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Ken is right to be concerned at the prospect of a blockchain turning back time.  Crypto-currency transactions are supposed to be final, immune to reversal regardless of community or political pressure.

The Ethereum developers are proposing a software change that they claim isn't a roll-back but observers (and the currency markets) aren't convinced; the value of an ether (Ethereum currency unit) has halved in the last few days to about 12USD.  However Ethereum isn't Bitcoin which remains solidly irreversible and is well-liked by the markets lately.

There's a good chance we'll see the development and wide adoption of a service model where you don't have to trust the provider.  Not for deposit-holding services obviously, but for payment services. That's assuming it proves practical to un-bundle payment servives from deposit-holding services.  Trustless providers would inherently have a lower cost base and be more competitive.

100K? Slapped with a wet bus ticket.

The overwhelming majority of criminal and terrorist funding is done via traditional banks not cash or virtual currency.  The EC is assisting the established players in their efforts to crush upstart competitors.

Earlier this year US prosecutors made use of the public blockchain to investigate and convict that corrupt DEA agent for extortion and money laundering.  So clearly a blockchain can help fight some sorts of crimes.

But regulation of fintech is a different use-case.  Regulators want to measure the health of institutions on an accrual basis not just a payments basis.  The blockchain is only a record of payments not liabilities.  A financial institution could be in seventeen different kinds of trouble that wouldn't show up on a payment ledger.

However the blockchain makes possible a class of financial businesses that do not require their customers to trust them.  Non deposit-holding institutions, that neither hold a customers assets nor are a liability threat (eg. stolen credit cards).  Such companies have a good claim to minimal regulation.

Ripple isn't a blockchain technology.  Of course words can mean whatever people think they mean but stretching things too far just destroys meaning.  A blockchain is a chain (a complete history) of transactions.  Ripple doesn't use a chain.  It uses a ledger of current balances.

Blockchain technology makes it possible to do payment transactions without a central trusted authority.  That's what it does, that's it's purpose.  Ripple is not any kind of blockchain.

Who buys lunch for the regulators, who swings the revolving door when they've had enough of making do on a government salary ?  Regulators always be looking after the established players with the big lobbying budgets, red tape always be accidentally-on-purpose tying the new players in knots not the incumbents.

A fifteen year old doesn't put the banking details of millions of consumers at risk.  It's the bank (or the mobile operator) who puts them at risk, through their negligence.  Arresting a child to save face, bleurgh.

I'm definitely more middle-aged then millenial yet walking into a bank branch feels distinctly odd in this digital age.  Speaking only for myself, though I know a good number of quite elderly people who are entirely accustomed to transacting on-line.

Present personal experience, I'm halfway through the process of gettting a home-loan and certainly a mortgage is a complex product.  But that complexity is best dealt with via phone and email contact.  I don't walk into the bank branch to sort out complex issues.

I walk in wearing a suit and my best smile to help cement a relationship with the banks' lending specialist.  Likewise the bank is trying to create an impression on me, that they're solid and trustworthy.  The branch exists to help build trust, the human element of a long-term business relationship.

So what's to criticise in any of that ?  Only that branches are obviously expensive, all that prime real estate, all the friendly professional staff.  To what purpose ?  If I'm buying a product like a loan it makes sense.  But if all I want to do is make payment transactions then all that trust-supporting relationship-forming apparatus is superflous overhead.

The population of off-net people who truly need branches is decreasing inexorably everywhere especially since the mobile device explosion.  Considered as a market segment it's a steadily vanishing group, targeting it with a branch network is increasingly uneconomic, only possible with heavy subsidy.

I've been walking into bank branches recently in search of a home loan.  Dressed in a suit.  We'll always need places for face-to-face contact when trust is at issue.

But I never go into a branch to do transactions, and these days it's hard to know why I'm obliged to borrow money from the same organisation I use as a payment service provider, it seems like a distinct function.