It’s the weekend, which means it's time to catch up on recent fintech news and reading:
Bill Gates Talks to Rolling Stone: “Innovation in California is at its absolute peak right now. Sure, half of the companies are silly, and you know two-thirds of them are going to go bankrupt, but the dozen or so ideas that emerge out of that are going to be really important.” And dozens of other fascinating perspectives on the full panoply of topics ranging from healthcare to climate change to income inequality to what technology can achieve to $19 billion for WhatsApp and what it means. (Rolling Stone)
Goldman Sachs: Bitcoin Is Not a Currency. (TechCrunch)
Satoshi Nakamoto and the internet’s complicated relationship with Bitcoin. (The New Yorker)
The Future of Bitcoin: A look at the road ahead and for the troubled cryptocurrency (CNBC). Also check out Institutional Investor's latest feature on the subject.
Millennials and Banking: 73% would be more excited about a new offering in financial services from Google, Amazon, Apple, PayPal or Square than from their own nationwide bank. Roughly 50% of Millennials are counting on tech start-ups to overhaul the way banks work. (Millennial Disruption Index)
Report finds more people switching to mobile banking. (Bank Tech)
Apple's iBeacon Mobile Payment System Is Death Knell for NFC. (International Business Times)
Many U.S. companies sticking with outdated payment systems such as paper checks despite the Fed backing e-payments. (Wall Street Journal)
PayPal’s new Director of Global Strategy on why he joined the payments giant and the future of payments. (VentureBeat)
Semantics: IBM’s Watson the closest we’ve come so far to true AI. (WIRED UK)
Rise of the Machines: Ray Kurzweil and his quest to robotify Google. (The Guardian)
Net Wars: Netflix spoofs Amazon drone. (Bloomberg)
