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eCommerce generational change Investing Social / Community

·Jun. 10, 2021

From ecommerce to a million+ global financial community, with Maximilian Rofagha of Finimize

In this conversation, we talk with Maximilian Rofagha, who serves as the CEO and Founder of Finimize, about how to do personal finance right and how to do it bottoms up for the world.

Additionally, we explore Max’s journey to becoming an entrepreneur, the nuances of the e-commerce business, the building of and drivers behind community and creating business activities around it, the influences of FinTok and crypto assets on financial community, and the drivers of value back into said communities fulfilling the feedback loop.

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China digital lending eCommerce Metaverse / xR neobank small business Social / Community super app supply chain / trade

·Jun. 13, 2021

The links between tech, commerce, and finance behind Klarna’s $45B valuation and Pinduoduo’s $150B marketcap

This week, we cover these ideas:

Klarna’s $640 million raise and its $45 billion valuation, and how its business model arbitrages the payments revenue pool to build a lending business
Pinduoduo’s growth path to a $150B marketcap, and the links between shopping, media, and financial mechanisms that help it compete with Alibaba
A comparison of approaches to growth and economics
Implications for crypto assets for capturing “the real economy”

Klarna is raising $640 million on a $45 billion private valuation, with over $1 billion in net operating income. The buy-now-pay-later company has over 90 million active customers and 250,000 merchants. It was founded in Sweden in 2005.

On the other side of the ocean, Chinese ecommerce company Pinduoduo is beating Alibaba with 820 million active buyers, generates over $3 billion in revenue per quarter, connects buyers to 12 million farmers, and has a market capitalization of $150 billion. It was founded in China in 2015.

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DAOs eCommerce marketing microeconomics NFTs and digital objects Social / Community visual art

·Jul. 4, 2021

Luxury and Fashion market structure applied to finance, NFTs, and DAO

Luxury and fashion markets are structurally different from finance or commodity markets in that they seek to limit supply in order to generate value. This increases price and social status. We can analogize these brand dynamics to what is happening in NFT digital object markets and better understand their function as a result.

We’re not cool. That’s why we’re in finance.

But people want to be cool. As highly social and intelligent animals, we want and need to belong, differentiate against each other, and negotiate for status. We create signals and hierarchies to create pockets of relational capital, which we then cash in for real world benefits.

Such mammalian realities are contrary to the economic rendering of the homo economicus, the abstracted rational agent making choices in financial models. In 2021, our financial models are waking up and instantiating themselves, becoming Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), spun up by DeFi and NFT industry insiders, and implemented into commercial actions onchain.

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asset management Crypto ICO / IEO Investing roboadvisor Social / Community

·Jul. 22, 2021

eToro CEO Yoni Assia on the purpose of investing, crypto assets, and building a $10B fintech

In this conversation, we talk all things capital markets and investing with Yoni Assia, the founder and CEO of eToro, one of the fastest-growing and largest global digital investing companies, brokerages, and applications out there.

More specifically, we discuss the eating habits of Warren Buffet, community-driven investment challenging incumbent investing practices, the purposes of investing and trading, of financial health, of investment education, of gamification of investment strategy, of capital markets and GameStop and the connection between capital, memes and fashion, and finally machine learning’s influence of investment behaviour.

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Crypto decentralized finance p2p & crowdfunding Social / Community

·Mar. 19, 2021

Camila Russo of The Defiant and author of The Infinite Machine discusses crypto journalism, writing about Ethereum’s inception, $69M NFTs, and building a DeFi community

In this conversation, we talk with Camila Russo of The Defiant and author of The Infinite Machine, about her journey as a successful financial journalist was derailed by the Crypto boom and subsequent winter of 2017. Additionally, we explore the success behind her first book, the nuances of the NFT craze, and how The Defiant became one of the most popular crypto media brands to date.

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eCommerce Embedded Finance paytech Social / Community

·Apr. 16, 2021

Building global paytech companies and communities with Anil Aggarwal of TxVia, Money2020, and Fintech Meetup

In this conversation, we talk with Anil Aggarwal of Clarity Payment Solutions (acquired by TSYS) and TxVia (acquired by Google) about how he “stumbled” upon the payment space at the right time.

Anil is an absolute FinTech icon as the founder of renowned FinTech conferences – Money20/20 and FinTech Meetup. Additionally, we explore the various concepts of payment network utlity, the market timing large platform shifts, as well as, how social capital and community formation can serve as drivers towards the monetization of our attention even further.

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digital transformation generational change marketing mega banks neobank Social / Community

·Jul. 29, 2021

Step CEO CJ MacDonald on building the leading Gen-Z bank, TikTok influencers, and money culture

In this conversation, we delve deep into next generation finance and banking with CJ MacDonald, the Founder and CEO of Step – an incredibly successful neobank on a mission to improve the financial future of the next generation.

More specifically, we discuss traditional vs. digital banking, how personal experiences influence entrepreneurial the spirit, immersive market research, banking-as-a-service, the importance of financial literacy amongst Millenials and Gen-Z, the power of influencers who actually believe in a brand, aspirational brands vs. plastic Wells Fargo stage coaches, and lastly the proliferation of crypto in the minds of the next generation.

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DAOs gaming & sports generational change Metaverse / xR NFTs and digital objects Social / Community

·Sep. 3, 2021

Metaverse 101 with Lex Sokolin and Cris Sheridan, Sr. Editor of Financial Sense

In this conversation, Cris Sheridan, who is the Senior Editor of Financial Sense and Host of FS Insider, leads the conversation around the basics to understand the exciting new digital universe, more commonly known as The Metaverse.

More specifically, we discuss all things VR & AR including social media’s proliferation into the sector, Millenial vs GenZ behavioural approaches to the metaverse, the creator economy, NFTs, Axie Infinity, Mr Beast, Computational Blockchains, Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), ConsenSys, MetaMask, and Ethereum vs Institutional Finance (Schwab).

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exchanges / cap mkts identity and privacy marketing Metaverse / xR NFTs and digital objects Social / Community visual art

·Oct. 6, 2021

User-Generated Finance and Cultural Financial Instruments, via Snoop Dogg, Dapper Labs, and $1.5B Decentralized Social

The structure of capital markets precedes the innovations that come from it. High frequency trading, passive ETF investing, SPACs, and crypto assets all telegraphed their value proposition before becoming large and meaningful in scale. We are now seeing a new market shape emerge, one that starts with community and builds up into financial instruments that are cultural and social. This analysis looks at the most recent developments in the overlap between decentralized social and cultural work and related financial features.

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Crypto DAOs gaming & sports Metaverse / xR neobank NFTs and digital objects Social / Community visual art

·Aug. 23, 2021

Creating, Transacting, and Storing Value in the Financial Metaverse of NFTs, DAOs, and DeFi

The evolution towards a financial metaverse is rapidly accelerating, with the growth in generative assets, profile picture avatars, the emerging derivative structures that build on their foundation, and DAOs that govern them. This article highlights the most novel developments, and builds the case for what a digital wallet / bank will need to be able to do in order to succeed on the way to this alien destination.

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