This week our experts brought you the following insights based on their experience as investors, entrepreneurs & executives.
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Your Editor is Bernard Lunn. He is also the CEO of Daily Fintech and author of The Blockchain Economy and occasional opinion columnist.
Monday Ilias Hatzis our Greece-based crypto entrepreneur (Founder & CEO at Mercato Blockchain Corporation AG and Weekly Columnist at Daily Fintech) @iliashatzis wrote Is Bitcoin driving DeFi or is it the other way around?
A few days ago I read that the number of tokenized Bitcoins on Ethereum skyrocketed this month, reaching 107,000, estimated to be worth $1.15 billion. Tokenized Bitcoins, let people use BTC on the Ethereum network, instead of ETH, to issue loans or earn interest. While Wrapped Bitcoin (wBTC) is the most important tokenized Bitcoin project on Ethereum, people have twelve different alternatives to choose from, with the recent addition of Tron to the DeFi landscape (RSK, Liquid, WBTC, renBTC, hBTC, sBTC, imBTC, pBTC, tBTC, tzBTC, btc2). Last week, Tron entered a strategic alliance with BitGo, to bring WBTC to the Tron ecosystem, as a TRC-20 token. The token is backed 1:1 by Bitcoin deposits on BitGo Trust, a qualified custodian in the U.S. WBTC has been the key growth driver for DeFi on Ethereum. On Tron its meant to do exactly what it did for Ethereum, and create the sparks needed to jumpstart decentralized finance (DeFi) on Tron. Recently, tBTC re-launched and there’s now 83 tBTC ($885k) in circulation and Polkadot is also planning a tokenized BTC project with polkaBTC.
Editor note:“Bitcoin is the dollar, Ethereum is like SWIFT”. And Ethereum is like a Bank offering Lombard Loans. Ethereum will change the world, but not sure how much ETH will be worth.
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Tuesday Efi Pylarinou @efipm our Swiss-based Fintech Adviser, founder of Efi Pylarinou Advisory and a Fintech/Blockchain influencer – No.3 influencer in the finance sector by Refinitiv Global Social Media 2019 wrote Stripe`s VC activities
Stripe is in the spotlight this season. They ranked high based on several criteria in the latest Forrester Wave report (along with the European Adyen).
The rankings are based on 15 criteria and 5 is the top score. Most of the other competitors are already public companies, while Stripe seems to hold off.
I personally expected (still expect) that they will come to the public markets via one of the SPAC structures that are mushrooming left and right in the US. Bill Ackman has publicly said that he held preliminary talks with Stripe but nothing promising has come out of this.
Stripe`s latest valuation is $36billion and lots of Seeking Alpha authors discuss about whether it makes sense at this valuation to trade the shares on EquityZen, the pre-IPO investment platform.
Editor note: Fascinating look at where Stripe is investing adjacent to its core business.
Wednesday Alan Scott Managing Director EMEA at 24 Exchange @Alan_SmartMoney wrote Stablecoin News for the week ending Wednesday 30 September 2020.
This weekly snapshot is the news that matters in the Stablecoin market.
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Thursday
Rintu Patnaik, an Insurtech expert based in India, wrote: Health Insurance Investments Fuel Digital Health Promise
Few recent developments in health insurance are noteworthy. Two of these were large fund raises, distinctive from general trends. The third was unveiling of its ecosystem roadmap by a large insurer.
The events in discussion are:
- Oscar Insurance raised $225 million recently, $1.5 billion till date.
- Waterdrop raised $230 million from Swiss Re and Tencent. It was Swiss Re’s first startup investment in China.
- Ping An released its health ecosystem roadmap with plans to create synergies with core financial businesses to acquire customers, enhance stickiness and increase CLTV.
Editor note:this roundup of the action in health insurance, shows traction in both USA and China.
Christian Dreyer @x3er, our Swiss based CFA who focusses on how XBRL changes our world wrote XBRL News: Reshaping ESG / sustainability reporting now
Editor note: This weekly snapshot is the news that matters in the XBRL market.
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Friday Howard Tolman, a well-known banker, technologist and entrepreneur in London, wrote: Alt Finance for week ended 2nd October 2020
Editor note: This weekly snapshot is the news that matters in the Alt Lending market.
Bernard Lunn, CEO of Daily Fintech and author of The Blockchain Economy wrote:Fintech driven market structure changes may explain how the stock market is behaving at the macro level.
Sometimes you have to go into the engine room to see where and how fast the ocean liner is going. It is not enough to know what the Fed is doing in the captain’s tower. Fed stimulus is obviously a big macro driver, but there are also other factors.
Today’s stock market may remind you of the 2017 ICO meltup or the Dot Com bubble.
Maybe it is now having a healthy correction?
During 2020 with some tech stocks trading at a PE over 1,000, it did not take a genius to warn about bubbles.
Editor note: This post delves below the daily market gyrations to see some of the underlying Fintech driven market structure changes driving the market
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