Featured Headlines

April 11, 2021 @ 3:36 pm By JD Alois  |  

Several months ago, FinCEN submitted for publication in the Federal Register its Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) regarding certain transactions that involve virtual currency or digital assets. FinCEN or the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network is a bureau of the US Department of the Treasury that… Read More

April 8, 2021 @ 2:00 pm By JD Alois  |  

Back in January of this year, Anchorage, a top crypto platform for institutions, announced that the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) had conditionally approved  Anchorage Trust Company, a South Dakota chartered trust company, to become Anchorage Digital Bank, National Association. Thus, Anchorage… Read More

April 7, 2021 @ 9:43 am By JD Alois  |  

JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) is out with its annual report today and opening up the document is a letter from JPM CEO Jamie Dimon. The annual missive has emerged as the most widely read “dear shareholder” letter in the financial services sector as Dimon is broadly… Read More

April 6, 2021 @ 4:59 pm By JD Alois  |  

In advance of its much-anticipated initial public offering (IPO), Coinbase has posted its Q1 results for 2021. For the quarter ending March 31st, 2021, Coinbase reports top-line revenue of $1.8 billion and 56 million verified users. Coinbase is the largest digital asset exchange in the… Read More

April 6, 2021 @ 12:00 pm By Patrick Daugherty, John Lanza and Catherine Zhu  |  

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) were minted and sold under the radar until a relatively obscure artist sold an NFT for an immense sum. That seminal event invigorated interest in NFTs by artists, sales platforms, and collectors. In this column, we undertake to identify and answer, in… Read More

April 5, 2021 @ 4:00 pm By Xu Gao  |  

Huabei Announces Agriculture Promotion Plans On March 29th, Huabei, the consumer credit platform of Ant Group announced the launch of a series of agriculture promotion plans. For example, Huabei will offer consumption subsidies and platform traffic to help the farms sell more products. Besides, Huabei… Read More

April 5, 2021 @ 3:20 pm By JD Alois  |  

Wefunder, a leading funding portal in the Reg CF offering sector, has listed 40 new offerings – each being a Y Combinator graduate.  According to Wefunder, 20 companies are recent graduates and another 20 are from previous cohorts. Individual investors may participate in any securities… Read More

April 4, 2021 @ 8:00 pm By Daniel Daboczy  |  

It seems hard to believe, especially after a decade where it dominated new finance, but equity crowdfunding is still just in its infancy. Originally coined by entrepreneur Michael Sullivan in 2006, the true modern crowdfunding boom kicked off at the start of the previous decade… Read More

April 3, 2021 @ 4:00 pm By JD Alois  |  

In 2020, over €400 million was invested into securities offerings in Germany via crowd investing or investment crowdfunding platforms according to research by Crowdinvest.de augmented by data from Bundesverband Crowdfunding (the German crowdfunding association). The first quarter of 2021 saw approximately €100 million. According to… Read More

April 1, 2021 @ 10:30 am By JD Alois  |  

Funderbeam is a global funding and trading platform for private companies that reports over €30 million in funding raised and more than 60,000 trades on their secondary marketplace.  The Fintech notes that it holds multiple financial licenses including authorised and regulated by the Estonian Financial… Read More

March 30, 2021 @ 11:00 am By Ariel Glasner and Amit Roitman  |  

President Joe Biden’s young administration is poised to deliver heightened – and perhaps unprecedented – regulatory scrutiny of the exploding Fintech industry.  The groundwork for a more active regulatory regime has been set over the course of the past decade.  Prior administrations harnessed existing enforcement… Read More

March 29, 2021 @ 9:43 pm By JD Alois  |  

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has charged LBRY with conducting an offering of digital assets deemed to be unregistered securities. LBRY is a blockchain-based company that working on a digital marketplace, with its native currency LBC, for content such as images, video, audio and… Read More

March 28, 2021 @ 10:00 pm By JD Alois  |  

Christin Friedrich is CEO and majority shareholder of Innovestment, an alternative financing platform founded in 2012 that is focused on the long-term sustainable impact for SMEs based in Germany. She is also chairwoman of the board of the European Crowdfunding Network (ECN), the association that… Read More

March 28, 2021 @ 12:51 pm By Xu Gao  |  

Insurtech platform Shuidi closed its mutual insurance service On March 26th, Insurtech platform Shuidi announced that it would close its mutual insurance service at 18:00 on March 31st, 2021. Prior to this, members who were unfortunately diagnosed with a serious illness could continue to apply… Read More

March 26, 2021 @ 2:00 pm By Omar Faridi  |  

We recently caught up with Len Covello, CTO at Engage People, a global loyalty tech company. Covello explained how loyalty points are an often-overlooked alternative payment option. Covello talked about how the demand for having the flexibility to pay with points as easy as credit… Read More

March 25, 2021 @ 2:44 pm By JD Alois  |  

In the midst of a global health crisis, Fintech appears to be one of the big winners, according to a recent research report. As outlined by Pitchbook, Fintechs raised $44.4 billion in venture funding across 2,581 deals during 2020. This is a year-over-year increase of … Read More

March 25, 2021 @ 9:35 am By JD Alois  |  

Yesterday it was reported that the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) had provisionally decided to not allow the merger between Seedrs and Crowdcube. The two securities crowdfunding platforms combined were seen as dominating online capital formation for early-stage ventures to the point it would… Read More

March 23, 2021 @ 12:15 pm By JD Alois  |  

Lawrence C. Lee is a top merger and acquisitions attorney operating in the Fintech sector. A partner at Baker McKenzie and based in Palo Alto, Lee was previously in-house counsel for Coinbase where he led strategic transactions and investments. More recently, Lee and his team… Read More

March 22, 2021 @ 7:57 am By Lee Schneider  |  

CryptoUK issued a clarion call to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the UK financial and anti-money laundering (AML) regulator, demanding that FCA grant licenses as prescribed by AML rules.  Too many applications have gone unanswered since those rules came into effect over one year ago. … Read More

March 21, 2021 @ 2:58 pm By JD Alois  |  

This past week, the House Committee on Financial Services held part two of three anticipated hearings on the GameStop/Reddit/Robinhood saga. As most people are aware, in recent months a short-squeeze caused shares in GameStop (NYSE:GME) to jump dramatically higher compelling short sellers to purchase shares… Read More