#390
Rise Of The Angels

DeFi Is Helping to Fuel the Crypto Market Boom—and Its Recent Volatility - A good read on DeFi in the WSJ. Important, as assets deposited as collateral on DeFi platforms, have grown to more than $100b, of which about $64b is on Ethereum, according to DeFi Pulse. A year ago, there were only about $1b of DeFi assets on Ethereum. Read more

How the virus disrupted inflation statistics - “You can easily see why CPI was a poor measure of inflation during the pandemic recession." Spending on groceries increased 29% in March last pushing prices up 2.7% month-on-month. By contrast, transport spending declined 70% and prices dropped 7%. Read more

Silicon Valley bets on crypto projects to disrupt finance - In the span of two years, what started as a curiosity has ballooned in size, ushering in a new model for technology investing in the process. Private investors have backed 72 DeFi companies this year, according to PitchBook data, already surpassing last year’s total by more than a quarter. Read more

Venture capital fund plays role of credit union-fintech matchmaker - Because of their smaller size and scale relative to banks, many credit unions find it hard to draw the attention of fintechs. A new venture capital offering has set its sights on fixing that problem. Read more

Uruguay gets its first billionaires with U.S. fintech IPO - dLocal, the cross-border payments company, raised $618m in its IPO with an initial market cap of $6.2b. Wealth in Uruguay has historically been tied to agriculture and meatpacking, but it took a fintech startup to create the country’s first billionaires. Read more

Mir breaks Visa-Mastercard duopoly in Russia - As Europe's proposed alternative to Visa and Mastercard takes shape, evidence from Russia suggests that an upstart rival can break the American giants' duopoly - if government is prepared to put its finger on the scale. Read more

Global food prices post biggest jump in a decade - The year-on-year leap in UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s monthly food price index was the largest since 2011 and signaled that inflation initially stoked by pandemic disruption is accelerating. Read more

Mastercard releases new badge for easy identification of recycled cards - According to a recent Mastercard study, 58% of consumers are more mindful of their impact on the environment, with 85% willing to take personal action this year. Read more

Financial blockchain in Latam: from exploration to application - Latin American financial institutions have become more open-minded about blockchain in recent years. Yet solid use cases are needed for it to become more wide-spread. Read more