JP Morgan just shut down its neobank competitor Finn, targeted at Millennials in a smartphone app wrapper. Several other traditional banking incumbents have similar efforts, from Wells Fargo's Greenhouse, Citizens Bank's Citizens Access, MUFG's PurePoint and Midwest BankCentre's Rising Bank, as well as most of the Europeans (e.g., RBS competition to Starling called Mettle). These banks have every advantage -- from product infrastructure, to balance sheet, to regulatory licenses, to physical footprint, to relationships with the older generation. So how is it that players like Chime, MoneyLion, Revolut, and N26 are all able to get millions of happy users and the incumbents are failing?
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Companies like Hummingbird and Babel Street are successfully applying new technologies to improve the efficiency of long-cumbersome aspects of compliance.
Anyone watching Fintech over the last decade has recognized an increasing shift of power from product manufacturers to the platforms where those products are sold. In the case of Amazon, Google, and Facebook -- finance is just a feature among thousands of others. I've made this point since 2017, when Amazon launched lending into its platform. Brett King has been a bit more generous in the categorization, calling the shift "embedded banking". This means that banking products are built into you life's journey, not accessed in a separate customer center location. The financial API trend is a tangible symptom of this vector.
Money Laundering is a perpetual thorn in the side of financial institutions. BIS reports that AI and use of networks could be way forward.
The Securities and Exchange Comission punted again on allowing a passive Bitcoin ETF to enter the market. It failed to approve the VanEck SolidX Bitcoin Trust, instead opting to open a commentary period to address several questions around Bitcoin price formation and the health of the exchanges. A similar outcome faces the Bitwise Bitcoin ETF. You can tell I am not a fan of this waffling, and there are two core reasons: (1) the years-long delay and uncertainty is responsible for financial damage to both traditional and crypto investors, and (2) the premise of the objections misunderstand the environment of the Internet and the way our world is shaping up in the 21st century.
exchanges / cap mktsgaming & sportsgovernanceidentity and privacyMetaverse / xRNFTs and digital objectsregulation & complianceSocial / Community
·We discuss the top-down and bottoms-up approaches to innovation and project building. For the former, we reference Australia’s draconian surveillance laws, and the integration of US driver’s licenses into Apple’s wallet. For the latter, we dive into the Ethereum-based Loot project and its incredible derivatives, $500MM token, and $200MM of volume. Last, we conclude by highlighting the role of creators on the coming wave of Fintech.
In this conversation, we talk with Patrick Berarducci of ConsenSys, about the valuations and multiples of capital markets protocols in Decentralized Finance on Ethereum, now making up over $60B in token value. Additionally, we explore the nuances of scaling Ethereum and its solutions, such as Metamask and the emerging Layer 2 protocols.
We also discuss law and regulation, including a fascinating story about Bernie Madoff from when Pat was a practicing attorney. This leads into a conversation about the embedded compliance nature of blockchain and crypto technology, the early days of ConsenSys, the path of crypto brokerages like Coinbase, and Metamask exhibiting emerging qualities of a neobank.
The use of messaging apps raises compliance issues that SnipperSentry addresses. This issue is not going away for fintechs and banks.
central bank / CBDCChinacivilization and politicsCryptoDAOsdecentralized financegovernanceIndiamacroeconomicsMetaverse / xRregulation & compliance
·In this conversation, we are so lucky to tap into the brilliant mind of none other than Sheila Warren who sits on the Executive Committee of the World Economic Forum and is a key member in the executive leadership of the Forum’s Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (C4IR), in which she oversees strategy across the entire C4IR Network, consisting of centers in 13 countries. Sheila also holds board member and advisory positions at multiple institutions and organizations including The MIT Press (Cryptoeconomic Systems), The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), NGO network TechSoup and she is a Member of The Bretton Woods Committee.
More specifically, we discuss her professional journey from small claims court to NGO Aid to refugees to corporate law to The WEF, touching on rational choice theory, corporate personhood and its correlation to the growth around ESG, new substrates, DAOs and protocols, artificial intelligence, the purpose of The World Economic Forum and its impact on governments and society alike, and just so much more!
The principle behind Mastercard’s CipherTrace acquisition, L1 growth, and IRS getting your bank data
Paying attention is the path to seeing and doing. Mastercard has bought CipherTrace to see blockchain-based finance, to launch new businesses, and to plug in more networks into its nexus. The crypto networks proliferate at every layer, creating more computation on Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, Fantom, and Solana. The US executive seeks to see more too, asking the banks for their records of financial transactions to enforce taxation compliance.









