From Cash Machine...to Grumpy Cat NFT

Ah the humble Automated teller machine...Cash point, Any time money... The good ol' hole in the wall...

Arguably the financial services industry's greatest innovation.... By enabling out of hours cash distribution, the ATM gave people the ability to get their own banking industry, fundamentally changing the way banks interacted with their customers. Bank working hours could be shortened, costs could be cut, with congestion and long queues in branches reduced. More than anything it was the ATM that made banking feel more ubiquitous, with people no longer feeling tied to a particular branch, but rather the brand.

The cash machine is now 55 years old and despite the proliferation in online & mobile banking, cards and contactless payments, the UK record for the most cash withdrawn in a single day was only broken as recently as December 2016 as Christmas shoppers withdrew ï¿¡730m to splurge on presents, food, and booze.....

….Its fair to say then that John Shepherd-Barron's brainchild has stood the test of time.

Its probably also fair to say though that when Jon Shepherd-Barron's first cash machine was installed in 1967 at the Barclays branch in Enfield he would not have envisaged a world half a century later when financial innovation might be represented by a coin going to the moon, someone selling a digital image of an ape for half million a dollars, or little Billy being able to split the purchase of a McDonald’s into four easy instalments of ￡1.27

You don’t have to go too far back to a time when Dogecoin, NFT’s and BNPL didn’t exist and FOMO folks weren’t desperate to pump their money into algorithmic stable coins (You couldn’t lose), meme stocks or JPEGs on a blockchain. (I’m still kicking myself I missed out on Grumpy Cat NFT which only went for $78,135 last year!)…

…The point then is that changes in financial technology and innovation are moving at an ever accelerating pace, but perhaps in becoming increasingly experimental, have untethered from the real problems that the humble cash machine once set out to solve.

Of course there are incredible strides being made in increasing access to financial services, removing barriers, friction and cost to moving money around the world, but its also the case that so much cash has found its way to companies chasing solutions for problems that don’t exist, looking to jump on trends hyped on social media, playing to the increasing human emotion of “have something now, worry about how you got it” later.

Today we often here the talk of the boring "read only" Web 1.0 and Social web 2.0 being replaced. Its all about Web3, where a digital version of you is able to buy yourself a prime piece of digital real estate in the Metaverse run on a Blockchain underpinned by software protocols and smart contracts. Crucially unlike Web 1.0 or Web 2.0 where your data is effectively harvested and monetised by the Facebook's of this world, your data is stored on a crypto wallet (Which you own the keys to) and so leaves with you as soon as you log off the Metaverse. The point being that by using a decentralised system the user gets to decide how, when and where their data is monetised and can be rewarded not punished for their participation...

It wouldn't be a leap to state that today's financial services industry is weighed down by legacy technology, spaghetti systems architecture and a patchworks of fixes & temporary measures creaking to hold its infrastructure together...

The idea then that through smart contracts, any transaction can be turned into a few lines of code, and money programmed to act in a certain way based on predetermined criteria, moving with as much friction as sending an email is incredibly exciting. Whether its:

• Smart contracts being used to secure trust and increase transparency with open account trading between buyers and sellers
• Insurance companies being able to supply automated insurance claim validation on a blockchain,
• Governments using programmable money to provide targeted support to its population, with smart contracts & tokens forming a basis for the creation of a universal basic income

…Sounds slightly more complicated than "hole in wall.. press four buttons, cash come out", and of course it still being in its nascent stages Web3 will look very different in 2025 than it does today. Hopefully though we wont be talking about it and its become ubiquitous, invisible and built into our daily lives, solving for the real challenges of access, transparency, removal of barriers and costs... Just as the humble cash machine once set out to do.

For this to be the case we'll need to avoid falling into the noise and speculation trap of "One coin to rule them all", "Crypto the only real hedge against inflation", "An NFT of the worlds first NFT", and "Redditors giving meme stock advice,"