A few years ago Jami bought me a notebook with Bad IDEAS inscribed on the cover. The notebook goes almost everywhere with me. It has become a stage for expressing thoughts bouncing around in my head. I cherish it. https://www.instagram.com/p/B8mCBxygucf/ After a nice New Years with our family, I opened up the book and started… Continue reading Bad Ideas
Games and Gains
My son plays Fortnite like a lot of people. He puts in real hours. I asked him to look and over his lifespan of the game he's put in over a thousand hours. We could be judgmental parents but I bet during my teenage years I put in that or more playing Golden Eye. Throw… Continue reading Games and Gains
Dwolla Interoperability
Dwolla released Virtual Account Numbers yesterday. This is interesting and beneficial for a number of reasons. One of those reasons is the interoperability VANs enable with the non-Dwolla payment world. A VAN is a routing number (RN) and account number (AN) combination that is ACH routable. This means you can plug a VAN into any… Continue reading Dwolla Interoperability
The Speed Of FinTech
Yesterday was V-Sum_Eight, which was great. One of the demos was from Alloy. Their product makes it much easier for banks, FinTechs, and others, to validate an end user's identity. This has a special place in my heart because I've experienced the brain damage of solving the problem first hand in a far less elegant… Continue reading The Speed Of FinTech
Diverse Children’s Books
A close friend of mine has spent years looking for and cataloging diverse children's books. When she shared the list I was overwhelmed by it. I asked her permission to share it here because it's the best list I've seen to date on the topic. Hopefully some of you find as much in this list… Continue reading Diverse Children’s Books
The future of the Internet, data at rest, and Basis Theory.
There are tens of billions of Internet connected devices and a litany of software runs on them. As we all know, many of the apps running on that hardware handle our data at rest differently. HTTPS has solved a massive gap in protecting data in transit but data at rest still needs a bit of… Continue reading The future of the Internet, data at rest, and Basis Theory.
CBDC & Currency Bandwidth
CBDC is a fascinating topic. Central Bank Digital Currency is simply digital money but at times this feels perplexing. Perplexing because money is mostly already digital and there are plenty of things to consider when creating a CBDC. When money is printed it's because a computer said it was available to print and another computer… Continue reading CBDC & Currency Bandwidth
The Value Layer
The phrase the value layer of the internet is peppered throughout my work. When I say, the value layer of the internet, what I'm speaking to is the immensely complex series of systems that support value exchange across the internet. I've come to think about this as being comprised of access, value types, transfer types,… Continue reading The Value Layer
Solving T+2 Settlement
In a meeting last week we were talking about T+2 challenges. Certainly Robinhood has brought these back to light. Companies these days are commonly raising capital left and right just to fund payments. The thing is, T+2 is going away right before our very eyes and pre-funding requirements are now being solved through various mechanisms.… Continue reading Solving T+2 Settlement
The Printed Word
My desk(s) are always surrounded by paper. One of my discoveries as an adult is that I don't absorb written words on a screen well at all. This has spawned an enormous amount of printing things. A few years ago I finally bought a decent black and white printer for our home. Our trusty Brother… Continue reading The Printed Word