Fiction and Finance
Recommendations of works of fiction of interest to financial practitioners or enthusiasts.
Previous issues of Bits about Money
Why the CrowdStrike bug hit banks hard
Regulation-induced monocultures meet unfortunate but explicable engineering decisions.
Working title (insurance)
Title insurance is grossly overpriced relative to actual risks involved. Why is that?
Guys what is wrong with ACATS
Ever transferred assets between brokerages? Impressive, terrifying machinations happened in the background. No cats were harmed.
The business of wallets
How digital wallets work, and how payment costs drive a lot of product decisions inside and around them.
Anatomy of a credit card rewards program
Credit card rewards are mostly funded out of interchange, a fee paid by businesses to accept cards.
Financial systems take a holiday
Ever wondered about what happens when banks are closed or why some apps have operating hours? It's fascinating.
The business of check cashing
Check cashing, as a business, is a poorly understood "alternative" financial service.
Payroll providers, Power, Respect
Payroll processors exist to provide financial infrastructure and because political economy is complicated.
The Long Shadow of Checks
A lot of more modern financial infrastructure follows the paths blazed by checks, at least in the U.S.
The Bond villain compliance strategy
Jurisdictional gamesmanship is a common strategy for crypto businesses. Here is how it worked out for Binance and its CEO. Spoiler: poorly.
Seeing like a Bank
The structural reasons why banks sometimes behave bizarrely in interactions with customers, like forgetting things which customers tell them.
A review of Number Go Up, on crypto shenanigans
A review of Zeke Faux's Number Go Up, with some bonus commentary on financial journalism and Tether specifically.
Credit card debt collection
Credit card debt is the waste stream of consumer finance. The debt collection industry ends up being sordid, for complex structural and microeconomic reasons.
Requiem for a bank loan
A brief retrospective on an attractive product First Republic used to offer, and a wider discourse on the banking crisis.
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I write roughly biweekly on the intersection of tech, financial infrastructure, and systems thinking. It's free.