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Retail CBDC's issues by the Central Bank. In the US they will not issue and in Europe the ECB wants but European parliament fortunately will have the last word on that. Is this not a government decision? Just check around, retail CBDC's are a bad idea in many ways while they solve a problem which is not there.

Revolut has certainly come a long way. But why a $2.2 bn revenues, $0.55 bn profit should translate into a $40 bn valuation? Unclear. Profitability needs to be more constant and clearly higher. We have quarterly profits before to become losses later. We have seen mistakes in KYC / AML. We have seen the repeated failure to obtain a UK bank license. Of course you can get a license in some of the smaller more lenient countries of the world who are eager to attract some (FinTech) investments & activities to their country. Good example for the path to follow? NU Bank. Very good at lending and more generally neo banking. Operating in a limited number of countries with a very clear product / services offering. Not the smorgasboard of countries and product / services try-outs of Revolut. It's great that their investors have allowed them to invest everywhere. For $40 bn, for an IPO, for real investors who also want returns Revolut will need to focus and make clearer choices.

What is truly worrying is that with this presentation and panel, nobody raised the two most important problems with the digital euro: 1) how it creates something which can be 100% controlled by the government / ECB; 2) the ECB and traditional banks in Europe have not really stood out in terms of innovation and creating technical wonders, how will they create this digital euro? An example of control would be if Euro citizens with a digital euro account are forbidden to buy certain goods and / or services. Many political parties are very much against a digital euro.

As an additional comment: believe many tax paying citizens would be delighted if they would not have to pay taxes on their bitcoin holdings as these are worth zero according to the ECB. Please let all of the relevant tax authorities in Europe know!

The trouble with these comments is that they are as colored and influenced by an institution which has every interest in seeing crypto not used. Because their eyes are set on retail CBDC’s, which have many disadvantages as well. It is time we have a mature discussion and not a shouting match with poor arguments from on the one hand bitcoin haters and the other hand bitcoin evangelists. The user cases for more generally crypto and the underlying technologies with for example smart contracts enabling all kinds of digital assets companies and projects are undeniably there. Large banks and other institutions are working with them already. Europe’s regulation and FED’s first moves are good and necessary steps to providing consumer protection and more while CBDC’s provide no real additional benefits.

It is not that surprising, Covid created a big move to e-commerce shopping and hence non-cash payments. In 2022 lockdowns (partially) ended in the UK and cash payments came back. The long term trend remains the same, less use of cash. More and more invisible, embedded payments.

But Visa and Mastercard are not the ones loosing necessarily, correct? Because the majority of the fees go to the issuing bank. MA and V typically get a smaller piece of the fee, usually something like 30 bps for credit cards for example. In the US interchange fees have typically been used to enable innovation and give the issuing banks room to provide incentives to their card customers. American Express (both issuer and acquirer) has had an advantage over other credit cards with lot's of room to provide proprietary incentives as well as make money themselves for provided services. What happens with lower fees? Less incentives and potentially less innovation. Merchants usually will put the extra money in their own pockets and not lower consumer prices...

Fortunately Jamie Dimon is not "the government". Fortunately Senator Warren cannot, on her own pass laws and then sign into law the banning of crypto. For that there is a process, like in any normal democracy. And even if a law would be passed and signed into law, that would still not close down crypto. It is sad that Jamie Dimon is not more educated on crypto, I understand Senator Warren is probably too old to get it. But the use case for crypto really is not just criminal, tax avoidance. Just like bans are not only used by criminals. Because if you regulate it in the right way (like in Europe for example and few other countries) you can do the right AML / KYC. Just like in banking where still criminal things happen, in spite of all the controls.

Ether and bitcoin have no intrinsic value and use a lot of energy? Please read up and check the facts. Ether has virtually zero energy usage nowadays and both crypto’s have increasing numbers of user cases which puts their value above zero. Is it volatile and speculative and do you need consumer protection? For sure.

Please do not restrict financial institutions from holding and / or offering crypto but regulate digital assets. Make sure that all the relevant intermediaries are registered and regulated as a Financial Institution with, depending on the size, appropriate regulations. Don't ban crypto though because Central Banks want to remain in control.