This is my (short version) talk from the Big Data World Congress in London in June 2013.

1. BIG DATA AND THE FUTURE OF
MONEY
Daniel Austin,
Principal Architect
PayPal, Inc.
2nd World Big Data Congress
London, UK
June 27 2013 v1.3

2. Today‟s Talk
Big Data is King
Big Data and Money
The Future of Money – Three
Predictions
And the usual disclaimer – these views
are my own and not necessarily those
of my employer.

3. Ben Chaim - fotolia

4. BIG DATA MAKES ALL THE
DIFFERENCE
• The real Big Data problems are only now becoming evident – in
Media, Finance, & Administration
• It‟s not an accident that these problems are surfacing now, just
as we are able to bring the tools online to solve them

5. BIG DATA LETS US ASK BIG
QUESTIONS
• Are you a Big Data problem?
–How much data will you generate over the
course of your lifetime? (~ 5 petabytes)
• How much of human behavior is predictable?
–At what scales?
–The answers may make us uncomfortable
• How much control can we have over the Big
Data about ourselves?

6. BIG DATA + BIG MONEY = BIG
CHANGES
We can know more about what‟s happening
now
We can store it and manage it for a lot longer
This allows us to know more about the past
in order to better predict the future

7. MONEY IS A MEASURE OF
ORDER• We add order to the system
by doing work on it – adding
value by opposing entropy
• Big Data is a means of
imposing order on large
volumes of data
• Taking the friction out of
payments increases their
value
• Predictability also contributes
to stability

8. Monetary Digital Encoding Methods
Bitmint
• A means of digitizing the value of
money (in existing currencies)
• Respects the sovereign currency
system – transparent and credible
• Allows for digital storage and
transfer of funds
• Focused on cryptographic
security and associated metadata
• Reduces anonymity
Bitcoin
• Virtual standalone currency
• Lies outside the sovereign
currency system
• May be subject to instability
• Irreversible transactions
offer high levels of
anonymity – but at high risk
• May not enjoy the trust
factor associated with
nation-based financial
systems

9. CURRENCIES AND CURRENCY
OVERLAYS
• Commercial services offer a „currency overlay‟
facility
– Allows for the free flow of digital money while
preserving the distinctions between currencies
– Reduces „friction‟ in payments, accelerating the flow
of money globally and locally, perhaps at different
rates
– Big Data facilitates this ability, allowing us to
manage these flows in a secure and stable way

10. PRIVACY & SECURITY AS
COMMODITIES?
• Our ability to process Big Data problems will
open the door to recording a great deal of
personal information
• As the value of security and privacy goes up,
they will naturally come to be sold on the market
• How much of the data about your behavior can
be kept truly private, given our ability to collect
and manage large data systems?

11. EVOLUTION: MONEY AS AN
APPLICATION
• Digitally encoded currencies are only the first
step
• Need to add application functionality
– “Object-oriented Money”
– Encapsulate data, business rules
– May include its own models
– Allows for indeterministic behavior
• Conditional Money
– Tied to a specific purpose or intent

12. SELF-AWARE MONEY?
What if you wanted to send $1000 into the future,
say 1,000 years?
• We need a means of preserving and transferring
value across longer timescales than existing
currencies allow
• By giving money autonomy and conditionality
we could enable action on our behalf over long
periods of time.
•

13. PROGNOSTICATION - TIME
HORIZONS
25-50 years
5 -10 years
36-60 Months
• National currencies become fully digitized
• Acceleration of money leads to
acceleration of development
• Long-term autonomous financial
instruments
• Money as an application
• Monetary flows accelerate exponentially
• Privacy and Security as commodities
• First self-managing funds and financial
models
• Mobile payments continue to surge globally
• Evolution of digital currencies
• Big Data begins to blur the line between
money and information

14. 3 PREDICTIONS:THE FUTURE OF
MONEY
• Big Data and (digital) Money will
become more tightly coupled as the
line between money and information
blurs
• Our ability to control the Big Data we
produce about ourselves will be
limited
• Money will evolve toward becoming
an application, with autonomous,
self-managing long-term behavior

15. BIG DATA AND THE FUTURE OF
MONEY
Daniel Austin,
Principal Architect
PayPal, Inc.
2nd World Big Data Congress
London, UK
June 27 2013 v1.3
Thank You!
daaustin@paypal-inc.com
@daniel_b_austin
The future of money?