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Richard Gendal Brown
Personal blog · gendal.mebusinesseconomics
Richard Gendal Brown's personal blog at gendal.me covers business and economics. Since 2014, 26 different Hacker News readers have linked it 28 times, most often “A simple explanation of how money moves around the banking system (2013)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-11-27, and you can follow it by feed.
Thoughts on the future of finance
Most-linked posts?
- A simple explanation of how money moves around the banking system (2013)5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2016-05-23
- A Simple Explanation of How Shares Move Around the Securities Settlement System3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2016-11-26
- A simple explanation of how money moves around the banking system (2013)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-03-22
- A simple explanation of Bitcoin “Sidechains”2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-09-02
What Hacker News says?
For rather deep dive: https://www.coursera.org/learn/money-banking/home/welcome Something shorter: https://gendal.me/2013/11/24/a-simple-explanation-of-how-mon...
Comment linking /2013/11/24/a-simple-explanation-of-how-money-moves-around-the-banking-system/
on “Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index”Submitted A simple explanation of how money moves around the banking system (2013) as a story · 178 points
HN discussionHi everybody... Richard Brown, CTO of R3, the firm behind Corda, here. As Mike says, we're somewhat unusual in that there are many live, successful Corda deployments around the world. Mike's comment about how Corda is blockchain-like but not, strictly speaking, a chain of blocks is at the heart of this I think. Here's what I mean: How many 'introductory' presentations have you been to (or, worse, given ) to semi-tec…
Comment linking /2014/05/21/bitcoin-mining-the-first-technology-platform-that-works-because-it-goes-slow/
on “AWS and Blockchain”Submitted A simple explanation of how money moves around the banking system (2013) as a story · 162 points
HN discussionVISA does not offer credit. The issuing bank does. VISA is just a payment network that links consumers, merchants, and credit issuers. Actually it is a scheme that involves 4 parties[1]. [1] https://gendal.me/2014/08/09/a-simple-explanation-of-fees-in...
Comment linking /2014/08/09/a-simple-explanation-of-fees-in-the-payment-card-industry/
on “Home Depot Files Antitrust Lawsuit Against Visa, MasterCard”Submitted A Simple Explanation of How Shares Move Around the Securities Settlement System as a story · 106 points
HN discussionNo it only shows they've done their homework. Allot of the "security" of banking processes is based on human verification often via phone, fax, printing etc. so it's not surprising that they've compromised the printing process because that would flag the transactions immediately as the process mandates for the printout to be reviewed (and usually singed, and then filed with compliance). If you can present an all cle…
Comment linking /2013/11/24/a-simple-explanation-of-how-money-moves-around-the-banking-system/
on “Two Bytes to $951M”Submitted How to Explain the Value of Replicated, Shared Ledgers from First Principles as a story · 13 points
HN discussionThe content in this article about anti-spam techniques is fascinating. But the title should be edited to indicate its vintage: 2014. Also, by the by, there is some interesting context about the author (Mike Hearn) and his recent activities that are not related to the topic of spam. Warning: off-topic digression below. Mike Hearn became one of the most visible Bitcoin core developers, working in that community for 5…
Comment linking /2016/10/25/r3-corda-what-makes-it-different/
on “Modern Anti-Spam and E2E Crypto (2014)”Submitted A model to make sense of the proliferation of cryptocurrency projects as a story · 11 points
HN discussionRichard Gendal Brown has a great post on the difference between a distributed database and a distributed ledger: https://gendal.me/2016/11/08/on-distributed-databases-and-di... The Coco team shares Richard's view that the distinguishing factor is where the trust boundary exists within the system. In the case of Coco, we assume a lack of trust among consortium participants, but we leverage the attestation and anti-ta…
Comment linking /2016/11/08/on-distributed-databases-and-distributed-ledgers/
on “Coco: Framework for enterprise blockchain networks”Submitted A Simple Explanation of How Shares Move Around the Settlement System (2015) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThe Bitcoin whitepaper [1] (which is very short, concise, and definitely worth the read) describes how the Merkle trees might be pruned (transactions could be pruned when all outputs are spent) and in fact Bitcoin 0.11 added pruning (and 0.12 added further compatibility for pruned nodes). Vitalik Buterin (Ethereum lead) also posted a description of how Ethereum will implement State Tree Pruning [2]. These are short/…
Comment linking /2014/10/26/a-simple-explanation-of-bitcoin-sidechains/
on “Maybe Blockchain Really Does Have Magical Powers”Submitted A simple explanation of how money moves around the banking system as a story · 3 points
HN discussionRead up on how international banking and specifically correspondent banking works[0]. There is a lot of counter party risk for banks in that process. Bitcoin or something like it would allow a system to be built that eliminated a lot of that counter party risk. [0] https://gendal.me/2013/11/24/a-simple-explanation-of-how-mon...
Comment linking /2013/11/24/a-simple-explanation-of-how-money-moves-around-the-banking-system/
on “Blockchains are the new Linux, not the new Internet”Submitted Corda: A Distributed Ledger Designed for Financial Services as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThis article explains the general thinking behind it: https://gendal.me/2015/04/27/how-to-explain-the-value-of-rep...
Comment linking /2015/04/27/how-to-explain-the-value-of-replicated-shared-ledgers-from-first-principles/
on “Blockchains are the new Linux, not the new Internet”Submitted The Mathematics of Covid Vaccines as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThis is a pretty good explanation of it for the banking system at least: https://gendal.me/2015/04/27/how-to-explain-the-value-of-rep... Beyond accounting ledgers though, hard to say.
Comment linking /2015/04/27/how-to-explain-the-value-of-replicated-shared-ledgers-from-first-principles/
on “How blockchain will revolutionise far more than money”Submitted The Myth of Public Blockchains for Business (2019) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionhttp://gendal.me/2013/11/24/a-simple-explanation-of-how-mone... I have a feeling you're remembering this article that was on HN a while back (at least I did, reading your comment).
Comment linking /2013/11/24/a-simple-explanation-of-how-money-moves-around-the-banking-system/
on “Funds Run by Robots Now Account for $400B”Submitted A simple explanation of Bitcoin “Sidechains” as a story · 2 points
HN discussion> there is someone at a desk with a terminal I haven't found a single good description/explanation of how the actual operations are carried out "on the ground". It's hard enough to find information on how the financial system works in an abstract way. It amazes me that 99.99% of the people who (also indirectly) use it, including the financial 0.1%, don't know what and "where" their shares actually are. Maybe the exa…
Comment linking /2014/01/05/a-simple-explanation-of-how-shares-move-around-the-securities-settlement-system/
on “Ask HN: “government is printing money” - what does it mean in practice?”Submitted R3's Corda platform will be open-sourced as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI had troubles implementing that... due to the fact that it is not a direct transaction which didn't fit into things: https://gendal.me/2013/10/21/lessons-from-bitcoin-push-versu... ... and crypto isn't really all that anonymous either. The most anonymous is stolen credit card numbers. Not that we condoned that or anything:)
Comment linking /2013/10/21/lessons-from-bitcoin-push-versus-pull/
on “Ask HN: Is getting banned on Stripe many years ago a death sentence?”Submitted Why All the Web3 Hate? as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted A simple explanation of Bitcoin “sidechains” as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
