money confiscated.”

http://www.internationalman.com/articles/ending-the-ownership-of-money

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Ecuador launches new digital currency after banning competitors

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“The new system, which is officially set to launch on Thursday, will work much like mobile phone bank payments in other countries: users will be able to exchange hard cash for digital money which is stored in an electronic wallet on their phones.  As with other mobile payment programmes, text messages will allow users to make payments to other accounts, but what makes this plan different is that this is the first time a national government will have full control; everything from the creation of new units to securing the system against attack will be managed by the Central Bank of Ecuador.  The bill that authorized the digital dollar also banned Bitcoin and other digital currencies.”

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/26/ecuador-digital-currency-dollar-rafael-correa

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Spendable Gold

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“The state of Texas has passed a bill to create a gold depository and to create a means for transactions to occur in precious metals.  Under the new law, an account holder could use an electronic system to make payments to others who hold accounts.  This legislation, if it’s followed through upon, would end the monopoly now held by the Federal Reserve to create money, and end the plan for the banks to totally control money.  Any individual who sees the currency debacle coming would be able to withdraw his funds and buy gold. Were this legislation to spread to other states, each state could develop the ability to be economically independent of the central bank.”

http://www.internationalman.com/articles/spendable-gold

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Amid the Greek Crisis, Bitcoin Reminds Everyone It’s Not Perfect

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“The economic crisis in Greece has turned some attention to Bitcoin again. The price of the digital currency has rallied over the past few days, partly because some Greeks have been snapping up the currency amid bank closures and cash withdrawal limits.  But over the weekend, Bitcoin’s software provided a well-timed reminder of why it’s not the perfect financial system, either. Bitcoin transactions have been taking five times longer than usual to complete, according to Gil Luria, an analyst at Wedbush Securities. The problems stem from a new version of the Bitcoin software that runs on PCs and servers underpinning the currency’s decentralized system.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-06/amid-the-greek-crisis-bitcoin-reminds-everyone-it-s-not-perfect

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Bitcoin: Greece’s new euro workaround?

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“Joaquin Fenoy was wandering the streets of Athens Friday, doing his bit to ease Greece’s currency restrictions. He wasn’t handing out cash, but rather installing an ATM with a withdrawal limit of €1,000 (about $1,100). That’s €940 above the €60 daily ATM withdrawal limit the Greek government put in place to stop a bank run as its creditors decide the country’s financial fate. There is one catch, though: You need to have the virtual currency bitcoin to use it.  In Greece’s case, worried relatives in London could buy bitcoins and transfer them to the digital wallet of a family member in Athens, who could then withdraw the bitcoins as euros from Bitchain’s ATM.”

http://fortune.com/2015/07/10/greece-bitcoin-bitchain/

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