Three things crypto isn’t….

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Often, when the topic of cryptocurrency and blockchain comes up in conversation during social gatherings, I frequently hear that “crypto is a criminal venture, it’s a scam, and in any case, it has nothing to do with my life, so I can ignore it.”

Of course, there is an element of truth in each of these allegations. But the same level of scepticism or denial could be levelled at traditional finance systems (remember Enron, Bernie Madoff, Nick Leeson, LIBOR, the GFC….), on-line gambling (the house always wins….), and the early days of the Internet (I still recall one colleague saying “www” stood for “World-wide wait”…).

So allow me to address the charges frequently thrown at crypto:

1. “Crypto is only used by criminals.”

The irony is, of course, that blockchain is one of the most transparent financial systems ever built. Every transaction is recorded, permanent, and visible. It’s not the best tool for someone trying to hide something. Physical cash is opaque and frequently utilised in criminal enterprise.

2. “It’s a scam.”

Some of it probably is. But fraud, money laundering, hacking and illicit activity exist in traditional finance too. The difference is nobody calls the entire banking system a scam because of it. Crypto is just newer, and newer things attract more suspicion.

3. “It has nothing to do with my life.”

This one is the biggest misconception of all. If you’ve ever sent money overseas, there’s a good chance the payment provider used a blockchain or distributed ledger technology to process it, you just didn’t realise. Think of the Ripple Ledger, stablecoin networks like Circle, and the numerous projects that Chainlink is facilitating within inter-bank systems.

If you’ve ever tapped your phone to pay for something, you’ve used a digital wallet. A digital wallet in crypto works the same way, it holds your assets and proves they’re yours, and allows you to transact with those assets.

The only difference is there’s no bank sitting in between you and those transactions. The technology isn’t something new, you’re already using a version of it, you were just unaware.

Crypto is real and it’s already in your pocket.

The only things often missing are awareness, education and understanding.

Next week: Time for age limits on religion?

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My thanks to Simian Giria for helping to initiate this topic.

Crypto is like dog years….

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Following on from last week’s post about my personal career path, I have been reflecting on my 10-year experience of working in the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry.

Using the analogy of dog years, in crypto years, that’s more like half a century.

I sometimes joke about it with colleagues and clients, but the more you consider the pace of development in the crypto sector, the less of a joke it becomes.

In most industries, change happens over decades (yes, I know AI is now evolving at a rapid rate, but it has taken many years of earlier development to achieve this current momentum).

Regulations shift slowly, new asset classes take years to achieve legitimacy, and institutions move stolidly.

In crypto, that same volume of change happens in 12 months.

Consider what this industry has lived through in the last decade alone:

1. For me personally, Bitcoin went from being a “curiosity” at a Melbourne pitch night to a reserve asset held by sovereign nations.
2. Ethereum has introduced programmable money.
3. The ICO boom of 2017-19 upended the way companies and capital form around new technology, innovation and business ideas.
4. The cycle of market booms and crashes.
5. The DeFi experiment/explosion.
6. NFTs and RWA tokenisation.
7. The FTX collapse.
8. ETF approvals.
9. And now stablecoins and tokenised assets being quietly adopted by the very banks that once dismissed crypto entirely.

Every one of these reshaped how the industry operates at ground level.

Everything traditional finance systems took decades to build (price discovery, benchmarking, asset origination, financial structuring, risk management, clearing & settlement), crypto is rebuilding faster than ever.

After 10 years, I’m still not totally comfortable with all aspects of this constant rate of change, but I am a little better at reading it.

How do you keep up when your industry moves fast?

Next week: Three things that cryptocurrency isn’t

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My thanks to Simian Giria for helping to initiate this topic.

Non-linear Career Development

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I’ve recently been asked several times, mainly by younger people in their 20s, what do I actually do for work, and how did I end up doing what I do?

Regular readers will know that career development is a topic I have commented on many times in past articles, either as a result of my coaching and consulting engagements, or in response to the current state of the world.

This month marks 10 years since I started working in the crypto and digital asset industry. While it’s not a full-time job, and I serve as a freelance consultant, it’s now the longest period of continuous “employment” I have had in a single role, sector or organisation. Not a bad gig for something that started out almost by accident – it certainly wasn’t part of a well-planned, linear and structured career path!

If I look back on my career, there is probably one constant factor – that at heart, I am an editor, and by and large, I have always worked in “content”, whether in traditional publishing, on-line data, or new media. My specific roles and the organisations I have worked for have been varied, but the output or format has been consistent.

After graduating in law in the early 1980s, I spent a stressful and frustrating few years as a paralegal in local government, helping people with housing difficulties or facing homelessness. Within 5 years, I was burned out, and needed a change.

So I retrained, and completed an evening class in journalism and sub-editing, run by a couple of senior editors from Fleet Street. However, my aspirations of working for glossy titles or cultural magazines came to nothing, as by this time I was probably too old to be hired as a trainee journalist or on a graduate program. Luckily, I spotted an ad for “legal editors”, and putting my formal qualification together with my recent night school learning meant I was exactly in the right place at the right time.

That initial foray into publishing took me from London, to Hong Kong, and then to Australia, and along the way I transitioned into financial services, market data, international roles, business development, product management and digital assets. And I still use my legal knowledge every day, and “content in context” (hence the name of this blog) is relevant to everything I do.

Fast forward to 2026, and here I am running a media company serving the crypto industry. (More on that next week).

Looking back, there was no master plan, or grand strategy. My curiosity just kept pulling me from one industry or one role to the next.

1. Law taught me how to think.
2. Publishing taught me how to communicate.
3. Capital markets taught me financial infrastructure.

And when I walked into a Bitcoin pitch night in Melbourne more than 10 years ago, I felt at home (which is perhaps a little weird when you think about the somewhat impersonal, anonymous and 100% on-line world of crypto).

I appreciate that my career path looks messy from the outside, and it’s not for everyone, but it all fits in the bigger picture.

I didn’t become a lawyer, but I use legal thinking every day.

I left traditional finance 15 years ago, but that background is largely the reason I ended up working in crypto and digital assets.

If you’ve had a non-linear career, you will probably recognise the following:

Every skill you have picked up, every industry you wandered into, and every unplanned detour has been accumulating in the background.

You don’t necessarily connect the dots looking forward, you only ever connect them looking back.

But in the end, it all fits in the bigger picture.

Next week: My 10 Years in Crypto

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My thanks to Simian Giria for helping to initiate this topic.

Old School Ties

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Last month I visited my old high school to attend the annual reunion. This was the first time I’d been to a formal alumni event, only 46 years after I left.

That’s not to say I haven’t kept in contact with my school mates, despite living on the other side of the world. Among the Class of ’79 who had turned up, I’d seen all but one of them in the past couple of years, and I try to catch up with this group each time I go back to the UK.

Despite the passing years, I was surprised by how much the old place felt so familiar – I guess having more than 450 years of history behind it means that tradition runs deep.

At the same time, it also felt quite alien – I realise that although I am originally from the local area, I feel less and less of it. Nevertheless, I was reassured that however much things may change, my immediate circle of school friends endures.

Why should that be so? Yes, “old school ties” can form the basis of life-long relationships, linked to a specific educational institute; and those ties can be both tangible and metaphorical. But more importantly, these connections are built on a mix of broad common values, our shared experiences, and the age we met.