this week i'm thinking about – #5 – microchip payments
Hey friends,
Happy December 🎄! I’m writing a weekly blurb about 1) one thing I learned, and 2) one question I’m thinking about that’s broadly tech-related.
If you have thoughts, please do reply! I’ll paraphrase the best responses in the next newsletter. My goal is to start conversations with people thinking about similar things with different lenses. I'm trying this out with a small group of VIP friends, but if you know anyone who would be interested in the discussion, please do forward this along or have them subscribe here.
John
What I learned about: microchip payments 💉💰
I have always been intrigued by biohacking, but have not taken it seriously outside of its mystique as a fringy hobby. That is, until I read this NPR piece about how thousands of Swedes are using microchip implants for payments. These implants are mostly implanted by a single startup called Biohax, which is striking given there is a major risk of early adopters’ implants becoming obsolete if the company doesn't endure.
Given Sweden seems to lead the U.S. in terms of payments infrastructure – Swedish retailers are already eliminating support for cash – there’s a chance we’ll see something similar on our side of the Atlantic. Or the U.S. may leapfrog microchips entirely and go straight to biometric payments (facial recognition or fingerprints), similar to how China leapfrogged past credit cards and straight to mobile payments in the last decade.
What I’m wondering about: tech anti-trust 🍎🔪
Stratechery published an in-depth article on Apple’s App Store + Antitrust, which poses the question: does Apple’s control over iOS devs constitute a monopoly? In the late nineteenth century, railroad and oil monopolies had fairly straightforward regional breakups. In 1982, the Bell System was broken up into seven geographies. If the iOS App Store were to be considered a monopoly, what would breaking it up look like? Much less straightforward than purely regional division. And how about for Google?
Top replies from last week’s edition (challenger banks; next decade’s industry):
Anna points to the UK's regulatory sandbox, implemented in 2016 by the FCA, as one of the regulatory features allowing these challenger banks, where they are able to test new products and get feedback from regulators before releasing them to the public. She noted that the new head of the CFPB's innovation office started a regulatory sandbox in Arizona and is working on a federal regulatory sandbox, which could open the floodgates for US fintech.
Michael remains skeptical on the UK’s long-term ability to reinvent banking – ”perhaps new banks, but nothing really novel”. While young techies across the pond flock towards fintech given London’s reputation as a financial hub, the stodgy banking culture will prevent any structural, long-term changes from taking place.
Zach suggested that there are "waves" in SV related to when and where startups create the most value. The smart enterprise wave has been driving the current decade, and the bio-IT wave will dominate the next decade.
What I’m reading:
Microserfs – a 1994 essay about life as an engineer at Microsoft.
Andrew Chen on marketplaces in the service economy – sent by a subscriber in response to newsletter #3 about unbundling Craigslist.
The Digital Maginot Line – extended metaphor between the Maginot Line and the Information Era, where human minds are the territories and social platforms are the nation states.