Fintech Focus For January 27, 2021

Quote To Start The Day: October: This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August and February.

Source: Mark Twain

One Big Thing In Fintech: Greenwood Financial, a new challenger bank aimed at serving Black and Latinx communities, has amassed 500,000 signups in the first 100 days since opening its waitlist in October, said Ryan Glover, an Atlanta-based entrepreneur and founder of Bounce TV.

Glover said he thinks the platform, which is expected to launch in May or June, is on track to hit more than 600,000 active accounts by the end of the year.

"We see that there is definitely an appetite for what we're doing," said Glover, who founded the digital bank alongside civil rights leader Andrew Young and rapper and activist Michael "Killer Mike" Render.

Source: Banking Dive

Other Key Fintech Developments:

• Foxquilt, Digital Partners teaming up.
• BNPL tech seeing growth, innovation.
• Overstock jumping on blockchain talk.
• Pocketnest landing a new investment.
• SIA, WizKey team on trading platform.
• Cboe to add a program for ETP MMs.
• DeFi may be making a big comeback.
• Social Leverage files S-1 for an SPAC.
• Oxygen, Fundera team on PPP loans.
• Matrix Executions eyes high volumes.
• Stripe leading $102M round for Fast.
• Lagarde’s comments on a digital euro.
• Melio hit $1.3B valuation in Series C.
• Victory Park launches fintech SPAC.
• CMC taps AWS for improved delivery.
• NetCents started printing credit cards.
• Albert tapped $100M for development.
• CoPeace raises for impact initiatives.
• UBS poaches a top JPMorgan quant.
• Rothschild added to its BTC holdings.
• Kevin raised seed for payments tech.
• QuantaVerse adding new crime tools. 
• Roostify taps $32M for home lending.
• LME overhauling tech and data stack.

Watch Out For This: President Joe Biden said his administration intends to order 100 million more doses each of Pfizer Inc. and Moderna Inc.’s coronavirus vaccines, and at least temporarily speed up shipments to states to about 10 million doses a week.

Source: Bloomberg

Interesting Reads:

• ARK Invest’s Big Ideas Report 2021.
• Spirit Airlines CFO talking numbers.
• New York City in worst fiscal health.
• US is not ready to debate the WTO.
• Dominion Voting sues Rudy Giuliani.
• Investors getting high on Cannabis.
• SPACs are disrupting the VC world.
• Top 6 tips for being happier at work.
• Drupal’s journey to billion-dollar exit.
• Real estate trends to watch in 2021.
• Members saved $100M with Current.
• Biden eyes OSHA safety standards.
• Twitter’s platform open to academics.
• Bullish stock bets explode to records.
• Calendly turned into a $3B company.
• PepsiCo, Beyond Meat intro venture.
• Ford Bronco trailer burns at rest stop.

Market Moving Headline: The skyward march in GameStop Corp. accelerated Tuesday, its stock nearly doubling during exchange hours and then surging another 50% after being name checked in a tweet by Elon Musk. Its market value flew past the $10 billion mark via a year-to-date rally that is pushing 700%.

For more on the dynamics behind this rally, click here.

Earlier this month, [] traders piled into the stock after activist investor and Chewy Inc. co-founder Ryan Cohen joined its board. The rally has also in part been fueled by Reddit-charged day traders who used the website’s WallStreetBets forum to pump up shares and fight back against the huge levels of short interest, which has held steady at about 140% of the float, according to data compiled by S3 Partners. Short bets by Gabe Plotkin’s Melvin Capital and Andrew Left’s Citron Research have faced a reckoning in the battle with GameStop’s retail fans.

Source: Bloomberg