Fintech Focus For March 9, 2021

Quote To Start The Day: “If I look at trading when I started, I would say a phone or occasionally a computer got broken at least once a week, or once every two weeks,” Dunn, Citigroup’s global co-head of rates trading, said during a virtual roundtable last week, held ahead of International Women’s Day on Monday.

“That kind of thing doesn’t happen anymore, or it rarely happens.”

Source: Bloomberg

One Big Thing In Fintech: In a recent company podcast, Matt McDermott, global head of digital assets for Goldman Sachs Global Markets Division, hinted that “incumbent banks” – like Goldman – could face pressure to increase their crypto business lines, with one obvious path being mergers and acquisitions.

Source: CoinDesk

Other Key Fintech Developments:

• Docoh is empowering retail investors.
• 2021 is likely the year of fintech IPOs.
• MicroWorkers integrates ONTO wallet.
• Taco Bell sold out of its very own NFT.
• Guggenheim adds to team, eyes tech.
• ING deepens its Flowcast partnership.
• How banks are hiring over blockchain?
• Edward Jones is launching technology.
• Fintech trade groups merge and grow.
• Priority acquiring Finxera over banking.
• WeLab has raised $75M led by Allianz.
• Cathie Wood: Fintechs misunderstood.
• NYDIG taps $200M to support growth.
• Ripple’s Moneygram partnership done.
• Mastercard expands Engage platform.
• LSEG’s spend on Refinitiv integration.
• PayPal plans to buy crypto-tech Curv.
• Moven looks to establish partnerships.

Watch Out For This: SITA, a data firm that works with some of the world’s largest airlines, announced Thursday that it had been the victim of a “highly sophisticated cyberattack,” the likes of which compromised information on hundreds of thousands of airline passengers all over the world.

Source: Gizmodo

Interesting Reads:

• Fauci warns of a new COVID-19 spike.
• Government plans to auction off BTCs.
• Trump was rejected in Supreme Court.
• What is in the $1.9T stimulus package?
• Virtu Financial expands to Palm Beach.
• How Citadel transformed stock market.
• Trudeau unveils women-only task force.
• Twitter CEO’s first tweet selling as NFT.

Market Moving Headline: The prospects of a strong recovery enabled by both the ongoing vaccine rollout as well as the historic levels of fiscal and monetary policy stimulus have simultaneously pushed growth forecasts sharply higher, while also stoking concerns over an overly rapid rise in inflation. Jitters over an eruption of price pressures and higher interest rates have recently provoked volatility in equity markets. However, some strategists suggested these fears may be overblown, and that rising rates should be in fact taken more positively as a signal of a firming economic backdrop.

Source: Yahoo Finance