BlockFi offers loans to those who own cryptocurrencies; the company is currently in a beta launch and is lending in 35 states; ConsenSys Ventures, Kenetic Capital, PJC, SoFi, Purple Arch Ventures and Lumenary participated in the round. Source
While some of Europe’s biggest banks will not allow clients to buy cryptocurrencies with credit cards or advise on investing in the market, the smaller banks see an opportunity; Vontobel, Falcon Bank and Bank Frick have all agreed to handle cryptocurrency investments on behalf of clients; “There are risks involved but there are also really big opportunities,” Edi Wögerer, chief executive of Bank Frick, told the Financial Times; some of the world biggest banks have said the market is too risky with volatile prices and money laundering concerns; with the potential for more regulation these smaller banks are looking to already stake a place in the market before the bigger firms feel comfortable enough to get involved. Source.
Head of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, said she thinks it is inevitable that global regulators come up with new regulations for cryptocurrencies; the IMF has been primarily focused on how the new currencies are being used for money laundering and funding illicit activities; this isn’t the first time the IMF has hinted at and discussed cryptocurrency regulations; trends in the direction of new legislation have been hinted at for some time though nothing widespread has occurred yet. Source.
The new lender, run by former Funding Circle execs, will offer loans between $5 million and $60 million. Source
With more customers being active on Twitter, TD Ameritrade sees an opportunity to better engage and so they are rolling out a Twitter trading bot; the bot allows traders to execute trades, get market updates and look at educational content; this rollout follows the recent release of the Facebook messenger bot last August; using social media within trading has become a wider trend in the wealth management community as advisors look to cater to younger investors. Source.
Ant Financial is looking to raise a new $5bn round that would take the company’s value north of $100bn; the FT reports that the new round might begin later this month; if the valuation is as much the company would be worth more than Uber who right now is worth about $68bn; the biggest reason behind such a lofty valuation is the data collected on users according to Thomas Olsen, partner at Bain consultancy. Source.
Only 8 percent of cybersecurity heads at U.S. financial firms report directly to the CEO; a survey done by the Financial Services Information Sharing & Analysis Center showed the lack of access for cyber heads and pointed to other vulnerabilities; one of the biggest areas for improvement of defenses is better employee training as people can click the wrong link and open systems up; most firms, 54 percent, compile quarterly security reports while 18 percent do bi-annual reports and 16 percent do annual reports. Source.
Forbes has released their third edition of the Fintech 50 list which includes 22 new companies; companies included all have operations, customers or impact in the US. Source
There is no standard for data sharing between banks and fintechs which often results in screen scraping; this leads to concerns around data security and is also an inefficient way to gather data; the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center released an updated version of their recommendations around data sharing called the Durable Data API specification; this could eventually become the standard adopted by the industry; American Banker compares this to PSD2 in the UK and shares more about the new specification. Source
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