
At the final Celebration of Life for James Ledbetter, held Monday at 20 Cooper Square, Holly Sraeel said this of her friend and colleague, who died unexpectedly on Oct. 28:
The last time I was in this room, Jim was my guest to listen to Bloomberg’s Zeke Faux talk about his new crypto book. Afterward, we went for Chinese food and talked about the world’s problems.
It’s been nearly a year – February 25 – since Jim and I jointly announced that he was exiting FIN, his Substack newsletter, and heading out to take on a new role (later revealed to be as thought leadership editor at KPMG), and that I would be taking over as editor in chief of FIN. I committed to two things: That I would play the long game to build FIN into a multiplatform community, and that Jim and I would find a way to welcome him back whenever and wherever he felt it most appropriate. To that end, we talked about live events where he would participate as a moderator or panelist, sit in on some podcasts and write the occasional Guest Essay opinion piece.
It was not to be.
Jim was desperately worried about Trump winning, for so many reasons—including what it would mean for fintech. Unbridled innovation he worried, and we often discussed, could have damaging impacts on people, the financial systems and the global economy.
It would have pained him to see criminals like Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht pardoned by Trump. FTX founder and former CEO Sam Bankman Fried is likely next, if his parents are successful in winning Trump’s favor.
Jim worried and wrote about the dark underbelly of artificial intelligence and its potentially negative impact on lending and other businesses.
And Jim often wrote about Elon Musk, X and his ambition to have a significant impact on the payments world. Jim could not have known then what is happening now: Musk has taken over the payments world, in the form of government payment systems across various agencies that are responsible for all sorts of money flows to recipients who count on this money.Jim loved covering fintech innovation, business and the economy. But he was always on the lookout for the bogeymen and the bogus operators who could take the real promise of financial innovation and find a way to harm people and society.
I often think about what Jim would be writing about now at this critical time in our nation’s history. In any title he held across so many media brands, Jim’s voice mattered greatly. That held true for FIN at a time the self-anointed technology gods were swarming.
The absence of his voice, his keen intellect, and his ability to articulate with precision and his no-holds-barred style is not only sorely missed but desperately needed.
You are missed, Jim.