Today’s article is inspired by my conversation with a taxi driver about money and Putin.

I came to Salzburg for the Opera Festival and a taxi driver asked me (mixing Russian and German with some heavy Slavic accent) if I was pro or against Putin. I said “obviously against” and he immediately went ballistic about national pride, strong discipline, and putting oligarchs to jail… It was a lost cause to persuade him otherwise but I needed to find at least one politically neutral argument to make my case and keep a civil conversation.

So, I responded:

• In Putin’s Russia, I would not be able to do what I do because people who live there know enough not to challenge the system. If you are smart and work hard, you won’t become very successful in Russia, if your parents are just simple people and you don’t come from privileged circles. It is easier for me to compete in Europe. The game is fairer.

The driver didn’t budge:

• You have no idea what fairness is – nothing is fair in modern Europe, I have two university diplomas, I studied economics, I speak multiple languages, and I ended up as a taxi driver. Uber and other American companies are putting us out of business… with no job during the lockdown, I used up almost all of my savings … You just got lucky, good for you, but don’t speak to me about fairness… Austria needs someone like Putin…

He went on and on… Well, he had a point. I agree, in modern times hard work and formal education rarely if ever guarantee you success or even stability. I asked myself, why despite the fact that Europe has so many issues, I still prefer to stay here when theoretically I could work from almost anywhere these days.

Many of my followers, clients, and friends, possibly you too, share something important in common. We mostly come from less favorable, unprivileged backgrounds, we are used to counting primarily on ourselves in life and in business, and we learned early on that knowledge and expertise are valuable because they allowed us to make decent money and support our families. We never believed that anybody, including governments, are coming to “save us”.

My followers and most of my friends are people who survived several radical makeovers – changing countries, partners, or careers, learning new professions, overcoming serious health challenges, commencing and losing businesses, breaking up with old friends, starting over a few times … in some cases all of the above.

When I asked them and myself, what gave us the strength and resilience to keep going, there was one specific answer that’s worth mentioning: “There is so much more I can do, there are so many possibilities around, I’m not ready to settle. I’m not done yet.”

Those of you who are in FinTech and crypto can probably relate. Nobody was born into FinTech, we all had to make changes and earn the place where we are today. Many of us share the same vision for money, payments, and financial systems: Individuals and businesses should have undisputed access to their money and freedom to spend their money as they want without being restricted, overcharged by the traditional banks, or limited by currency or capital movement controls. Money ideally should know no borders and it should not matter where you were born or where you live, or whether or not you have a stable traditional job, to be able to get accepted as a client, pay or get paid. Technology should eliminate a lot of manual decisions and human interference that currently make payment flows inefficient, slow, and expensive. It is still a long way to go and we are not done yet, but strangely enough, Europe right now is the closest economic environment to this ideal vision than any other place (even San Salvador, with all due respect). Europe is one of the few jurisdictions that actually has laws and rules about non-discriminating access to payment accounts and service levels around execution times or fraud protection provisions for consumers. Maybe that’s why Europe was really the birthplace of FinTech and is currently the best ecosystem to launch crypto services. 

So, Europe is the right place for me to be right now because here I can do more for the industry than anywhere else.

What was your journey to FinTech and what is your vision for the financial industry and the future flows of money?