Zag To The Zig #13 :: Immutable finance and predictions FTW
Hello, thanks for reading. 📖🙏
Last week I got the feedback that the newsletter is pretty Anglo-Saxon. It’s something I’ve been thinking about before, because I realize it’s where I worked, it’s what I read,... I try to actively step out of that bubble, but it is not easy. So if you have suggestions about interesting Italian, Vietnamese, Sudanese,... people to follow, let me know. Could be on Twitter, newsletters, YouTube - any tips are welcome.
In the Economy room this week…
Because yes, the most downloaded fintech/neobank app is in fact Brazilian.
This gives a glimpse of what the impact of permissionless blockchains can be. Uniswap is a so-called decentralised exchange, where you can buy/sell/trade tokens without having to register. It’s one of the more prominent apps of the Decentralised Finance movement. This week, out of the blue, people from 10 countries were blocked from using it. That is to say, from using its interface. The Uniswap team (who manage the interface) is based in the US, so assumingly they were pressurised to do this. However, the protocol runs as smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain, so can no longer be controlled. So within hours new interfaces were built, one of them hosted on decentralised storage solutions like IPFS. If you’re in a legal profession, you are going to have some intellectual fun in the next few years, methinks.
Interesting to see a global bank look into that future. In their Imagine 2030 report, Deutsche bank actually talks about the end of fiat money (page 10) and a possible role for crypto-currencies (from page 58 on this good old PDF).
In tool shed
Of course, it’s bloody hard to imagine 10 years in the future. Just think back 10 years: pretty much no bitcoin, no Instagram, no Uber, no Trump. But there’s an app for that. Exploding Topics uses data to predict the upcoming themes.
In the innovation room
In the age of FOMO and a relentless drive to try new stuff, it’s nice to read that repetitive actions are actually more enjoyable. - “We’re simply more boring than we’d like to admit.”
In the ethics corridor
The Germans are active in producing PDFs this week. The German Data Ethics Commission published a list of their ethical benchmarks and guidelines around data as well as algorithmic systems.
Nice story on how how millions of French shoppers are rejecting cut-price capitalism. Brand name? C’est qui le patron?
But at the same time conscious buying behaviour is declining according to this study. Why? Because one day recycling is good, one day it isn’t. And as people we can’t deal with that complexity.
Random ZTTZ
As a beautiful antidote to the yearly/decade-ly predictions and future thinking trend reports: Tom Whitwell has a habit of ending the year with gathering the 52 things he learnt this year. Curiosity FTW.
🏁 End note: 1 thing I’ll be doing this week
Structure and write up my thoughts on a new idea/lecture: How to be a Relevant Business in this Conscious Age. Or something along those lines. Published is better than perfect, so I need to get it out there.