For decades, proponents of AI have been promising unimaginable riches and upgrades, painting a vision of the future where we sit around drinking pina coladas whilst robots drive our cars, mow our lawns and do our work. So far, it’s fair to say, most of what AI has achieved
This week, the ECB has been vocal in sharing its prognosis for the future of bitcoin. In addition to this blog post, it also posted a tweet articulating its thoughts in no uncertain terms: “The apparent stabilisation of bitcoin’s value is likely to be an artificially induced last gasp
This week, an FT headline caught my eye: Treasury bails out BoE for first losses on QE programme It may ring some alarm bells, but I think it’s crucial to break down what is going on behind the headline and understand whether “losses” at the BoE should be a
Liquidity in the bond market has been a challenge for well over a decade now. Recent events show that despite the macro environment changing, these liquidity problems show no sign of abating. This week the FT ran a long-form piece entitled, “The cracks in the US Treasury bond market.” The
A chaotic week in crypto… what’s new, you might ask? Well, over the past few days, events took an ultra chaotic turn when a run on FTX, a crypto exchange, created a fire sale that looked like it could burn down the entire ecosystem. So, what caused the chaos?
Another month, another prime minister. It feels like it was only yesterday when we were discussing the prospects of Prime Minister Liz Truss. But as of this week, following Truss’ resignation and the rapid anointing of Rishi Sunak, we must tear up the past and look ahead to a brave,
As everyone reading this is well aware, we have for a very longe time, (including the first 6 and a half years after we founded Origin), been in a ZIRP environment. Within the world of fixed income, broadly, the problem facing market participants was too much cash. I recently read
This week, the Bank of England was forced to stabilise the UK Gilt market… again. The reason being, much to PM Truss’ dismay, economic chaos continues to reign. The volatility in UK Gilts has led to huge pressure in the pension sector and their liability-driven investing (LDI) strategy, a strategy
The Twitter v. Musk saga continues to rage on. Musk and Twitter announced an acquisition agreement on 25th April 2022. A couple of months later Musk pulled out, citing concerns about bots and spam accounts on the platform. Now Twitter is suing Musk to force him to follow through with
Keeping up to date with UK economics and politics over the past few months has felt a bit like riding a rollercoaster. And the scariest part is that we have no idea when the thrills and spills are going to end. I’m sure many people would love to stop
Aside from the neverending whipsaw market volatility, something big went down in crypto yesterday - Ethereum completed its long awaited Merge. The labour of proof of work The migration of the Ethereum network from ‘poof of work’ to ‘proof of stake’ was significant for many reasons, both to those inside
Energy has been in the headlines the past week for good reason. In the UK, last week we found out about the energy price cap rising over 80%, with predictions of a further doubling likely. In Germany, state governments have mandated that pools go cold, lighting is turned off, and