Fintech Focus For May 7, 2021

Quote To Start The Day: “Whatever you are, be a good one.”

Source: Abraham Lincoln

One Big Thing In Fintech: Metromile Inc, an insurance-focused fintech powered by data science and machine learning, announced Thursday it will allow policyholders the option to pay for insurance and receive payment for claims in Bitcoin or U.S. dollars.
Source: Benzinga

Other Key Fintech Developments:

• How fintech will eat into old banks.
• Crypto.com sponsors Coppa Italia.
• Nivaura helps LSEG with platform.
• Goldman launches BTC derivatives.
• Lime furthered BestEx partnership.
• IEX Exchange targets retail trade.
• Tink, Tribe form bank partnership.
• Square shows $3.5B BTC revenue.
• Coinbase looking to promote remote.
• UK scrapping open-access regime.
• PBoC, Ant, Tencent team on CBDC.
• Börse fully acquires Clearstream.
• Northern Trust finishes Parilux buy.
• Bitso raises $250M at $2.2B value.
• Sotheby schedules more NFT sales.
• Nasdaq: NMS and odd lot problems.
• Shift raises $220M at $1B+ value.
• Paystack expands to South Africa.
• JPM on bitcoin, blockchain, DeFi.
• Revolut enables crypto withdrawals.
• NFT auctions to move from ether?
• Chime can’t be calling itself a bank.
• Neuravest expands, adds leaders.

Watch Out For This: Influencer marketing, which is on track to become a $15 billion industry by 2022, is a unique way for creators to monetize their content and outreach.

The problem with this industry is both the supply and demand dynamics, as well as an unfulfilling culture, according to some. More and more, creators are being faced with a tough decision, innovate or die.

Source: Benzinga

Interesting Reads:

• Twitter testing a new Tip Jar feature.
• Elon manifests interplanetary reality.
• New York City’s violent crime is up.
• Dimon commented on raising taxes.
• Top lumber firm to expand capacity.
• Why we can’t just make more chips.
• Einride is innovating freight mobility.

Market Moving Headline: The selloff that’s tearing through high-valuation tech shares has battered Cathie Wood’s flagship ETF.

The ARK Innovation exchange-traded fund (ARKK) dropped for a seventh straight day Wednesday in its longest slide in nearly two and a half years. After surging roughly 150% in 2020 thanks to a string of prescient bets on Tesla Inc. and stay-at-home tech darlings, the negative stats are starting to add up.

ARKK, which edged lower in early trading on Thursday, is down more than 10% for the year and investors are piling into protection against more losses. Put volume hit 190,000 Tuesday, the most in six weeks and the fourth-most on record. The latest data show outflows for a sixth consecutive day, the longest streak since the fund launched in 2014.

Source: Bloomberg