Some of biggest bitcoin miners in China have reportedly been looking to set up operations in other Asian countries; there has been conflicting reports out of China is the last week as to what the country is doing when it comes to mining operations; the PBOC has not made official comments yet and the mining overall doesn’t look to slow down as other countries can fill the role of China. Source.
Buying and selling of cryptocurrencies may be available as soon as June, but the bank is still working on how it will store them; Goldman remains one of the few banks who are leading the charge when it comes to trading cryptocurrencies and it remains to be seen whether other banks will follow suit. Source
- Testimonial Tree Partners With J4 Mortgage Solutions to Offer Online Review Software to Mortgage Lenders and Title Companies
- Reffind bets on blockchain for turnaround story
- Credit Karma Teams with American Express to Offer Advance Tax Refund
- Student Loan Startup Frank Secures $10 Million During Series A Funding Round
- 2018 In Crypto - 11 Predictions (ZeroHedge)
- CIBC Innovation Banking unit launched to help grow startups
- Finova Financial’s New Fundraising Process Leverages Cryptocurrency to Serve Non-Accredited Investors
- Why I Joined MetaProp As An EIR (Nav Athwal)
There has been talk about one the big tech firms becoming a bank and potentially forever changing financial services; event without a banking license big tech firms are making noise in the finance market; Amazon and PayPal have been extending billions in loans and banks have started testing technologies like Alexa; the tech firms have also amassed a trove of data that could end up being as important as banking data; as banks become more digitized we will begin seeing a further mixing of interests to help offer the best experience as possible to the customer. Source.
Tiger Global has led Wealthfront’s latest $75 million round; the capital will be used to further build out their Path platform which connects users to their other financial accounts; Wealthfront now has $9 billion under management. Source
Prior to the license, the company operated as a platform for other third party funds to sell products through their wealth management platform Qian.qq.com and WeChat; now the company will be able to sell direct to its nearly 1 billion users; the company already had licenses for mobile payments, insurance and micro finance. Source
As CoinDesk reports Chinese publication Caixin said that the PBOC did not hold a meeting on shutting down mining activities; the meeting was supposed to be held on January 3rd and meant to focus on banning mining; the news means that the Chinese government is taking a more agnostic approach to bitcoin mining, not endorsing it but at the same time not banning it; more concrete news should surface in the coming months, for now firms like Bixin and ViaBTC will keep operating. Source.
Chris Larsen, Ripple’s co-founder and executive chairman is benefiting from Ripple’s (XRP) recent rise; CNBC reports that his net worth climbed to $59.9 billion yesterday, at least on paper; this puts him high on the Forbes 400 list, just head of Larry Ellison; Larsen owns 5.19 billion of the digital currency and has a 17% stake in the company; he was previously a founder of Prosper. Source
The Financial Stability Oversight Council's annual report includes a section discussing the risks of marketplace lending. Source
Roostify CEO Rajesh Bhat sat down with TearSheet to discuss the online mortgage market and stated we are still in the first quarter of the game; Roostify is an enterprise mortgage origination platform and has secured deals with JPMorgan Chase and Guild Mortgage; topics discussed include why mortgages are so hard to digitize, how banks have addressed the move to digital mortgages and how did Roostify come to be. Source.