Simon Taylor
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sytaylor.bsky.social
Simon Taylor
@sytaylor.bsky.social
Writing and Ranting @ FintechBrainfood.com
My X timeline feels more like the bluesky timeline with each passing day.

The overton window moved again.
April 16, 2025 at 1:00 PM
Same accounts on X who thought tariffs were 4D chess now hate them.

Study history.

Smoot-Hawley is the last time the USA tried tariffs.

It's considered one of the worst acts of Congress in history.

It drove the Global Depression and led to the rise of fascism.
April 4, 2025 at 9:23 AM
Reposted by Simon Taylor
In a lot of ways the market feels frothy right now, but even Stripe is raising at lower valuation than 2021 www.fintechbrainfood.com/p/stripe-joh...
Stripe's $1.4 trillion Year: Q&A with John Collison on the 2024 Annual Letter
Acquiring Bridge for $1.1bn, $1.4trillion TPV, and Stripe Billing beats $500m ARR. A conversation and Q&A with John Collison, President of Stripe, about their 2025 Annual Letter.
www.fintechbrainfood.com
February 27, 2025 at 3:36 PM
The tech-right be like
February 2, 2025 at 8:10 PM
The Tech Bro Military Industrial Complex is as vulnerable to regulatory capture as the one that preceded it.

Oligarchies are rarely efficient markets.

There's too much upside in winning that phat government contract.
January 27, 2025 at 2:05 PM
Reposted by Simon Taylor
On the environmental cost of AI, this by @simonwillison.net w is useful. The models we use today have become orders of magnitude more efficient in the last year, and each prompt likely uses much less energy than many seem to think.

But the aggregate impact of ever-larger data centers is very real.
January 11, 2025 at 8:06 PM
Reposted by Simon Taylor
If you're in FinTech and haven't read @sytaylor.bsky.social's State of Fintech 2025 report yet, it's a must read covering all corners of FinTech - payments to asset management, AI to Fraud Prevention and Credit Defaults. Helps clarify the matrix docs.google.com/presentation...
Fintech Brainfood Presents - The State of Fintech 2025
docs.google.com
January 3, 2025 at 9:47 PM
Are we still doing bluesky or no?
December 25, 2024 at 8:43 PM
Robotaxi's are significantly better than humans. Waymo had 88% less property damage and 92% less bodily harm.

Now you have to wonder what this evidence will mean.

Less accidents with public transport means we need less bus and train drivers?

Can we actually change that fleet?
December 22, 2024 at 8:00 AM
"We need to figure out how to make crypto closer aligned with AI - it's the natural micro payments and token solution" Shopify CEO

"Crypto solves so many AI problems and AI solves so many crypto problems" Ben Horowitz

"These need to be harmonious areas of excitement" Tobi...
December 21, 2024 at 11:25 AM
Will AI replace jobs?

Exhibit A
Hmm. From St. Louis Fed
December 17, 2024 at 1:23 PM
The founder of midjourney
December 17, 2024 at 12:21 PM
The State of Fintech 2025 - Age of the Fintech Hyperscaler.

We're just at the beginning of this revolution.

You'll find the entire free, 111 page report at fintechbrainfood.com
December 15, 2024 at 3:09 PM
Feature request.

AI agent that is familiar with every consumer protection, baked into emails and other data sources to

1. Identify and apply for refunds (e.g. delay flights)

2. Fight for you + report spammers or bad actors to regulators

3. Discounts from utility providers on renewal
December 13, 2024 at 11:16 AM
Thank you to ADGM for having me today. Incredible reception for this talk.

Ps. That's me demonstrating the approximate scale of a small sardine.

🐟
December 11, 2024 at 9:45 AM
More pay by bank in the wild. This time Ryanair.

Have you seen pay by bank at checkout?

If so where?
December 7, 2024 at 8:23 PM
Microsoft Co pilot is such a bad product that it is giving boomers a bad perception of Gen AIs capabilities.
December 6, 2024 at 8:47 PM
That's a lot of users.

www.theverge.com/2024/12/4/24...
ChatGPT now has over 300 million weekly users
ChatGPT keeps on growing.
www.theverge.com
December 6, 2024 at 8:46 PM
Wait the Shift4 CEO now runs NASA and used to be an astronaut?

What timeline is this??
December 4, 2024 at 8:22 PM
December 1, 2024 at 5:57 PM
Feature request @bsky.app

Auto split long copy + paste over multiple posts.
December 1, 2024 at 8:59 AM
More Pay by Bank in the Wild. This time for the Brave browser API. See the incentive to pay by bank at the bottom? 👀
November 30, 2024 at 6:37 AM
The UK lost a generation of growth in Fintech after Brexit.

We took our eye off the ball

But we can make a comeback

formventures.substack.com/p/simon-tayl...
Simon Taylor, Fintech expert: "We lost a generation of fintech growth"
A decade ago, startups, regulators and government came together to make the UK the ‘fintech capital of the world’.
formventures.substack.com
November 29, 2024 at 12:24 PM
Finally! UK to get crypto rules by 2026.

- 7m users in the UK
- average balance ~$2,200
- FCA says the goal is to ensure consumer protection AND a competitive market

🧠 MiCA led to banks doing Stablecoins. Expect similar but with big UK banks.
November 26, 2024 at 1:48 PM