Federal Reserve Bank of New York President William Dudley said the U.S. central bank is starting to think about adopting its own digital currency; while talks are in their infancy Mr. Dudley does see the value in the technology behind bitcoin; he doesn’t see bitcoin being a rival to the dollar as it is currently to unstable. Source.
The explosion in data has made the data scientist an essential part of all fintech companies. Source
A story by American Banker highlights a potential legislation that will change how Americans pay for college; many people familiar with the Promoting Real Opportunity, Success and Prosperity through Education Reform Act believe it will benefit lenders and loan servicers. Source
Tonderys shares what makes Marlette Funding different and what he sees in the market for next year; he also provides his take on traditional banks getting into the business and where personal lending overall will be in five years. Source
Article shares a story of a $200 jean purchase that was made with the help of point of sale finance firm Affirm; Affirm works with over 1,000 retailers to provide installment loans; merchants benefit since consumers end up spending more, but some critics say it promotes poor consumer behavior; article shares the history of consumer credit and the changes in point of sale financing. Source
The National Internet Finance Association of China has been tasked with the job of making the agency but has offered little details so far; the PBoC invited eight leading Internet companies in 2015 to help with this issue but have received eight individual ideas and rejected them all; the issue of sharing proprietary data still plagues the project and the current issues don’t look to be solves soon. Source.
Coinbase was ordered to hand over information on customers who made transactions over $20,000 between 2013 and 2015; the IRS believes people have not been correctly reporting income made from trades; the information required by the IRS was significantly less than they originally tried to get back when the IRS initially summoned records a year ago; Coinbase might still challenge the order. Source.
Thomas Peterffy, CEO of Interactive Brokers Group, sent a letter to the CME and OCC Clearing Members voicing concerns about bitcoin futures; Mr. Peterffy believes bitcoin price movements are too big and arbitrary; he would prefer to put the clearing of bitcoin into an isolated clearing house or another isolated entity; he is sounding the alarm because he does not want to see the repeated mistakes of the 2008 financial crisis. Source.
Alibaba spin-off Ant Financial and non profit online lender QCash won the second annual FT fintech awards; they were selected from a group of over 200 companies in the fintech space and the winners were announced at the FT Banking Summit; both companies were rewarded for innovation and providing increased access to financial services. Source.