There’s this joke that people who think traveling for work is fun, probably don’t travel for work enough. Getting to visit new places on the company’s expense account sounds great in theory, but tight schedules and constant jetlag tend to reduce the fun factor substantially. I was recently reminded of…

Consensus 2018 wrapped its third and final day yesterday, and as some 9,000 attendees, exhibitors, volunteers, and sponsors filed out of the Hilton Midtown in New York City, there was only one thing on my mind: I needed a drink. Coindesk’s annual flagship event has long been among the industry’s…

It’s startling how far the cryptocurrency industry has come over these last four years. In roughly the same amount of time it takes a saguaro cactus to grow one centimeter, we went from an obscure technology promoted by wide-eyed cypherpunks to a new asset class traded on Wall Street. When…

I got a nice surprise from my telco recently when they gave me a call to ask how I wanted my new Samsung S9+ delivered. It was surprising mostly because I hadn't ordered one. …

Writing a book about the Bitcoin industry has been on my list of things to work on for a while now, and during the holiday break at the tail-end of 2016 I finally had a chance to sit down and really start putting it together. Before I got started, I…

On July 14th, four members of the Bloom team flew out to San Francisco to participate in the 4th batch of the Google Launchpad Accelerator, a program for promising startups in emerging markets like Southeast Asia, Latin America, Africa, and Central Europe. Google LPA starts with a two-week-long bootcamp, during…

Last Friday, Globe Telecommunications announced a new capital infusion from Jack Ma’s Ant Financial and Ayala Corporation into its Globe Fintech Innovations subsidiary (officially, Mynt). Mynt launched in late 2015 as a sort of revamped and consolidated version of GCash and its microlending sibling Fuse Lending. It seemed like Globe…

Roundup of News on Bitcoin Remittances for Mid-February 2017 — The Philippines dominated the news cycle briefly during the first week of February as the BSP’s new guidelines for Bitcoin exchange companies drew both interest and discussion. Will New Regulations Help or Hurt Bitcoin Startups in the Philippines? Originally published on Coindesk, February 15 2017 (LB) Because of the way Philippine startups have been using bitcoin over the past three years…

Short videoclip from an interview with Regina Hing on Bloomberg Philippines’ Starting Gate last week on the BSP’s new virtual currency exchange regulations, which I wrote about more extensively in this previous entry. My only regret is that I never got to peddle my book on nationwide TV.