Happy Easter

IMTW is slacking off this week.

Apr 09, 2023

I hope you and your loved ones are enjoying a restful Easter break. I am, so this week’s missive will be shorter than usual. No insight or actions but I have compiled a few news items I think you’ll find interesting.

This week, you’ll learn why Switzerland remains as hungry as ever for dirty money, central bank digital currencies present an opportunity for commercial banks to differentiate themselves, and how the best alternative to Twitter (one that Elon Musk seems particularly scared of) is right here in your hands.

Now, please excuse me, I have to get back to roasting my lamb…. 🐑

Top stories

The other articles that are worthy of your time.

FINANCE

Julius Baer CEO warns Switzerland not to jeopardise status as banker to super-rich

Source: The Financial Times, 3 April 2023

“Switzerland’s status as the world’s banker to the super-rich is not ‘god given’, the head of one of the country’s biggest banks has warned, as the country reels from the near-collapse of Credit Suisse.”
“The Swiss government and regulators needed to better communicate with worried international investors, Julius Baer’s chief executive Philipp Rickenbacher told the Financial Times, as he cautioned that the crisis of confidence in global banking was far from over.”
“He said he was seeing a ‘movement of clients to quality’ in Switzerland as wealthy account holders pull back from UBS and Credit Suisse — whose business models also entail riskier investment banking activities — and shift towards traditional, more conservative Swiss banks. The 133-year-old Julius Baer is Switzerland’s largest pure-play private bank: it caters only to the account and investment needs of wealthy individuals and does not speculate with its own capital or run its own in-house asset management business."

TECHNOLOGY

Digital pound CBDC won’t be programmable to avoid government control perceptions

“Last week, Katie Fortune, senior manager of the central bank digital currency unit at the Bank of England, suggested that the digital pound will not include government-enabled programmability functions to avoid misperceptions about government overreach.”
“The issue of programmability is a sensitive one in CBDC discussions. The usual argument is that because any government-issued digital currency would be a de facto legal tender – therefore, anyone would have to accept it – CBDCs should be simple, standardized, and not restricted. However, programmability functions could limit usability and impose rules on how people are allowed to spend their money. The BofE believes that if these functions were introduced by design, they could feed people’s misperceptions and reduce trust in the system.”
“Like the digital euro, the digital pound would not be programmable at its core but programmability can still be implemented by the private sector. A two-tier model with a private sector layer in the middle could build on the BofE’s infrastructure, Ms Fortune argued. This way, it would be private firms that deal with end users. This would allow the BofE to support innovation while maintaining independence. ”

MEDIA & MARKETING

Substack’s new short-form ‘Notes’ feed looks a lot like Twitter

“Substack announced today that it’s introducing a new Notes feature that is designed to let users share posts, quotes, comments, images, links and ideas. Notes shared on the platform are displayed in a dedicated short-form feed that looks a lot like Twitter. Once you share a note, it’s essentially like posting a tweet. Each note displays a like count and comment count. There’s also the option to ‘restack,’ or retweet, a post.”
“The company seems to agree that the new feature looks similar to Twitter, as Substack noted in its announcement post that Notes ‘may look like familiar social media feeds.’ However, Substack argues that Notes differs from traditional social media feeds because it doesn’t run on ads.”
“Substack also argues that Notes won’t feel like traditional social media, and that the goal with the new product is not to create a ‘perfectly sanitized information environment,’ but to allow for constructive discussion where there is enough common ground to seek understanding ‘while holding onto the worthwhile tension needed for great art and new ideas’.”

WILDCARD

Here's why macOS has the Bitcoin whitepaper hidden in its files

“The fact that macOS has the original Bitcoin whitepaper hidden in its internal files has gotten attention once again after developer Andy Baio wrote an article about it this week. According to Baio, he was trying to fix his printer when he found a PDF copy of the whitepaper written by Satoshi Nakamoto, considered to be the person who invented Bitcoin.”
“The file seems to have been added to the system with macOS Mojave, which was released in 2018, and is still present in the latest version of macOS Ventura. If your Mac is running one of these macOS versions, you can check the file yourself by running the following command in Terminal:
open /System/Library/Image\ Capture/Devices/VirtualScanner.app/Contents/Resources/simpledoc.pdf
“This file was never intended to be found by normal users. It is located inside a folder with assets used for internal testing by Apple engineers. This was probably just an inside joke by Apple engineers working on this tool.”

Off cuts

The stories that almost made this week’s newsletter.

The last word

Nigel Lawson, who died this week, on Government’s relationship with business:

Nigel Lawson. Source: CityAM, 4 April 2023

“The Conservative Party has never believed that the business of government is the government of business”.

Don’t settle for marketing.

Strive for InMarketing: innovate, interact, influence.

Wishing you productive, if short, week,

P.S. I cheated today and opted for this over a leg. I hope the family doesn’t revolt…

Happy Easter

IMTW is slacking off this week.

Issue № 79 | London, Sunday 9 April 2023