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I just discovered a portal of information from McKinsey. Now, now, now … I know you may love or hate McKinsey but bear in mind that all their staff have an Upper Second Grade or First Grade degree, OK?So, I start delving into their portal that answers questions like:
- What is inflation?
- What is quantum computing?
- What is AI (Artificial Intelligence)?
- What is generative AI?
- What is artificial general intelligence (AGI)?
- What is the metaverse?
There’s loads in there …
- What is blockchain?
- What is central bank digital currency (CBDC)?
- What is proof of stake?
- What is exascale computing?
- What does CX mean?
- What is the Internet of Things (IoT)?
- What is cloud computing?
- What is Web3?
There’s even much more in there. A veritable feast of knowledge and it’s all free. So, I dived in.
From: What is FinTech?
Fintechs—short for financial technology—are companies that rely primarily on technology to conduct fundamental functions provided by financial services, affecting how users store, save, borrow, invest, move, pay, and protect money.
Fair enough. They then expand a bit …
Fintech is spreading fast: in the United States, for example, almost one in two consumers in 2021 used a fintech product—primarily peer-to-peer payment products and nonbank money transfers. Fintechs also raised record capital in the second half of the 2010s: venture capital funding grew from $19.4 billion in 2015 to $33.3 billion in 2020.
But recently, the luster has worn off a bit: in 2022, a market correction caused a slowdown in fintech’s explosive growth momentum. As a result, fintechs have had to adjust to lower valuations and decreased willingness on the part of venture capital firms to fund companies with low margins. Rather than sprinting toward the hockey stick of old, fintechs today are focused on sustainable, profitable growth.
Yep, worth a read and then we go to: What is tokenization?
Events of the past few years have made it clear: we’re hurtling toward the next era of the internet with ever-increasing speed. Several new developments are leading the charge. Generative AI (gen AI) is one; barely a week goes by without an important new breakthrough. Web3 is said to offer the potential of a new, decentralized internet, controlled by participants via blockchains rather than a handful of corporations. How we pay for things is also experiencing disruption: one in two consumers in 2021 used a fintech product, primarily peer-to-peer payment platforms and nonbank money transfers.
What do gen AI, Web3, and fintech all have in common? They all rely on a process called tokenization. But each case uses tokenization in a very different way.
In payments, tokenization is used for cybersecurity and to obfuscate the identity of the payment itself, essentially to prevent fraud. In Web3, by contrast, tokenization is a digitization process to make assets more accessible. And in AI, it’s something else entirely: tokenization is used to break down data for easier pattern detection.
Interesting.
The reports are long and a deep dive into all the subjects I love so … recommended.
Full disclosure: McKinsey has no idea that I posted this.