The monetary union was flawed from inception. It included, under the framework of a single currency and a single monetary policy, countries that were likely to have very divergent outcomes and therefore would prefer to see different exchange rates, interest rates, and monetary policy responses.

You can't be in both lanes; you have to pick one. If you are making a film and you go to Warner Brothers, they'll give you $50 million and a whole stack of notes that will make your movie worse creatively, but more successful from their commercial perspective so it can get through gatekeepers and return the investment.

There's also a great metaphor from the world of automotive technology. The main naysayers against cars were probably the drivers of carriages in the streets of New York. At some point, the Model T factory was open. And suddenly you're looking around, you're looking at the friend that is driving a car and you're saying, wait a second – he doesn't need a barn to house your horse.

Having forefathers as merchants that forged their own paths pushed me to pursue a similar journey. At this point I got a lead that there was a lot of potential in catering, and so in 1982 I set out to make my mark competing with major international companies.

Despite huge and on-going technological advances in electronic transactions technologies, it has remained surprisingly durable, even if its major uses seem to be buried in the world underground and illegal economy.