Wall Street firms paid almost $3b last year for retail brokers’ trades - Monthly regulatory filings collated by Bloomberg show “payment for order flow” earned US brokers $2.9b in 2020. TD Ameritrade generated fees of $1.1b between its broker-dealer and clearing divisions, while rival Robinhood grew fastest, earning fees of almost $700m. Read more
Ant reaches agreement with China regulators on overhaul - China only introduced its framework for financial holding companies in September and many of the specifics are still being ironed out. While the rules will eventually provide more regulatory clarity for Ant, they’ll almost certainly force the company to slow the torrid pace of expansion that has made it China’s dominant fintech player and one of the world’s most valuable startups. Read more
Reddit’s WallStreetBets founder sells life story to movie producer RatPac Entertainment - Jaime Rogozinski into the man every producer in Hollywood wanted to do business with. Earlier this week, the founder of Reddit’s WallStreetBets sold the rights to his life story to RatPac Entertainment. Rogozinski later said "‘Maybe I’ll get to go on the red carpet”. Read more
Fintech startups target younger audiences, investor interest in financial literacy - A growing group of fintech startups is developing child-friendly tools and resources geared at promoting financial literacy. Venture investors are increasingly getting on board, putting over $400m in the past couple years into companies offering savings platforms for children, young people and parents. Read more
FCA calls for full regulation of ‘buy now, pay later’ credit - The UK financial regulator has said “buy now, pay later” credit deals offered by online retailers via fintech companies such as PayPal and Klarna must be covered by its rules “as a matter of urgency”, because of a “significant potential for consumer harm”. Usage of BNPL products nearly quadrupled in Britain last year, taking total lending to £2.7b — with 5m people taking advantage of them since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. Read more
New joint venture between SWIFT, PBC fuels speculation over pursuit of globalizing China’s digital currency - The joint venture could serve as a conduit for broadening the use of the PBC's digital currency, officially called Digital Currency Electronic Payment (DCEP). Thus far, the use of DCEP has undergone trials in some cities, making China a forerunner in the launch of a state-backed digital currency. Read more
Visa to enable cryptocurrency trading - Visa’s plan is to divide digital assets into two categories: cryptocurrencies and digital currencies. For cryptocurrencies, Visa plans to work with wallets and exchanges to allow users to buy these currencies using their Visa credentials. With regard to digital currencies, these assets could find use cases in global commerce “much like any other fiat currency” and could run on public blockchains as additional networks much like RTP and ACH rails. Read more
Payoneer reaches $3.3b deal to go public with Betsy Cohen SPAC - Following its public debut, the firm plans to expand its offerings that allow businesses to transact with each other overseas, an area that’s long been dominated by pricey wire payments and paper checks. The firm also hopes to do more mergers and acquisitions of its own. Read more
Silver prices jump in GameStop-like frenzy - Futures prices for silver in New York on Monday settled at their highest level in eight years, the latest work by a loosely knit group of speculators who congregate on social-media platforms including Reddit’s WallStreetBets. Some participants have been contending aggressive buying could power GameStop-like, quadruple-digit percentage gains in other arenas, with some chatter over the weekend focusing on the roughly $50b market for silver investments. Read more
Goldman winds down Clarity Money to focus on Marcus Insights - Due to close on March 5th, the app and website wind down follows the bank’s gradual transition of Clarity Money’s “best” features to the Marcus app. This year, the plan is to launch a checking account with Marqeta, as well as an investing service, under the Marcus brand. These features would see Marcus take on both challenger banks and digital, fee-free investment platforms in one fell swoop. Read more
Robinhood raises another $2.4b from shareholders - The huge infusion—the $3.4b raised since last Thursday is more than the company has raised in total up until that point—gives Robinhood a war chest to cover a surge in collateral requirements stemming from the trading boom. It should also allow the company to support the hundreds of thousands of new accounts users opened since last week and to remove many of the trading restrictions that angered customers of the popular brokerage. Read more
The Winklevoss’ bitcoin exchange is pushing into banking with a new savings product - Gemini is adding a new service called “Earn” that lets clients move their holdings in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies into interest-bearing accounts, offering rates of up to 7.4% APY, more than 100 times the U.S. national average. The news signals a larger move into banking from Gemini and other crypto firms, which are looking to develop more ways to lure in the uninitiated. Read more
Revenue climbs at Carta, a VC favorite now valued at $6.9b after private stock sales - According to The Information the company’s annual recurring revenue, or customer commitments to buy its software over the next 12 months, is currently around $150m, up from $50m two years ago, according to a person close to the company, noting that Carta isn’t profitable. Read more
GameStop day traders are moving into SPACs - Before 2020, trading in SPACs was muted when they made their debut on public markets. Now, shares of blank-check companies almost always go up - the last 140 SPACs to go public have either logged gains or ended flat on their opening day of trading. The gains in companies that don’t yet have any underlying business underscore the wave of speculation in today’s markets. Read more
Open Banking kicks off in Brazil - The phased implementation started this week and the model will be introduced throughout 2021. Read more
No, Bitcoin ownership is not highly concentrated – but whales are
accumulating - Are you a "shrimp", "dolphin", or "humpback"? Galssnode analyzes the distribution of Bitcoin across network participants and shows that BTC ownership disperses over time and is much less concentrated than often reported. Meanwhile, BTC supply held by whales has recently increased, suggesting institutional investors are entering. Read more
Covid-19 pandemic motivates younger people to buy life insurance - Consumers’ pandemic shopping lists went beyond baking flour and exercise equipment in 2020. They also bought more life insurance. Applications for life-insurance policies jumped 4% in 2020 in the U.S., the highest year-over-year annual growth rate since 2001. Read more |
|
