In this week's podcast Profit & Loss managing editor, Colin Lambert, and editor, Galen Stops, open by discussing the news of some senior staff departing from EBS in the wake of its acquisition by CME Group, which in turn causes the pair to compare and contrast the different approaches and FX businesses of the Chicago-based exchange and Deutsche Boerse Group, which has also been in acquisition mode .

Stops then provides his highlights from a fintech event that he attended last week and, along with Lambert, poses the rather existential question: what problem in financial services do cryptocurrencies really solve for?

One of the speakers at the fintech event was the CEO of Bakkt, a digital asset platform launched by Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) last year, which announced last week that it has bought a digital asset custody company. This of course means that Stops was correct in one of his predictions for 2019, a fact that he is quick to point out.

Lambert then reveals that, despite the pleas in last week's podcast, at least one firm has not been voting fairly in the Profit & Loss Reader's Choice Awards! The discussion ends with a rather memorable story (supposedly) involving Micky Roberts who last week retired from Citi after a long career in the FX industry.