According to Bloomberg, Ripple attempted to provide financial incentives to exchanges Gemini and Coinbase for its XRP cryptocurrency to be listed; Some believe that the exchanges are reluctant to include XRP because the token could be deemed securities because it is controlled by one single company; the article by Bloomberg shares that a Ripple executive offered a $1 million cash payment to Gemini which was followed by other incentive offerings; Ripple also offered lending Coinbase $100 million of XRP to let users trade the asset. Source
Credit bureaus have had a tough past year with the Equifax breach of customer data and new legislation in the U.S. looking to increase competition by allowing lenders to use different sources; changing the credit bureau system is not as easy as it may sound as they have been intertwined in the financial services system for a long time; lenders still use the bureaus for a large majority of lending decisions, even though some alternative bureaus have seen traction; the breach at Equifax could have a lasting effect because people did have a lot of trust in the company to secure their sensitive information like social security numbers; as data sharing in financial services becomes commonplace a premium will need to be placed on how that data is secured. Source.
In this post we share the process of opening up a new LendingClub account, the first in a new series we will be sharing over the coming quarters. Source
NEW! LendIt Fintech USA has expanded to a third day filled with six workshops running from 9:00AM - 1:00PM on April 11. Each workshop will be led by expert panelists and will provide training and case study discussions. ConsenSys Academy will be conducting the Blockchain workshop featuring intense learning on this headlining topic. Other workshop themes include Financial AI, Bank Technology, Success Through Diversity, RegTech, and Sales & Marketing. Workshops are available to all registered attendees. Three days away at Moscone in San Francisco. Register here
Bloomberg reports on Goldman Sachs’ new San Francisco office culture which has no dress code and offers kombucha in the break room; Jeff Winner was hired this year to run the office which aims to employ 80 people; Winner leads the engineering team behind their successful consumer brand Marcus; with their new office location they will compete for talent from names like Google and Amazon. Source
Adam Fisher, head of macro investing at Soros Fund Management has received approval to trade cryptocurrencies but has not begun trading them according to sources; Soros recently spoke at the World Economic Forum in January stating that cryptocurrency is a typical bubble, but was more bullish on blockchain technology; his family office as of Q4 2017 had a significant stake in Overstock.com. Source
According to a blog post by the company, the fund will provide. ”financing to promising early stage companies that have the teams and ideas that can move the space forward in a positive, meaningful way”; the company also said it will not invest in security tokens at this time; it is likely that the company is sitting on significant amounts of cash which put it in a good position to launch a fund; revenues in 2017 totaled over $1 billion; Bloomberg reported that the top ten largest crypto exchanges take in $3 million in fees per day. Source
Deposit accounts and debit cards will be available to some customers next month according to SoFi; the account will function like a checking account that will earn interest; the company recently shared that they were working with WSFS Financial Corp for the new product called SoFi Money. Source
According to a report in Bloomberg online small business lender Kabbage is getting set to acquire Orchard. The companies have not yet confirmed and the cost of a potential deal is also not known. Source.
Goldman Sachs has acquired personal finance app Clarity Money as it continues to build out their consumer focused brand. Adam Dell, founder of Clarity Money, will become a partner at Goldman as a result of the deal. Source.