The Peg in 2026
Looking ahead. Plus, reflections on the past year.
Dear subscribers,
First of all, thank you for tolerating my little “go slow” period the past couple of weeks. I was taking some time out for rest purposes. As mentioned in my previous email it’s difficult taking holidays when you operate a one man show, and signalling upcoming holidays is tricky when there are risks with broadcasting one’s whereabouts explicitly. I left you with my perpetual future Long Read to make up for it. Please do check it out if you haven’t already.
To keep you abreast of the situation.
We will be going full time as of January 8.
Between then and now I am engineering a daily aggregation service that will be less expansive than the Weekly Peg, but hopefully very consistent and good at capturing the broad brush of stablecoin and CBDC news and developments.
I am just finishing a quasi academic piece on stablecoins which I have to get over the line before January 7. While this won’t be available to subscribers, the knowledge gained from the exercise will hopefully serve subscribers well.
I’m not ruling out original content on this site between now and January 8, because I have about five unfinished drafts, so, who knows. I may find the time to finish them… But I am warning readers that publication patterns until then are not going to be reflective of the professional standards I seek to achieve thereafter.
As early subscribers know, I have been operating this service as a minimum viable product since about May this year.
Initial operations were very amateur and in stealth due to the constraints of having other full-time responsibilities.
We went into what I would describe as beta mode in September, mainly to illustrate what we are capable of, both in terms of our expertise and coverage capacity, but also to demonstrate our commitment.
Since then we have been operating pretty consistently until this short break.
The highlight of the year was definitely The Peg’s December dinner debate. The fact we were able to draw such a high caliber crowd to deepest darkest Ealing at short notice speaks to the reputational value we have already established. (Thanks to Brunello Rosa and Drago Indjic for being unofficial photographers on the night. )
The informal and easy going set-up worked really well and I would be keen to replicate it.
Keeping the event capped at 30 ensured a good discussion flow. It reminded me of the old Andrew Hilton CSFI fintech breakfast briefings, which were always super fun to take part in.
In 2026, I would be keen to host these sorts of events more regularly. As much as I love Miguel’s restaurant and Ealing (and would love for it to become an unofficial stablecoin hub) I appreciate the venue isn’t the easiest place to get to.
We managed to break even on the event with tickets set at just under £100 per person. But it would be good to know what people are prepared to pay for something more regular (if at all). And what locality would best suit everyone. Also breakfast? Lunch? Dinner?
The added value I bring to the table in crafting such events is independence, creativity and experience.
I don’t represent any commercial interests in the space. I am truly a free agent. And I seek mainly to be a facilitator of conversation and a bridge between the tradfi world and the crypto/fintech world. Albeit one prepared to critique both sides at all times.
My event repertoire to date includes organizing the Blind Spot’s Cold War-themed (Wirecard-focused) extravaganza at the Teufelsberg NSA listening center in Berlin this summer, FT Alphaville’s one-off journalistic Vaudeville show in 2019 (ft. Adam Curtis, execs from Cambridge Analytica and, err, Craig Wright, among others) and of course three iterations of Camp Alphaville (2014-2016), which became the template for the FT Weekend Festival.
None of these events made money. That is true. But they were all memorable and fun. And while I have high hopes of one day hosting a creatively distinct financially-themed event/experience at Ealing’s Pitzhanger Manor (the family home of Sir John Soane, aka the architect who designed the Bank of England), I am also realistic. Starting with a series of supper clubs probably makes more sense.
Beyond IRL events, the Peg would really love to professionalize as soon as possible. To do so, we need to recruit some solid reporters and editors. I know the names, we just need the funds.
Now that I am a free agent I am also free to explicitly hustle for money (which, to be clear, I hate doing and am terrible at. That independence thing runs deep in my DNA and asking for money just grates as a result).
We will be fundraising openly in the New Year in a way that hopefully won’t undermine our independence. As mentioned in my previous missive, we will be raising prices too. That’s because to make this the high quality and honest enterprise we aspire it to be (especially in terms of tracking regulatory affairs) we need to operate as a premium service.
To figure out the best commercialization plan, I will be conducting some market research. Do drop me a line if you want to take part.
Hopefully, the model we arrive upon will be cost effective for everyone, profitable, and also allow for some freemium element for reach purposes and discretionary discounts for worthy parties (students, hard up start-up folk, bohemian intellectuals etc).
As I told those attending the dinner the other week, it is my weird and slightly kooky dream to be able to make a living from writing about stablecoins/CBDCs and the new emerging financial structure (while also expressing my contrarian tendencies on a more leisurely basis over at the Blind Spot.) I appreciate it is a weird dream. But what can I say? It started off as a fascination with eurodollar markets and the author Paul Einzig (an economic journalist from Hungary who managed to carve himself out a career as a highly respected Financial Times commentator by becoming an expert on the fintech innovations of the interwar and postwar period.)
It would be amazing to be able to make that dream come true in 2026.
In the meantime, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.