Paul

"Pay attention to what I say, not what I do..." More and more - over decades of practice - this opening statement has become the golden rule of marketing and communications, no matter if that "marcom" strategy is being applied in the context of finance, economics, politics - or, any other blood sport. Reason being: If you believe that perception is reality, then perception can have real economic consequences. However, with today's data ubiquity and resulting overload, we have the possibility of infinite perceptions and very little sense of reality... No one is truly to blame for this predicament. We have all conspired - most of us tacitly, some of us more directly - to participant in this confidence game. And so, when Alphacution picks out certain names, it is only to shed light on examples of how the game is played and not to pass judgement on the player(s) - since we are all more or less complicit... (As it turns out, Deutsche Bank is one of our best [...]

Disintermediation. And, desperation. That's what this is really all about. Together, these drivers produce an enormous amount of hype; a mixed wave of cryptocurrency insanity (and some blockchain legitimacy) washing over the global financial landscape... These days, it seems possible to transform any topic, no matter how dry or serious, into an all-out circus. And, it can be difficult - even for those most disciplined at rationing their limited attention - to look away as the spectacle unfolds. I mean, who can resist a tale that includes cornering the market on graphical processing units (GPUs), "chestahedrons," an Icelandic datacenter, the money flower, FUD and FOMO - among many other attention-grabbers? The Disintermediation Driver Now, typically, when the crowd rushes in one direction, I prefer not to follow - or, sometimes, head in another direction. Call it a bad case of intellectual claustrophobia. As a result, I haven't been eager to weigh in on any of this craziness. However, thankfully, the Swiss-based Bank for International Settlements (BIS) - sometimes otherwise known [...]

Take a deep breath... Focus your attention... And then consider: How bad do you want it? As a fellow #fintech entrepreneur, the reason I pose the question is that mass disruption and disintermediation (of status quo business models and "analog" workflow processing methods) is already here, and accelerating. In fact, chances are, you are involved in developing a digitally-savvy venture - likely related to #AI or #blockchain or #bigdata or #IaaS or even #cryptocurrencies - right now. We are living in a truly amazing and unprecedented period in history. And, should that venture be successful, your efforts will add to that disruption, winning you and team an invitation to the "other side" of fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD), but also further perpetuating the ongoing skills mix shift to a more globally-diversified STEM workforce (weighted towards lower-cost regions), and continue the displacement of non-STEM personnel, many of whom are middle-aged, mid-management market veterans (some of whom with a woefully under-appreciated cache of rare, indigenous knowledge). What's more, our current techno-economic paradigm [...]