David G.W. Birch

New on the not-a-newsletter...

The Problem is Steve from Accounts ($$$) buff.ly/P8wAgmr

Traditional social engineering preys on trust, fear, and urgency. AI lacks psychology, at least as far as I know, but it can and will be exploited through analogous deceptions.

Epsom woman traps 23 'terrified' cats in wheelie bin Those at the bottom of the pile were "slowly crushed and suffocated" to death, says the RSPCA.

This is what jails are for. Why was she let off?

Epsom woman traps 23 'terrified' cats in wheelie bin - BBC News www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

#FlashbackFriday In 2020, I suggested Wirecard wasn’t an anomaly but a preview. Have we learned to spot the red flags yet?

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Yesterday’s future. Progress optional.

#Fintech #CorporateGovernance #RiskManagement

#Deepfakes #MoMo26

Hey #MoMo26 this was such an interesting panel why no time for questions?

Lloyds, Bank of Scotland and Halifax apps showed customers other users' transactions buff.ly/YKdGrG9

Can an informed person explain what actually went wrong here? I am so curious

The President of Croatia addressing #MoneyMotion2026. I hope he will stay to listen to the on stage debate about cryptocurrency ✔️

gm Zagreb! Waiting for the President🇭🇷to kick off the day!

Cabinet revolt deals fresh blow to Starmer’s digital ID scheme buff.ly/mQhfSw3

Scheme is probably a strong word, in the circumstances. I think it was more of a digital identity notion, really.

I think it might be a good time to rethink what we might mean by "financial literacy"

#FT The AI pension advisers buff.ly/HSrR0H6

"A study of 5,000 Britons commissioned by Lloyds Banking Group late last year concluded that more than half of adults were using AI platforms for financial advice."

New on the not-a-newsletter... Peaky Fakers buff.ly/gz0xJ15

There was a piece on BBC Radio 4’s “Today“ this morning talking about a upcoming film based on the “Peaky Blinders“ television series, which it turns out has a plot that revolves around Operation Bernhard.

Bedroom eyes We've long known that much of today's "AI" is humans all the way down. This week underlines this: in an investigation, Svenska Dagbladet and Göteborgs-Posten l

This week's net.wars, "Bedroom eyes", finds Meta's smart glasses scooping up intimate scenes, finds a new paper says LLMs end online anonymity, and notes wartime Internet risks: netwars.pelicancrossing.net/2026/03/06/b...

Swedish central bank urges public to horde cash in case of payments disruption buff.ly/vCRrRiO

"The Riskbank is currently working on improving the possibility of making offline payments by card to strengthen resilience."

#FlashbackFriday In 2020, I argued that tokenisation would remake markets, with public and private money becoming digital assets on shared rails. We seem to be edging that way.

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Yesterday’s future. Progress optional.

More about my childhood home...

Swindon, City of the Future. Part 2: The Magic Roundabout and the Magic Kingdom buff.ly/IowD3pf

The reality of chatbot-induced delusions buff.ly/f0E60uI

"“Discernment is a must when using AI, as they are coherence generators, not truth generators"

Swindon, City of the Future. Part 1.

It was all fields round here dgwbirch.substack.com/p/it-was-all...

Hey ho LET’S GO

Love DPI. Thanks for the pointer.

Gang who stole almost £150k in smash-and-grab rampage face jail buff.ly/97q5fLU

"Gibbs gave away his identity by using a Lime bike to travel to the shop – booked via his bank account."

Huge.

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"This move is a step towards money market funds themselves being considered a settlement asset."

Huge if true, as they say..

How digital identity can support compliance buff.ly/iEY2kRk

"entities are able to fulfil their obligations under Regulation 28 of the Money Laundering Regulations by verifying a customer’s identity using certified and registered DVS."

New on the not-a-newsletter "In the future, everyone will be famous for 15Mb"...

The Cap Fits buff.ly/E7wM9U4

Maybe it’s time to rethink credit cards and use all the options provided by new technology to decouple the payment system from credit.

How an Ocean's Eleven gang stole '£435m' by tunnelling into a vault When an alarm was triggered at the bank, police arrived in minutes, but little did they know it was the start of what is feared to be one of the biggest heists in European history.

How an Ocean's Eleven gang stole '£435m' by tunnelling into a vault buff.ly/j06eMda

"And they acted safe in the knowledge that the vault’s internal video surveillance ran only during opening hours."

What the actual ****?

#FlashbackFriday In 2020, I said PayPal’s Bitcoin move wasn’t about Bitcoin at all, but about positioning for a very different payments landscape. PYUSD has since filled in the blanks.

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Yesterday’s future. Progress optional.

#Stablecoins #Paypal #PYUSD

Exclusive | Trump Administration Considers Requiring Banks to Collect Citizenship Information buff.ly/Wu1NSfR

Could this be the trigger to get digital ID moving in the US?

The curious case of the disappearing Lamborghinis buff.ly/kMlHZqo

"high-end vehicles are stolen because dealerships and individual customers don’t properly check the paperwork or identity"

The identity of things is as important as the identity of people.

Why OpenClaw Won't Buy You Anything Soon buff.ly/LYpyp8q

"Amazon didn’t spend a decade perfecting one-click checkout just to add friction back in because bots learned to click the same button."

I am a simple dwarven paladin and a devoted follower of Tyr, light to the good and darkness to the evildoers. These strange runes mean nothing to me. Perhaps a priest of Waukeen, the Lady of the Merchants, could divine their true meaning...

"On a larger scale, the entire agentic world is wrestling with that trade-off: At what point will agents be secure enough to be useful?"

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