UK FinTech: Life after Brexit

Eight weeks ago I wrote Part 1 of this post called #Brexit good for UK #FinTech and got an overwhelming response - mostly abuse! I had to double check my post to make sure I hadn't inadvertently insulted somebody's prophet or, worse, suggested again that Bitcoin is just an over-hyped big waste of electricity! Turns out I simply held a controversial and, what I thought at the time to be, minority view.

Then something interesting happened. In my role I have the privilege of speaking at a lot of FinTech events around the world and for the past few months the conversation tended to turn to #Brexit. Publicly folks were quite vocal about their brexit concerns but privately (for Europeans) they were rather envious of the UK being given the opportunity to decide and mostly saw brexit as an opportunity for the UK if handled correctly.

When I pressed for why they weren't blogging/posting that view it was one of self-censorship. Folks working for big corporates and larger startups were understandably concerned about making public remarks for fear of being quoted and contradicting the (usually Remain) party line of their leaders. Secondly the brexit camp has been consistently badged as a bunch of bigoted loons so they didn't want to be tarred with that brush!

#Brexit good for UK #FinTech

Behind closed doors in a small office, off an nondescript corridor, in a rather large building on Rue Wiertz in Brussels, Belgium a hushed conversation took place last month. Shortly afterwards a piece of European Parliamentlegislation was quietly shelved. It carried the rather dull title of “Directive 2009/125/EC” and it was one of the most dangerous documents in Europe!

FinTech Future: It's Burgers, not Bitcoins

The other day I was watching my daughter playing with a group of children at her nursery. I didn't quite follow the rules but it was a picture card game with the apparent objective of winning as many cards as possible.

After a short while a couple of smug-looking kids (you know the sort!) had mastered the game and accumulated the majority of the cards to the obvious disdain of the rest, including my daughter.