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Utopia or Mattopia? We use today’s technology to create Matt’s perfect world of tomorrow. And introduce the term ‘bests of burden’.

Excerpt:

Then let’s start with money and finance as this is a business station.
•I like your commitment to keeping this fun.

Will money be digital?
•Eventually, of course. But it won’t be the kind of digital currency we have now.
•At the moment we have two major routes – the decentralised crypto currency route and the controlled, centralised currency, whether it’s physical or digital, like Sweden’s e-kronor.
•We talked about some of the risks of independent crypto currency last week when we discussed Quadriga CX and the money that is stuck in an encrypted cold store.

[Jeff ad libs reply]
•So there’s a real need for forms of money that are instant, robust and safe.
•At the moment, physical currency does that most successfully.
•But as we’ve seen from the growing power and success of e-wallet technologies, the currency itself is becoming more invisible.
•Most existing e-wallets link to your bank account or you pre-load the wallet.
•What I think we’ll see – what we’re already seeing – in China, Alipay is a bank as well as all the thousands of other things it is - is a growing merger of these systems and banking.

Can you imagine these payment systems becoming completely invisible and frictionless?
•Absolutely. What we have to figure out is the new relationship between central banks and retail banks.
•For example, a number of countries are starting to introduce electronic IDs that are a default access point for citizens to access government services, file taxes etc.
•In the future, why wouldn’t that central ID become our default payment account?
•At the moment, when we make a big transaction, we show a government approved ID, like a passport of driving licence.
•If everything is digitised, why do we need all these other layers.
•That one ID can be your payment account, your driving license, your marriage certificate, your passport.

You mean like a chip?
•I wonder if that idea if putting an identity chip in people is actually just an old sci fi idea.
•If you think about it, high speed web access allows you to do all the same things and more with biometric data and a cloud account.
•How that will look, I don’t know. It’s possible we’re be able to do on the spot DNA processing within a decade or two.
•Possibly even less.
•You get stopped for a traffic offence, it might be as simple as holding a sensor in your hand and that processes your DNA or other identifiers from from your sweat.
•The police can instantly see who you are, if the car is yours, if it’s insured, whether you have a license. Even whether you’re under the influence.
•And any fines or penalties can instantly be registered and debited from your account.