Category Archives: Payment system

A Very Preliminary Look at the Partial Suspension of Russia’s Access to SWIFT

News on the partial SWIFT cutoff for Russia was fuzzy. Despite being included, its central bank intervened in FX markets this AM. What gives?

Trudeau’s Money Heist: Emergencies Act Allows Seizure of Bank Accounts, Securities, Crypto of Those Suspected of “Links” to Convoy Members w/o Court Order

Why the implementation of Canada’s Emergencies Act is a terrible precedent.

Michael Hudson: America’s Real Adversaries Are Its European and Other Allies

America has gone off the deep end re Ukraine. It’s pressuring allies to engage in economic self-harm, which is not a relationship-builder

The Bitcoin Challenge: How to Tame a Digital Predator

Public authorities should refrain from taking measures supporting additional investment flows into Bitcoin and should treat it as rigorously as the conventional financial industry to combat illicit payments, money laundering, and terrorist financing

Satyajit Das: Fintech’s ‘Flim-Flam’ Innovation Games

Not surprisingly, fintech looks like a variety of old scams in new bottles.

Never Mind the Pandora Papers: Why Secrecy Still Rules in the UK

Thanks to poor drafting and a lack of enforcement, anti-secrecy legislation intended to make it clearer who owns UK companies isn’t working

When Counterculture Goes Mainstream: A Dispatch from the 2021 Bitcoin Conference

How Bitcoin hard-core loyalists see the future of their project.

Will Tether Bring All The Cryptocurrencies Way Down?

The more you look at the cryptocurrency Tether, the less there is to like.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb Shellacks Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies

Nassim Nicholas Taleb explains why Bitcoin is not good for much except enriching early adopters and intermediaries.

Crypto Crackdown: Only the Beginning?

If you think the officialdom is getting tough with crypto, there’s even more they can do to tighten the screws.

Sputtering About Crypto and the US Pipeline Ransomware Attack

You can hear the silence about the role of crypto in the Colonial Pipeline and a growing spate of ransom demands.

Michael Hudson on American as Absentee Landlord on The Greyzone: Biden Administration, New Cold War, Super Imperialism, Dollar Weaponization

Michael Hudson discusses geopolitics including currency power plays, global institutions like the IMF, the new Cold War, and Bill Gates

By Declaring March 11 “Our” Covid Anniversary, the Press Erases Covid’s Origin Story in the U.S.

The hive mind hums happily.

What Happens If Bitcoin Succeeds?

Most of us would not want to live in a society where bitcoin succeeds.

This Is What Can Happen When a Cross-Border Bank Merger Goes Horribly Wrong

As Banco Sabadell’s disastrous acquisition of UK TSB has shown, a bank merger can founder due to botched IT integration.