In an interview with CNBC last week, former PayPal COO and serial entrepreneur David Sacks talks about how cryptocurrencies are fulfilling the original PayPal vision; he explains: "A payment is just a credit to one account and a debit to another. That's a database entry. We believed that, if we could get enough people to participate, money would never need to leave the system. PayPal could become the database of money."; he talks about blockchain technology helping to build web 3.0 and a new wave of innovation; the interview also touched on how the current environment shows some of the same signs of the dot com era, the two ways digital assets are a threat to traditional venture capital and some of the biggest challenges that lie ahead. Source
USA
Global fintech patents reached 9,546 in 2016 with a growth rate of 49% over the past five years; the US leads in fintech patents with 4,523 and it has twice as many fintech patents as the second ranking country, China; both startups and traditional financial services firms have been active in the patent process for new fintech technology. Source
Clarity Services is a leading alternative credit data provider; the firm has published a new report titled, "2017 Subprime Lending Trends Insights into Consumers and the Industry" which analyzes alternative credit data from the firm's database of approximately 60 million unique consumer identities; provides details on consumer trends and the financial behavior of this market group. Source
Overstock.com has announced it will allow customers to pay in over 40 cryptocurrencies through support from ShapeShift; the e-commerce website is the first well-known retail platform to allow coin payments beyond bitcoin; the payments are facilitated by an API built by cryptocurrency exchange ShapeShift. Source