Big Tech in Finance: How To Prevail In the Age of Blockchain, Digital Currencies and Web3

Cover\nContents\nAbout the author\nIntroduction\n1 Finance as Big Tech’s El Dorado\n	The high-tech era\n	More than just a city of gold\n	Isn’t techfin just fintech backwards?\n	Facebook and WeChat want you to exchange more than cat pictures\n	Google and Apple let their mobile muscles play\n	Amazon wants to be your banker\n	References\n2 Railroads for a new age: birth of the blockchain\n	Pioneers tinker with a truth machine\n	A trust crisis and the advent of bitcoin\n	Definitively more than a faster horse\n	The moment banking started to listen\n	References\n3 Lure of the wild: redefining the idea of money\n	Redefining the idea of money\n	Gold rush and Telegram\n	Encountering bulls and bears\n	References\n4 Two roads ahead: centralization\n	Ideology clash: to decentralize or not to decentralize?\n	Problems with decentralization\n	Big Tech and Big Banking saddle up\n	References\n5 Land rush: crypto-economics\n	Ethereum and other Swiss Army knives\n	Rise of the token economy\n	The automation of finance – from smart contracts to DAOs\n	References\n6 DeFi unicorn stampede\n	DeFi and the return of crypto\n	The five major DeFi application categories\n	Money LEGO\n	The chain gang\n	Big Tech powerhouses in the clouds\n	Merging old and new territory\n	References\n7 The decentralization delusion\n	Who runs the crypto-DeFi show?\n	Pay-to-play consensus\n	Treacherous concentration\n	References\n8 Robber barons feel assured… and overshoot\n	Becoming captains of blockchain industry\n	One tech giant chooses another path\n	The hubristic dream of a modern Libra\n	Geopolitics\n	So what if Big Tech runs our financial system?\n	References\n9 The sheriffs come to town: regulation bends the trajectory\n	Libra backlash\n	Regulatory rodeo\n	Certainty lures settlers\n	References\n10 Dawn of a new era: central bank digital currencies vs private stablecoins\n	Why create new central bank money?\n	Paving the way for an autonomous economy\n	Worries of a super-state\n	Are CBDCs sounding the death knell for private stablecoins?\n	References\n11 Commercial banks and the frontier experience\n	Still centralized, yet transformed\n	Putting legacy into the museum\n	Platformization – invading Big Tech territory\n	The super money engine\n	Banks integrating DeFi\n	References\n12 Setting out for the next frontier: the metaverse and Web3\n	NFT-mania\n	Facebook finds new land – meet the metaverse\n	The difference between Web2, Web3 and the metaverse\n	MetaFi – money in the metaverse\n	The showdown between Big Tech, Big Banking and Big Government\n	References\nFinal remarks\nGlossary\nIndex