Accompanying the Bankers Association to visit the Western US, I learned about the imagination of the Silicon Valley tech giants Microsoft, Nvidia, and Google, etc. for AI financial services. We also learned about how Wells Fargo, the largest bank in this land full of green energy and creativity, cooperates with the tech sector on ESG finance.

More notable, however, was a small town that I went to explore on my own, following the official delegation. There, I was able to catch a glimpse of the past and future of financial development. Just like Jiufen in Taiwan, due to mineral deposits, located among the mountains of Nevada, Virginia City quickly became the richest town in the US in the 1860s. The influx of wealth attracted countless pubs and casinos, as well as countless adventurers, including Samuel Clemens, who once worked there for the San Francisco Chronicle. It was there that the literary giant chose his better-known pen name, Mark Twain.

But the town’s story goes beyond that. With the prosperity brought by gold also came innovation in financial services. At the time, Wells Fargo not only provided deposit and exchange services, but also trustworthy and reliable stagecoach services, and emerging telegraph services. They uniquely integrated people, goods, and information services, turning these services into cornerstones of prospecting and economic growth. It is in just the same way that this American piaohao bank[1] used escort services to fulfill customer requests, that the present-day Wells Fargo Bank has embarked upon modernization.

In order to avoid eavesdropping, Wells Fargo created a complex encryption system suited for the early era of the telegraph, ensuring the safe transfer of customer funds. Sensitive words like “gold” were replaced in messages with meaningless words like “wasp,” then decoded using cipher tables. This 3-layer encryption allowed transactions to be transmitted safely without eavesdropping.

Over time, the threats faced by financial institutions have evolved. Although we no longer worry about cowboy robbers, scammers and hackers are still constantly trying to steal the wealth of others. With the arrival of AI, attackers can use generative AI to improve their fraud techniques, such as deepfakes, spearphishing, and whaling (phishing for high-value targets). These developments make prevention more difficult by the day, and pose unprecedented challenges to the protection capabilities of financial institutions.

However, technology will not stop advancing; in order to enjoy the convenience it brings, we must also deal with emerging threats. History teaches us that both bank tellers and consumers need a “zero trust” mentality – matters involving money cannot rely solely on past trust, but must be explicitly verified before authorizing each transaction. This mentality is like that in a small town in the Wild West, where any security comes from one’s own facilities. Only by becoming an excellent marksman can one protect their wealth from bandits.