We look at some of the recent Fintech bundling news that boggle the mind. Neobank Chime just raised a mammoth round from DST Global, valuing it at $6 billion. Figure raised another $60 million round. Goldman is launching a retail roboadvisor. Revolut is offering pensions. Wealthfront is offering mortgages. The world is upside down. We cool down with pictures showing augmented reality implementations in commerce and finance, and finish with an elevated thought about the future.
I look at the similarities between the NYSE building out direct listing products to augment or replace IPOs, and Central Banks considering launching consumer-facing digital currencies. In each case, the value chain of the respective financial sector is compressing, as the underlying manufacturers of financial product move closer to the consumer. I also highlight how a few blockchain-native alternatives to trading and rebalancing software are developing, and the reasons to get excited about things like Set, Uniswap, and Aragon.
Well this morning started out as a bit of a bummer! See -- Charles Schwab to buy TD Ameritrade in a $26 billion all-stock deal. The $55 billion market cap Schwab is gobbling up the $22 billion TD Ameritrade at a slight premium. Matt Levine of Bloomberg has a great, cynical take on the question: Schwab lowering its trading commissions to zero is actually what wiped out $4 billion off TD's marketcap a few months ago. For Schwab, the revenue loss from trading was 7% of total, while for TD it was over 20%. Once Schwab dropped prices, TD started trading at a discount and became an acquisition target. You can see the share price drops reflected below in the beginning of October.
Chlöe Swarbrick, a 25-year old climate MP was presenting her climate change case to the New Zealand parliament, and was heckled by an older audience member. Without missing a beat, she acknowledged and dismissed the challenger with a pithy “Ok, Boomer.”
The recording has since gone viral, inspiring everything from merchandise to Vogue articles. While the incident isn’t the source of the phrase “Ok, Boomer”, today it is the most well known manifestation. So what does the phrase mean? If you are inclined to more colorful language, see Urban Dictionary. But the meaning is obvious on its face — Gen Z is dismissing utterly and without consideration the judgment and protestations of society's elders on multi generational issues like economics, climate change, and social norms.
Look at the difference between (1) building out the crypto asset class, and (2) operating infrastruture for a blockchain-based digital economy. There are so many little logic pot holes into which you could fall! There are so many things one could believe that make the whole thing make no sense at all! I am anchoring around two primary data points -- a Multicoin report about Binance's financial progress and its massive (though unaudited) $180 million profit in Q3 of 2019, and a post by supply chain company Centrifuge about marrying cashflow financing with the decentralized web.
Uber has entered finance! The end is nigh! The boogeyman is here!
Oh. So what's involved? There's a debit card and a "debit account" powered by Green Dot, the same bank that's behind Apple Pay's person to person service. That means that Uber isn't a bank, but is renting shelf space on one. There's a wallet that will be integrated into the Uber app, within the driver's experience. So tracking your earnings and spending will be a feature that is part of the app -- not unlike what Amazon has had for years for merchants. There is a credit component, letting drivers withdraw money against their payckeck. And there's a Barclays credit card, private labeled for Uber, riding on the VISA rails.
Hear ye, hear ye, beware the disruption and tremble under its glory!
I look at two mental models explaining why and how financial APIs have led to the creation of billions in enterprise value. The driving news is that Square Cash is competing with Robinhood in free trading, powered by trading API company DriveWealth. Last week, we saw that Chime, Robinhood, and Monzo were powered by payments API company Galileo. Should these enablers be worth the billion-dollar valuations of their clients? Are APIs inevitable technology progress? Or are we just seeing venture financing spilling desperately into a rebundling play to find profitability?
