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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While the crackdown on bitcoin in China has hurt the value of the digital currency, prices have stabilized and traders are confident this is a blip on the radar; what traders are more focused on is the technology behind the currency and the blockchain protocol has not been affected; there are also reports that say the crackdown is temporary and China has become less central as overall volume has dropped. Source.
Deposit marketplace Raisin moved into the UK market by acquiring Manchester-based fintech PBF Solutions; Tamaz Georgadze, Raisin’s CEO and founder, tells AltFi “The acquisition of PBF gives us the opportunity to significantly broaden our offer to UK savers and deposit takers." Source.
Real estate alternative investment platform AlphaFlow raised $4.1mn led by Resolute Ventures and Point72 Ventures; they plan to use the funds to scale partnerships with lenders and investors, accredited individual investors and investment managers; they also plan to hire more individuals for the data science and engineering division and potentially look at more asset classes int the future. Source.
TechCrunch has published the video from an interview with Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum; in the interview he talked about cryptocurrencies and blockchain, highlighting what makes a good use case for the technology. Source
Nathaniel Hoopes, head of the Marketplace Lending Association shares how the Madden v. Midland decision is having an adverse impact on borrowers in an American Banker opinion article. Source
Ellevest is an investment platform focused on women; the firm is led by Sallie Krawcheck and recently raised $34.6 mn in a Series A round; the round was led by Rethink Impact with participation from a wide variety of investors including PSP Growth, Salesforce Ventures, CreditEase Fintech Investment Fund, LH Holdings, SK Impact Fund, Morningstar, Khosla Ventures, Mellody Hobson, Ulu Ventures, Contour Venture Partners and Astia Angels. Source
A writer in a Bloomberg opinion article believes that the next financial crisis will have its roots in Silicon Valley, not Wall Street; author cites that fintech companies are vulnerable to rapid, adverse shocks compared to Wall Street banks because fintech firms are small and undiversified; article also shares that fintech companies are more difficult to monitor and that the fintech industry has not developed the set of unwritten norms and expectations that guide traditional financial institutions. Source
According to the WSJ, clients have been withdrawing more money than expected from the hedge fund; Pine River was best known for its profits after rebounding government-backed mortgages following the financial crisis; Pine River manages roughly half of the $15 billion it managed in 2015. Source