Technology

Banks that wait to be told what to do won't thrive because the possibility of surprising and delighting customers with innovation is exactly zero when you wait for them to tell you what to build.

Adopting universal terminology will allow financial institutions to quickly identify, understand and share information about threats, plan for different scenarios and build the systems required to effectively defend their interests.

While holding that Congress intended patent-eligible subject matter to "include anything under the sun that is made by man," the Supreme Court has consistently identified three exceptions: laws of nature, physical phenomena and abstract ideas. That last exception has proven most problematic for financial inventions.

After I wrote a post last week expressing optimism about this technology's potential, several generous Bitcoin fans sent me small donations of the virtual currency. Thank you. Now stop. Please.

Bitcoin lets users send money nearly instantaneously, at almost no cost, and (if desired) anonymously. Getting funds in and out of the system is the hard part. That may soon change.