BAM's Early Adopter discount ends soon
Bits about Money's Early Adopter discount ends on January 31st, 2023.
Previous issues of Bits about Money
KYC and AML: beyond the acronyms
Know Your Customer policies at financial institutions have more nuance than you'd expect.
BAM is now reader-supported
Bits about Money now offers paid memberships. (Plus, a bonus essay on newsletter financial infrastructure.)
The infrastructure behind ATMs
ATMs are connected to banks by networks which operate little-understood payment rails.
Credit cards as a legacy system
Credit cards have been in use for almost 75 years. Some long-ago decisions still cause consequences in the present day. But change is possible.
Demystifying financial leverage
Leverage is actually reasonably easy to understand, both in the math and in the implications for financial firms.
Siting bank branches
Community access to banking is downstream of siting decisions in commercial real estate, in fascinating detail.
The optimal amount of fraud is non-zero
Counterintuitively, businesses, customers, and society prefer having fraud to what they'd need to do to not have it.
The branch banking model
Ever wondered how bank branches work at a nuts-and-bolts level? Let's dig into the logic and economics of them.
Deposit insurance under the coverage
Deposit insurance is the backstop that guarantees the money-ness of deposits. Here's how it works under the covers.
The alchemy of deposits
Deposits are a public/private partnership which create generally usable money out of risky banking activities.
Stablecoin mechanisms and use cases
There are a few different mechanisms underpinning commonly used stablecoins. Some of them may not perish in a fire.
Reconciliation: A game designed to frustrate the player
I made a video game about reconciliation. Here's the textual version of it.
Plastic (and payments) in the fantasy supply chain
Shenzhen baseboard manufacturers, bicoastal U.S. tech companies, mom-and-pop factories throughout the Western world, and a global network of artisans bringing a bit of magic to your tabletop.
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I write roughly biweekly on the intersection of tech, financial infrastructure, and systems thinking. It's free.