Users in California, Massachusetts, Missouri, Montana and New Hampshire will now have access to trade bitcoin and ethereum commission free; Robinhood plans to open to most states by the middle of 2018; over 4 million people have signed up for accounts with Robinhood. Source
As rates rise fixed income investors are looking for places to put cash; Lend Academy shares the latest rates on savings and CD accounts as well as a look at the newly branded Marcus by Goldman Sachs bank account. Source
Anyfin is based in Sweden and allows users to refinance existing loans using a photo of a loan statement; the round was co-led by Accel and Northzone and included Rocket Internet’s Global Founders Capital along with other angel investors; Anyfin is currently only available in Sweden but they have ambitions to expand further into Europe. Source
LendingClub grew revenue and announced settlements in two class action lawsuits. Source
The investment will be deployed over three years and allow the bank to compete with other digital banks and fintechs; it marks an increase of 40% from Lloyd’s previous three-year expansion plan; Lloyds also hopes the investment will help cut costs. Source
According to new data from the Federal Reserve mobile payments have seen a big growth among consumers but fraud has also risen; the shorter clearing period looks to have opened banks on the Zelle network to more potential for fraudulent transactions; Zelle has been using multi-layer and multi-factor authentication during the enrollment process; as banks look to innovate to suit their customer needs they are also looking at newer ways to protect themselves against threats that are evolving just as quick. Source.
Danny Masters ran JPMorgan’s commodities trading business in the 1990s; he is a strong believer in ICOs as a better mousetrap compared to IPOs stating, “I’ve raised for companies — angel, friends and family, series A, series B stuff — and it's a real pain in the arse. It's slow, it's time-consuming, it's duplicative. It's a really heavy duty process. I know some great companies who've raised £5 million, £10 million and they've spent thousands of man hours doing it.”; he also notes that there is a lack of quality ICOs and they have funded only a dozen; Masters setup a fund called Global Advisors which pivoted to crypto in 2014. Source
Silicon Valley startup accelerator 500 Startups partnered with cryptocurrency exchange Huobi to incubate blockchain projects; Edith Yeung, a partner at 500 Startups, said to CoinDesk, in partnering with Huobi Labs, "Our teams will learn so much especially around the ins and outs of how a digital exchange works."; the companies will help startups to develop business plans, create and refine marketing strategies, fundraise and develop white papers. Source.
BlackRock, the world’s largest investment group, is setting up an AI research lab; the move is part of a wider industry trend by asset managers to use AI and machine learning for investments; the lab is meant to help their current teams and clients better understand how best to utilize the new technologies; “Big data offers a world of possibilities for generating alpha [market beating returns] but traditional techniques are not good enough to analyse the huge volumes of information involved,” said David Wright, head of product strategy in Europe for BlackRock’s scientific active equity division, to the FT. Source.