I have worked for over 30 years in product and technology development in the financial services industry, and have worked in Australia, the USA, and Hong Kong. I have held senior positions at large financial services and banking firms, and was CEO of a listed Australian company.
In 2009 I decided to leave corporate life to follow my true passion, which is working on complex computer software and the development of financial and cryptocurrency systems. I also advise and publish on strategy and cybersecurity, and in 2015 I was credited by the New York Times for discovering the Lenovo Superfish Spyware. I am now based in Australia with Horyzon, and continue as a Research and Development Associate with Northfield Information Systems.
I hold a B.Sc. (Hons) from the University of New South Wales.
An essay looking at tech privacy and the crypto movement.
ReadA wry look back for clients on all things Crypto in 2023.
ReadIn this paper I present data to show the intergenerational change that the financial services industry is facing over the next 5 years. While the data is from Australia, the theme is global.
ReadThe idea that crypto is a wild land of no regulations is talking off an old and wrong script. However it is still true to say that crypto still offers some interesting and new mechanisms for bad actors to operate, and these are exercising the regulators in new ways. And so the focus of this note is about some interesting developments in the way the USA is addressing these problems through the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).
ReadDecentralized Finance, known colloquially in the cryptocurrency community as “DeFi,” has been promoted as a form of finance that will replace traditional finance, or “TradFi” as described by the same community. The purpose of this paper is to look through the various claims to understand the technology and financial processes that underpin the DeFi phenomenon and separate the hyperbole from the true innovations so the reader can see what may be enduring and worth a professional’s time to understand. The paper concludes that while there are important ideas starting to emerge from the DeFi phenomenon, there is also a lot of risk and very little that a prudent investor would consider as opportunities worth pursuing at this time. DeFi is the financial system of the metaverse, and while that’s innovative, it is not a replacement of, nor an asset in, the traditional financial system.
ReadFew people will know that I have been programming computers since I was 13 years old.
Read The Ukraine Crisis Puts the Focus on CryptoVirtual currencies and DeFi are important enough in capital flows to be taken seriously - and controlled.
ReadCryptocurrencies - Arriving into reality as fast as they leave it.
ReadCryptocurrencies have found their way into many investment portfolios and will continue to find their way into many more. The purpose of this paper is to provide a perspective on the history and processes of these unconventional assets to show that their integration into conventional investment and oversight processes makes many of the highlighted dark market risks less relevant to investors, while also making some less discussed or understood technology and governance risks more relevant.
ReadLenovo, the Chinese tech giant, was shipping PCs with spyware that tracks its customers’ every move online, and renders the computers vulnerable to hackers.
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