Author: Megan Burrows

Some layoffs make headlines for a day before going unnoticed. They are not like Sitecore. They come in waves, year after year, loud enough for anyone who has worked in the enterprise software industry to be able to recite the pattern from memory, but quiet enough that most people outside the industry never notice. For the better part of ten years, the Copenhagen-based digital experience company has been periodically reducing its workforce. Between 100 and 150 people, mostly in Europe, were impacted by the cuts in 2015. Then came 2019, when about 70 workers, or 5% of the world’s workforce,…

When an asset ceases to function as it should, a specific type of disorientation occurs. Gold has been known for decades as the material to turn to in the event of a global emergency. The script is as follows: gold rises, markets panic, and war breaks out. However, as the Iranian conflict developed this year, the script was abandoned sometime in February, and it’s unclear why investors weren’t alerted sooner. On their own, the numbers reveal an odd tale. Given where it began a year earlier, the price of gold reached almost $5,600 per ounce in late January, which felt…

When a regulator lifts a ban, a peculiar kind of optimism descends upon a market. Press releases, trading platform posts on LinkedIn, and the somewhat breathless tone of financial newsletters all convey this. In the UK, cryptocurrency ETNs have returned. Finally, investors have access to ether and bitcoin through what appears to be a reassuringly regulated system. However, since it’s doing a lot of quiet work that it probably shouldn’t, it’s worthwhile to consider what the word “regulated” actually means in this context. The fact that these aren’t ETFs is what no one mentions in the headline. True cryptocurrency ETFs…

A certain silence descends upon a regulatory announcement that no one anticipated would have such a significant impact. That’s essentially what transpired this week when the FCA concluded its protracted review of consultation papers and finally informed the industry, “These are the rules, and yes, they’re real this time.” Three years have gone into its creation. Ten consultation papers, four discussion papers, and what FCA executive director for payments and digital finance David Geale described as the largest expansion of the regulator’s purview in ten years. That’s just the truth; it’s not marketing speak. For many years, British cryptocurrency companies…

Inside the Threadneedle of the Bank of England: What should money look like in a digital economy? This seemingly straightforward question has been posed for years by economists, policy teams, and street offices. The solution they are aiming for—a digital pound, sometimes referred to as Britcoin, though no one in official circles seems particularly fond of that moniker—is still developing, being tested in a lab setting through July 2026, examined in policy papers, and discussed in parliamentary committees. There has been no decision to build it. It’s important to acknowledge this fact because a lot of British ambition tends to…

A laboratory equipment company called Labtex recently finished a trade finance deal with India somewhere in West Yorkshire. Under the previous paper-based system, this transaction would have taken days or even weeks. Instead, it was processed in almost real time using a blockchain platform called WaveBL, with Lloyds Bank managing the digital Letter of Credit on the UK side. No messengers. No handling of paper documents. Don’t wait. It’s the kind of transaction that doesn’t make the front pages, but it’s precisely the kind of thing that indicates a real change, the kind where a technology becomes a process rather…

The full impact of Brexit on financial services started to sink in at some point in late 2020. On December 31 of that year, the transition period came to an end, and the passport—which the fintech and cryptocurrency sectors had secretly relied on for years—went away. A London-based startup was able to operate in 27 EU member states without having to submit a separate application in each thanks to that one word: passport. When it vanished, the environment changed in ways that were immediate for some businesses and still developing for others. The cryptocurrency industry had greatly profited from being…

When two senior officials explain the same policy in two different ways within the same news cycle, a certain kind of confusion descends upon Washington, and that is essentially what happened with Iran this week. On Truth Social, President Trump referred to the $300 billion estimate as “Fake News.” That same morning, Vice President Vance stated on CBS that Iran “could have access to” precisely that sum. Technically, both claims are tenable. This story is worth watching because of the tension rather than the actual dollar amount. The U.S. Treasury is not writing checks to the fund in question, which…

Drive past the Tesla showroom on Munich’s Leopoldstraße these days, and something feels different. It’s not empty, exactly. There are still a handful of Model Ys parked out front, gleaming under the showroom lights. But the foot traffic has thinned, and the sales staff have that particular look of people who’ve been told a turnaround is coming for a while now. Meanwhile, a few kilometers away, a BYD dealership that didn’t exist eighteen months ago is doing a steady trade in Seal Us and Dolphins. Nobody’s shouting about it. That’s sort of the point. The numbers tell a story that’s…

When a ceasefire is announced, there is a certain silence that no one is boasting about. This week, it occurred once more. Standing at the G7 summit in Évian-les-Bains on Wednesday, Donald Trump called his new memorandum of understanding with Iran “very strong,” but he quickly undermined himself by acknowledging, almost cheerfully, that “nobody knows what it is.” The majority of what you need to know about this deal can be found in that one sentence. It’s true. It has been signed, or will soon be. Furthermore, very few of the participants appear eager to get too close to it.…