If you’ve been following recent news headlines, you may have noticed an uptick in the number of articles discussing blockchain technology, and more specifically, the emergence of a new venture funding model based on that technology: the token sale. But first, a brief explanation of blockchains.

Here is my recent presentation to the International Conference of Commercial Bank Economists (ICCBE) in Paris this week. 

This report originaloly appeared in Latin America Goes Global.

Start with Crain's Chicago Business reporter Lynne Marek's excellent macro overview of Chicago tech leaders' failure to pull together a coordinated FinTech hub, "Chicago should be a FinTech hub. So why isn't it?" In terms of venture money, Chicago falls way short, as Marek and her colleague Joe Cahill point out.

Here is a discussion paper I prepared for the Australia-China Annual Think Tank Economic Dialogue Hosted by the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation (CAITEC) and the Australia-China Relations Institute (ACRI) at the University of Technology Sydney in Beijing.
 
 

The FinTech revolution is not lost. Its outlines may be obscured by the fog of events, but, as this week's links show, it's still moving forward.

Editor's Note: The next issue of FinTech Rising will be published on June 29, ahead of the July 4 holidays in the United States.

Rebuilding "truth"

Co-authored with Kurt Waltenbaugh.

In the western suburbs outside Minneapolis, two men lead average lives. Surveying them as part of the general population, no health system, insurer or policy maker would notice anything that might be alarming. Yet, when it comes to the healthcare costs they will incur over the next few years, they are ticking time bombs waiting to go off.

States cannot create good money. They are interested parties. A good monetary system should discipline states – i.e. hold them to account. A state-run money cannot do that. That is the flaw in proposals such as those made by Positive Money and The International Movement for Monetary Reform.

(Let me add, however, that I go along with many of the criticisms that my good friends James Robertson , Victoria Chick and others make of existing monetary systems.)