Fintech Focus For March 12, 2021

Quote To Start The Day: Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans.

Source: John Lennon

One Big Thing In Fintech: Financial technologies “cause turmoil when loosed” yet “perish once regulated”, a deputy governor of China’s central bank observed last year.

This is an apt description of the dilemma facing the country’s regulators. Innovation has swept its financial markets over the past decade. It has produced some of the world’s most valuable technology companies, such as Ant Group, and in some cases, such as peer-to-peer (p2p) lending, led to fraud and losses.

Regulators have fintech in their sights.

Source: Economist

Other Key Fintech Developments:

• Paths fintechs take to be mainstream.
• Autobooks announces $25M Series B.
• Walmart US CEO on fintech strength.
• AcreTrader secures a $12M Series A.
• Klarna up against banks, credit cards.
• Deutsche Börse piloting quant algos.
• Orion buying HiddenLevers platform.
• Plug and Play and Pimoc partner up.
• Atom Bank’s valuation likely to halve.
• Citi improves cross-border payments.
• Bakkt acquired New York BitLicense.
• JPMorgan’s crypto bond is full of risk.
• Heyday raising seed funds for growth.
• Fidelity, Moonfare added partnership.
• Celsius confirms over $10B in assets.
• Nexo grants Brink for BTC innovation.
• Triterras plans to buy Invoice Bazaar.
• bitFlyer launches crypto service in CT.
• WisdomTree submits BTC ETF filings.
• Syntropy to scale global tech adoption.
• dxFeed to launch own Chainlink node.
• Kukun, Jerry.ai announce partnership.
• Illuvium raises for an NFT battle game.
• Boson Protocol adds $10M in funding.

Watch Out For This: A handful of professional athletes and other high-profile figures have joined the SPAC boom, prompting the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to caution investors about investing in special purpose acquisition companies associated with celebrities.

Source: Crunchbase

Interesting Reads:

• Lit markets provide price improvement.
• Daylight saving time cannot be stopped.
• Florida one of the best states to live in.
• US infrastructure bill could pass in May.
• Roblox gains after ARK Invest buys in.
• $69M NFT sale a transformative event.
• Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg deal weed.
• ixLayer raises $75M for telehealth tech.
• Biden signs $1.9T coronavirus relief bill.
• Ford Bronco Sport overheat off-roading.

Market Moving Headline: The U.S. economy will grow faster than previously thought and reach pre-COVID-19 levels within six months, according to a majority of economists polled by Reuters who however said unemployment would take well over a year to recover.

Optimism was largely driven by the House of Representatives passing President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion relief aid in response to the pandemic, which has killed around 530,000 people in the U.S. and left millions out of work.

Source: Reuters