While the passage of the JOBS Act in 2012 helped to spur crowdfunding into an exciting industry, questions have continued surrounding investor protections and the legitimacy of companies using this method to raise capital; SeedInvest CEO Ryan Feit recently told the New York Times: "I'm legitimately concerned that a lot of people are going to be losing money; investing in startups is really risky, and it's very different than buying a used couch. We definitely do not think you should treat it like Craigslist."; investors don't necessarily understand the investment and companies are not following the rules fully, causing many in the industry to legitimately worry about the way forward. Source
Koubei was founded in 2015 with investment from Alibaba and Ant Financial; the firm offers online e-commerce services for merchants and is part of a diversified group of Alibaba affiliates; in January the firm reported new capital of $1.1 billion from external investors; investors now supporting the firm include Silver Lake, CDH Investments, Yunfeng Capital and Primavera Capital. Source
Blockchain has been becoming increasingly utilized across a range of industries; speculators believe 2017 could be blockchain's biggest year ever with a number of factors supporting the technology; bitcoin's price has been increasing, reaching a three-year high in January; market participants have been strengthening led by the Hyperledger Project; investment has also been increasing, specifically investment in patented blockchain technology. Source
Diagram has raised $25 million (USD$19.13 million) for a new fintech venture capital fund that will be led by Paul Desmarais III; Paul Desmarais is part of Quebec's Desmarais family which has built a $7 billion (USD$5.36 billion) fortune through investment in the insurance business; the new fund's initial fundraising effort has come from Portag3 Ventures LP and over 50 individual angel investors; the fund will invest in a variety of Canadian fintech companies. Source
<p>China has accounted for over 90% of bitcoin's trading volume in recent weeks as no trading costs and a devaluing yuan have attracted the attention of traders; the country has approximately 10 of the world's leading bitcoin exchanges which have seen some intervention from Chinese regulators in recent weeks; beginning on Tuesday, three of the largest Chinese bitcoin exchanges implemented a flat fee of 0.2% per transaction to manage manipulation and volatility; trading volumes were significantly impacted following the new fee structure with volumes down approximately 90% on Chinese bitcoin exchanges.
Global wealth managers have been increasingly partnering with fintech companies to provide their customers with new digital wealth management solutions; the Morgan Stanley Addepar partnership is one of the market's most recent deals involving new digital wealth management services; the chart below provides insight on some of the leading factors involved in digital wealth management strategies for global wealth managers; the ability to increase access and collaboration potential with clients and experts is one of the market's top factors. Source

An opinion editorial in American Banker makes the case for eliminating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; says the agency provides for unnecessary expansion of federal regulatory power; suggests a return to segregated oversight; provides a list of overreaching executive powers in addition to its recent unconstitutional ruling. Source
Robots have begun helping to take over menial tasks at banks and now there is talk that a full back office operation is not far away; "I think we're going to see it move from a few narrow functions to across the enterprise," said Alan McIntyre, the industry managing director for banking at Accenture; making these changes will help banks to cut costs and improve efficiency, at least when times get extremely busy; banks won't yet fully remove the human component but the trend is moving in the direction of more automation when running the back office. Source
Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are becoming increasingly relied upon by financial services companies and the credit sector; the algorithms powering these solutions have also advanced the use of AI and machine learning; while these advancements have helped new solutions they have also created new risks; these risks are primarily focused in three phases: input, training and programming; risks can also be higher when using nontraditional data; a report from White and Case titled, "Algorithms and Bias: What Lenders Need to Know" provides details on the evolution of algorithms in artificial intelligence and machine learning and explains important factors to consider for credit providers. Source
Open banking is a significant factor for fintech industry growth; it allows fintech companies to access customer data for fintech services; the Consumer Financial Data Rights (CFDR) coalition has been established to focus primarily on this issue; there initiatives include: lobbying regulators for open access to data, promoting fintech's rights to use data and serving as a resource center for open access regulation; Business Insider also suggests considering the UK's open access and regulatory examples and has published a report entitled, "The Fintech Regulation Report." Source

