Learning to Live with Crypto
Learning to live with Crypto, co-written with Andreas Dombret—and published by the LSE’s Systemic Risk Centre (SRC), lands at a timely moment. In a Financial Times piece this week, Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey asked, “how do we ensure the link between money (in whatever form) and credit creation as an underpinning for economic activity?” We take up that question—and more.
The “Brussels defect”, is a bug in a world that needs credible strategy instead
Call it the “Brussels defect”: the habit of treating market rules as a substitute for strategy. As Abe Newman recently coined it in the Financial Times, Europe’s regulatory reflex no longer matches a security-first world. What it needs is a credible plan.
Why stablecoins are Silicon Valley's Pandora's box
Despite piggybacking on the dollar and often sharing the same blockchain, out of the box their smart contracts remain stubbornly non-interoperable and therefore non-fungible.
Each coin is a brand—and combined with the network effects inherent in money itself, winner-takes-all dynamics emerge. Already, two giants rule: Tether commands a $159 billion market capitalisation - 61% of the market - while Circle's USD Coin holds $62 billion or 24%.
The political economy of AI
Size matters in AI. The importance of scale and its cost has implications as to who will benefit most from AI, and it will be felt from geopolitics to competitiveness to the structure of our economies.