The rise of alternative currencies

The more people worry about the death of cash, the more likely they are to replace cash with something else. Merryn Somerset Webb looks at some of the more successful alternative currencies.

150930-bitcoin

Bitcoin is just one of many alternative currencies

I interviewed Matt Ridley on his new book, The Evolution of Everything, this morning. We talked around all sorts of things the video and the podcast will be out in a few days for you but we spent a reasonable amount of time on the pointlessness of central banks (the only reason we need them to be the lenders of the last resort, says Ridley, is because they cause so many problems in the first place), the possible death of cash, and the rise of alternative currencies.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.