Cloudmoney: Cash, Cards, Crypto, and the War for Our Wallets
by Brett Scott · 4 Jul 2022 · 308pp · 85,850 words
second highest skyscraper in the UK. They call this place Level 39. It is a hub for financial technology start-ups in Canary Wharf, the London district that hosts one of the world’s greatest concentrations of financial mega-corporations. Level 39 was created by the Canary Wharf Group, which owns the entire district, to grow these fintechs
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and finishes off with an hour on a sunbed for that healthy glow. I often get invited into this tech start-up world. I am in Level 39 taking part in a workshop on ‘the future of money’. But this is not the first time I have looked out of skyscraper windows in Canary Wharf
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dense nerve centre for a multi-layered empire of money – and promises for money – communicated via fibre optic cables under seabeds and routed via offshore centres to other faraway clusters of corporations. Level 39 is hosted in the top reaches of one of these towers and, while they may not know it, the fintech-industry
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toilet after a night of drunken revelry. Why not get rid of the stalls altogether, and instead train machines to design and package up all those financial contracts? Automate the nerve centres. That is why their towers host Level 39. There is a small glitch standing in the way of all of this, however
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payment systems in particular. Put simply, digital finance does not work with non-digital payments, and fintech developers see cash as a bug standing in the way of their financial automation. The last time I visited Level 39 – the big fintech hub in London – they refused to take cash at the bar.
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of change, so UK banks like the Royal Bank of Scotland only stock big £50 notes in ATMs found in rich areas like London’s Canary Wharf. The UK government also encourages them to make £5 notes available in poorer areas to solve the ‘£7.56 problem’ – the situation in which
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encumbered with any legacy business. Fintech teams were small and specialised, and their meetings did not have items like financing Russian gas exploration on the agenda. This is because they were not financiers. They were builders of digital ‘store fronts’. For example, the Level 39 fintech accelerator (with which we began Chapter 1) hosted
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doublethink, which is why a peculiar atmosphere hangs in the air at Level 39. The aesthetics of fintech accelerators are different to those of traditional banks – with hackathons on the future of money and pitching contests full of the language of disruption – and yet there is a pervasive feeling of people play-acting. After
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the rising cryptocurrency movement. The crew filmed me on a boat on the Thames as we cruised past the huge banking skyscrapers of London’s Canary Wharf. They had wanted to film me standing underneath those buildings, but the entire area is a privately owned estate with its own security force
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, 180 Camberwell, London, 128 Cambridge Symposium on Economic Crime, 111 Cambridge University, 97 Canada, 35 Canary Wharf, London, 17–18, 20, 41, 62, 211 cannabis, 101–3 capitalism, 2, 10, 47, 65, 98–9, 173–4 blockchain and, 15–16, 231–46, 256, 258 charging up, 22–5 core vs. periphery, 28,
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left-wing politics, 7, 184, 191, 211–12, 215 Lehman Brothers, 17–18 Lenddo, 169 Level 39, Canary Wharf, 17, 20, 27, 41, 143 Leviathan (Hobbes), 177 leviathans, 177–84, 215–16 libertarianism, 7, 14, 42, 155, 156, 184 cryptocurrency and, 191, 212, 215–16, 225–6 Libra, 236–41, 245 Litecoin, 218 Lloyds, 72
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–3, 144, 146 loans, 70–71, 107, 159 artificial intelligence and, 167–8, 172 London, England, 128, 247, 248 Brixton Market, 177 Camberwell, 128 Canary Wharf, 17–18, 20, 41, 62, 211 City of London, 6, 135 Mayor’s Fund, 38 Somali diaspora, 116
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Uganda, 168 unbanked, 35, 94, 181, 238 underdog, support for, 106 Unilever, 99, 131 United Kingdom American Revolutionary War (1775–83), 60 banking oligopoly, 230 Canary Wharf, 17–18, 20, 41, 62, 211 cash use in, 249 City of London, 6, 135 colonialism, 55, 97, 175–6, 178, 239 digital money system
Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms & a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories
by Simon Winchester · 27 Oct 2009 · 522pp · 150,592 words
them—fly at even-numbered altitudes, separated by 2,000 feet: at 40,000 feet, 38,000 feet, 36,000, and so on. Eastbound craft operate conversely at odd-numbered levels—39,000 feet, 37,000, down to 31,000. On this day my BA 113—its call sign on the radio Speedbird
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water at the river’s mouth will behave. There is talk about a new barrier and what happens if none is in fact built. Lurid images are being published showing the Houses of Parliament awash, substations at Canary Wharf in a riot of short-circuiting sparks, the dean of St. Paul’s splodging
The Flat White Economy
by Douglas McWilliams · 15 Feb 2015 · 193pp · 47,808 words
an annual rate of over 70% since 2008 and grew by 117% in the year to Q1 2014. London is now home to at least five fintech laboratories: the Fintech Innovation Lab set up by Accenture in 2012; the Level 39 Fintech accelerator in Canary Wharf; the Techstars/Barclays lab in Mile End; the
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aspects of this that were prepared in the early part of the last decade: (i) Canary Wharf: London’s importance to the UK regions, (Cebr report for Canary Wharf Group, 2003) (ii) Greater London Authority: Growing together: London and the UK economy, 2005 (iii) Corporation of London: London’s linkages with the rest of
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of ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Labour Party ref1 immigration policies of ref1 Lai, Ian ref1 Laserfiche ref1 Lawson, Nigel ref1 Leeds Beckett University ref1 Level 39 ref1 Liberal Democrats immigration policies of ref1 lifestyles ref1 associated with financial services ref1 Livingstone, Ken ref1 Lloyds ref1 London School of Economics (LSE) ref1