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enterprise blockchain

acquisition digital lending enterprise blockchain financial advisors funding round marketing

·May. 20, 2019

Goldman pays $750M for wealth platform United Capital, Jefferies gives blockchain-lender Figure $1B

Two things are on my mind: (1) the acquisition of United Capital by Goldman Sachs, and (2) Mike Cagney's Figure securing a $1 billion funding line from Jefferies and WSFS for blockchain-tracked home equity loans. Both are outcomes of complex, interesting, somewhat unexpected processes -- and both are examples of demand-driven market expansion. Let me highlight that again. Both of these are consumer-centric developments, and not product-driven developments, which goes to the core of the problem in the financial services industry.

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artificial intelligence Crypto enterprise blockchain Fractals & reflexivity game theory Metaverse / xR

·Apr. 24, 2020

The Grand Theory of the Universe

I came upon this announcement by Stephen Wolfram recently: Finally We May Have a Path to the Fundamental Theory of Physics… and It’s Beautiful. Wolfram is a theoretical physicist turned mathematician, computer scientist, and entrepreneur responsible for the rigorous Mathematica software. After a career of building one of the most advanced computational packages ever created, he is returning to the question that endlessly captivates geniuses — what is the equation at the heart of our universe?

Is there one unifying stroke of the pen that can connect conventional physics, general relativity, and quantum mechanics into a single whole? Wolfram is not conventional, and I cannot do justice to his thinking both given its complexity and rigor. He claims to have found one such answer, which I will try to sketch. But what drew my atten

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central bank / CBDC decentralized finance enterprise blockchain governance regulation & compliance

·Mar. 9, 2020

Why Facebook’s Libra needs to change course, Ethereum’s Fintech promise, and a look at JP Morgan’s blockchain analysis

I anchor around the issues Libra is seeing in trying to develop a money, and what alternate strategies are available. We also analyze elements of a JP Morgan 2020 blockchain report, which highlights the differences between running a financial products (like a money) and a financial software (like a payments processor). In light of this necessary pivot for the regulated Facebook, we look again at Ethereum's decentralized finance ecosystem and the types of challengers it has created for Jack Henry, Finastra, Envestnet, TradeWeb, and other infrastructure providers.

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central bank / CBDC civilization and politics enterprise blockchain macroeconomics narrative zeitgeist philosophy regulation & compliance Social / Community stablecoins things that are not true

·Nov. 24, 2021

World Economic Forum CBDC analysis in the era of Populism, Institutionalism, and Hofstede’s Cultural DNA

We anchor our writing around the World Economic Forum 223 page report on CBDCs and stablecoins. The analysis highlights the key conclusions across several white papers in the report. We then add a layer of meta analysis around the language in the report, and question what it is trying to accomplish, and whether that will work with the Web3 revolution. This leads us to think about the tension between populism, as represented by crypto, and institutionalism, as represented by banking structures. We discuss theories of cultural and national DNA, and the rise of populism, as difficult problems to solve for any global alignment.

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Blockchain/DeFi

·Feb. 12, 2024

The future of payments is choice: Gnosis Pay CEO Marcos Nunes

While the future of payments is digital, Gnosis Pay co-founder and CEO Marcos Nunes said that leaves plenty of room for consumer choice.

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digital securities / STO digital transformation enterprise blockchain exchanges / cap mkts

·May. 28, 2021

The software stack powering Capital Markets and its coming transformation, with Horacio Barakat of Broadridge

In this conversation, we geek out with Horacio Barakat, who serves as the Head of Digital Innovation for Capital Markets and the Head of DLT for the Repo Platform of Broadridge, about digital transformation, capital markets, and the role of blockchain in the institutional part of the financial industry.

Additionally, we explore the embedded complexities of capital markets and how fundamental they are to the smooth functioning of our economy, determining the growth of companies, and funding expansion. Touching on everything from the engine that powers capital markets, how that engine has evolved to becoming computational, and lastly how companies like Broadridge are leading the deep work going on in making that engine better.

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Crypto enterprise blockchain exchanges / cap mkts regulation & compliance supply chain / trade

·Nov. 11, 2019

Blockchain progress through the lens of Binance’s $180MM profit and Greensill’s $1.5B SoftBank raise

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.

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Crypto decentralized finance digital lending enterprise blockchain entrepreneurship fixed income neobank roboadvisor

·Jul. 17, 2020

Figure, SoFi and the Disruption of Finance with Mike Cagney

Mike Cagney is the Co-Founder and CEO of Figure, a full stack financial services blockchain company with consumer offerings in market or on the way in lending, banking and more. In late-2019, Figure raised $103 million at a $1.2 billion valuation and continues to grow.

Prior to starting Figure, Mike co-founded and ran SoFi, one of the most successful consumer fintech companies ever.

In this conversation, we discuss Figure’s routes to asset origination and capital markets disruption, Figure’s previously unannounced consumer banking and payments offering, lessons learned building and scaling multiple billion dollar companies and more.

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artificial intelligence big tech digital transformation enterprise blockchain identity and privacy India regulation & compliance telecom & infrastructure

·Oct. 23, 2020

How IBM spinning-out $18B of managed infrastructure revenue, or Reliance Jio growing to 400MM mobile users, creates a chassis for digital finance

This week, we look at:

IBM spinning out its managed services division with $18 billion of revenue in order to focus on hybrid cloud and digital transformation
Reliance Jio, the Indian mobile telecom provider with 400 million users, contemplating financial services with backing from Google and Facebook
The role that technology infrastructure plays in the delivery of financial services

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artificial intelligence augmented reality Crypto decentralized finance enterprise blockchain Metaverse / xR narrative zeitgeist NFTs and digital objects regulation & compliance venture capital

·Nov. 27, 2020

Jamie Burke of Outlier Ventures on DeFi and NFT investing and acceleration

In this conversation, we talk with Jamie Burke of Outlier Ventures. This is a fascinating and educational conversation that covers frontier technology companies and protocols in blockchain, IoT, and artificial intelligence, and the convergence of these themes in the future. Jamie walks us through the core investment thesis, as well as the commercial model behind shifting from incubation to acceleration of 30+ companies. We pick up on wisdom about marketing timing and fund structure along the way.

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