Fintech Focus For August 19, 2021

Quote To Start The Day: “For as long as we’ve been taking confidence metrics associated with how well the people trust institutions … that confidence interval is the lowest in history.”

Source: Tobias Heaslip

One Big Thing In Fintech: Alinea, a smart investing app for a younger generation of investors, formally announced the closure of a $2.1 million raise led by Y Combinator, with participation from Goodwater Capital, Harvard Management Company, Kima Ventures, and Dragon Capital, among others.

Source: Benzinga

Other Key Fintech Developments:

• Galaxy filed for a direct BTC ETF.
• SME-focused neo-banking gains.
• Karrot becomes a $2.7B unicorn.
• PolyNetwork offered hacker a job.
• DeFi ecosystem Q2 2021 report.
• Crypto.com updates on transfers.
• CertiK secures a $24M Series B.
• FiscalNote has acquired Predata.
• BECU leveraging MX technology.
• Fiserv has partnered with Carat.
• Plaid announces Series D round.
• BitDAO raises $365M in auction.
• PayPal scraps late fees for BNPL.
• Pngme raises $15M for data tech.
• Hyperithm raises $11M Series B.
• World of Waves launches market.
• Coinbase building $4B cash pile.
• Dovly announces product launch.
• Binance taps Treasury investigator.
• Aspiration is planning to go public.
• Head of Facebook’s fintech talks.
• Bitpanda added $263M Series C.
• Zelle doubles down on marketing.
• How Coinbase Ventures grew up.
• Wells Fargo combining two units.
• Branch has added a $540M raise.
• Brex has acquired Weav for $50M.
• I2c partners with Visa on offering.
• Sightline reaches a $1B valuation.
• FreshBooks added $130M round.
• Mexican fintech expands into U.S.
• Allyson Felix to attend MX summit.
• MobileCoin added $66M to scale.
• Liti Capital is listing on exchanges.
• Marqeta commits to sustainability.
• Crypto regulation talks heating up.

Watch Out For This: Trading.TV, an online, social livestream community for investors, formally announced the closure of a $6.1 million seed round led by L Catterton Growth, Activant, Navy Capital, and Tribe Capital.

As part of the development, Benzinga spoke with Trading.TV CEO and founder Tobias Heaslip.

Source: Benzinga

Interesting Reads:

• Blumira secures $10.3M Series A.
• China blocking retirement money.
• Wall Street, big tech lost on health.
• FTC to get involved in Tesla probe.

Market Moving Headline: Most Federal Reserve officials agreed last month they could start slowing the pace of bond purchases later this year, judging that enough progress had been made toward their inflation goal, while gains had been made toward their employment objective.

Source: Bloomberg