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Happy Wednesday, Fintech Listeners! 

And Happy Christmas Eve to those who celebrate! I hope your holidays are going splendidly and you are surrounded by friends and/or family right now.

Today’s newsletter (and the accompanying podcast) is extremely silly and (mostly) unrelated to fintech. Please, do not feel any urgency to continue scrolling or to open up your podcast app.

Take a break from Fintech Takes, and come back here when you have some spare time!

Best,

- Alex 

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3 BIG IDEAS FROM THE PODCAST

This week’s episode of the Fintech Takes podcast is fully ridiculous.

I’m joined by Kiah Haslett, Jason Mikula, and Jason Henrichs for the rare four-person episode. And the premise is simple. We spent an hour talking about one of the greatest films ever made: Die Hard. 

We pull it apart using ten questions I randomly came up with and sent around in advance, starting with how each of us came to the movie in the first place. VHS scarcity. Delayed first viewings that involve pausing the movie mid-stream to Google financial instruments (yes, it gets more educational than anyone intended).

From there, we end up debating workplace behavior in the 1980s, the accidental invention of the everyman action hero, and the eternal question of what qualifies as a Christmas movie and who is allowed to die in one.

And read below for my three big ideas... 

Every generation believes it has invented anonymous money for the first time. It never has. 

In Die Hard, the entire plot hinges on bearer bonds. Bearer bonds are financial instruments that did, in fact, exist. However, at the time the movie was released in 1988, they were already on their way out.

Kiah admits she paused the movie to look them up. Fair response. Bearer bonds sound fake if you didn’t live through them. They were unregistered debt instruments. Whoever physically held the bond owned it. No name. No ledger. No registry. You clipped the interest coupon off the side and took it to a bank. That was the whole system.

Jason Henrichs nails it in one line: bearer bonds were the crypto of the 1980s.

And like crypto, they weren’t an accident. They also solved real problems (like portability, privacy, and flexibility). They also created obvious ones (like tax evasion, money laundering …and ownership disputes). Regulators eventually noticed.

By the time Die Hard hit theaters, the US Treasury had already stopped issuing them. Corporations had largely followed. Yet as Kiah points out, $99 billion in bearer bonds were still floating around in 1997 (they fully matured as of May 2016).

As of March 2020, $870 million still hadn’t been redeemed. Municipal issuers were among the last holdouts.

This is the part that feels familiar. The innovation phase lasts longer than anyone expects. The cleanup phase lasts even longer. And the people who arrive late to the conversation are always surprised to learn how much of the old system is still out there, sitting perhaps in attics, coupons still attached.

Anonymous money never fully disappears. It hangs around. It shows up where you least expect it, like in abandoned attics (have you checked yours this holiday season?). 

Or sometimes in a movie that is more about banking and fintech than you might expect.

🎬 DIRECTOR'S COMMENTARY

Kiah, because she’s Kiah, turned my initial homework assignment (watch Die Hard and be prepared to explain what bearer bonds are) into a much larger and more involved research project, which resulted in her making this week’s Fintech Takes Banking newsletter all about bearer bonds!

You can read her essay here.

Here’s a question: Was anyone in Die Hard actually good at their job?

The facts on the ground are thus.

The LAPD mishandles the 911 call that should’ve kicked everything off. 

The FBI arrives in force, announcing they’re in charge and cutting the building’s power (immediately making the situation worse). Kiah notices that even their wardrobe is off. They’re wearing what look like Wall Street trading shirts, not anything resembling combat-ready attire.

Then there’s Ellis. Loud, overconfident, coke-fueled. Flashing a watch from a big deal. He believes deeply in his own importance and his ability to negotiate (and he’s wrong about all of it).

The episode keeps returning to this pattern. Authority shows up with confidence. Confidence substitutes for judgment. And no one ever considers to ask whether the person in charge actually understands what’s unfolding.

Hans Gruber is the classic example. He sounds sophisticated (the accent!). He quotes history. He gives the impression of control. And, as Kiah again notes, his entire operation is taken down by one person. 

By contrast, the only character who adapts is the one with the least formal authority. John McClane doesn’t arrive with a plan or a playbook. He reacts; he improvises. He notices what’s actually happening in front of him.

People with titles, badges, and certainty keep failing. The person asking basic questions keeps surviving.

There’s a lesson in there somewhere 🙂

This episode of the Fintech Takes is a manifestation of a group text argument that’s been running for years: Is Die Hard a Christmas movie?

Arguments against:

• It was released in July of 1988, not December. There is no evidence that the creators or distributors of the film intended it to be a Christmas movie.
• A lot of people are killed in the movie.
• It could be set at a different time of year without significantly altering the plot.

Arguments in favor:

• It’s set at Christmas, and the Christmas theme is woven throughout the movie (“Now I have a machine gun. Ho-Ho-Ho.”)
• It is, fundamentally, a movie about family reconciliation, which is a very Christmas-y theme.
• Today, many people watch it as a Christmas movie, and the traditions that people build around art matter as much or more than the artists’ original intent in defining that art.  

I will not reveal how Jason, Jason, Kiah, and I came down on this question (or what additional arguments we made for/against). You’ll have to listen to the episode to find out!

WHAT I'M LISTENING TO

Great discussion on the OCC’s recent decision to grant conditional approval to a host of crypto companies for national trust bank charters, as well as a few other topics.

Apparently, there is more of a crossover between banking and fintech podcasts and movies than I thought!

I enjoyed listening to this discussion amongst my friends at Alloy Labs, even though I’m annoyed that Henrichs didn’t invite me to participate. 

Alas. Perhaps next year.

Thanks for the read! Let me know what you thought by replying back to this email. 

— Alex  

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