A consensus over the upcoming bitcoin split was not reached and the plan was cancelled; the hope was for a new version that could handle double the number of transactions; upon hearing the news bitcoin’s value shot up to over $7,800; the current version can only handle about five transactions per second and to compete with names like PayPal and Visa that will need to change at some point in the future. Source.
News Roundup
This page contains an archive of the Global Newsletter summaries and the weekly fintech news roundups.
Every day the Fintech Nexus news team scours the globe for the most important stories of the day to include in our daily newsletter.
Then every Saturday we bring you our weekly news roundup of the top 10 fintech stories of the week with commentary from Peter Renton.
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According to the WSJ, SoFi is pulling back on its expansion to foreign markets and asset management; two executives, Peter Early and Arkadi Kuhlmann are leaving the firm as part of the shift in focus; they led asset management and banking respectively at SoFi; despite some of the challenges the company extended $3.52 billion in loans in the third quarter, up almost 80% from the same period last year. Source
The Federal Reserve released a report saying that P2P loans resemble predatory loans; the report cautions on the industry’s rapid origination growth and rising defaults; they also say the industry as a whole has the potential to destabilize consumer balance sheets; the research also shows taking out a P2P loan hurts credit scores and credit card balances increase; the report also points to the benefits of taking out a loan as well. Source.
During the week I share the latest marketplace lending news on Twitter...
Bloomberg reports on flattening US Treasury yields; article shares how the trend could lead to effects on bank earnings, the economy and the factors leading to the flattening. Source
Metamask shares their official guide on what investors should expect when participating in a token sale for the first time; provides tips to ensure understanding of the projects, prerequisites to participate and how to avoid fraud. Source
After a wild night of trading the value of bitcoin cash reach $2,500 and total market cap surpassed Ethereum for second place; bitcoin cash split from bitcoin back in august and up until recently was trading between $300 and $500; bitcoin has been coming back down as of late with news of a new split not happening and the rise of bitcoin cash both eating into bitcoin’s overall value. Source.
Miles Reidy is a partner at QED and spearheads the VC firm’s regtech initiatives; Reidy talks about his background, why regtech has its origins in the changes brought on by the financial crisis, the differences that regtech is making in financial services today and more. Source
In an effort to increase security banks have started to move to the internet domain dot-bank; the switch has not been widely adopted but those who have done it say the investment is worth it; “Anybody can have dot-net or dot-com,” said J. Marty Filogamo, SVP and marketing manager of Farmers & Merchants State Bank. “Not everyone can have dot-bank.”; this is part of a wider trend in banking as more banks look to increase digital products and security. Source.