Fintech Focus For December 31, 2020

Quote To Start The Day: Celebrate endings—for they precede new beginnings.

Source: Jonathan Huie

One Big Thing In Fintech: In a recent outlook for North American and European fintech, Fitch Ratings acknowledged that the sector fundamentals should remain resilient next year, despite pandemic-related issues likely to bring significant operational headwinds to the sector in both geographical regions.

“The industry benefits from positive credit attributes including secular revenue growth, strong EBITDA margins, robust FCF generation and manageable leverage metrics,” Fitch noted. “Issuers are well-positioned to manage the pandemic into 2021 due to these factors.”

Source: International Banker

Other Key Fintech Developments:

• Moving finance into the new age.
• 2020 the year that shook fintechs.
• VanEck refiles for new BTC ETFs.
• Brokerages face sky high demand.
• Visa adds a novel CBDC protocol.
• Analysis: Open banking in Brazil.
• Building stablecoin from arbitrage.
• Jamie Dimon looking to next steps.
• Future FinTech taps $8M in funds.
• Betterfly extended Series A round.
• SEC’s Ripple lawsuit halts trading.
• Understanding Nasdaq exchange.

Watch Out For This: False rumors spread faster and wider than true information, according to a 2019 study published in Science by MIT Sloan professor Sinan Aral and Deb Roy and Soroush Vosoughi of the MIT Media Lab.

They found falsehoods are 70% more likely to be retweeted on Twitter than the truth, and reach their first 1,500 people six times faster. This effect is more pronounced with political news than other categories.

Bots spread true and false information at the same rates, the researchers found, so people are the ones hitting retweet on false information. One potential reason: the novelty hypothesis, which found that people are drawn to information that is novel and unusual, as false news often is. (Not that bots don’t play a role in spreading misinformation — in fact, they can easily manipulate people’s opinions.)

Source: MIT

Interesting Reads:

• Musk hones in on rocket recovery.
• Australian lawmaker predicts war.
• EU, China signed investment deal.
• Bill Ackman on 2021 stock market.
• No realistic path for $2,000 checks.
• IBM, Samsung team on innovation.
• First lab-grown burger comes soon.
• Four things to watch in US politics.
• Blasts strike Yemen’s Aden airport.
• Hitting snags in signed Brexit deal.
• Pending home sales show slowing.
• Police warned on Nashville bomber.

Market Moving Headline: Bitcoin [is honing] in on $29,000 as the world’s largest cryptocurrency pushes its mind numbing rally in 2020 past 300%.

The digital asset surged above $29,700 as of 3 p.m. Wednesday to a record. In December alone, Bitcoin has surged almost 50%, putting it on track for its biggest monthly gain since 2019.

“While a growing institutional presence has been part of the narrative of the current bull run, we may see increased retail interest in Bitcoin as a form of digital gold,” Paolo Ardoino, chief technology officer of crypto exchange Bitfinex said in an email.

Source: Al Jazeera