Yes, it is August – enjoy summer if you are in the northern hemisphere.
This week our experts brought you the following insights based on their experience as investors, entrepreneurs & executives.
Monday Ilias Hatzis our Greece-based crypto entrepreneur (Founder & CEO at Kryptonio a “keyless” non-custodial bitcoin and cryptocurrency wallet, that lets users manage bitcoin and crypto, without private keys or passwords and Weekly Columnist at Daily Fintech) @iliashatzis wrote Prices Bounce Back and Crypto Population Hits 221 Million
On Friday, bitcoin’s price rose to $42,351.93. The cryptocurrency hit its highest price since May 20 and in the past seven days, the price of bitcoin increased by 23.2%. In the last week the price of bitcoin has broken the $40,000 mark on several occasions. The price swing is the reversal of the negative trend that bitcoin investors have seen since it reached a high of over $60,000 in April. The total market value of cryptocurrencies has increased to $1.58 trillion, representing a 2.34% increase in the past 24 hours. The cryptocurrency market, which had been turbulent over the past couple of months, has shown signs of stability in the past 24 hours. But more importantly, the number of cryptocurrency users worldwide increased by more than 100% in the first six months of 2021, as a result of a surge of cryptocurrencies. According to Crypto.com, as of June 2021, the total number of cryptocurrency users across the globe reached 221 million people, while In January 2021 there were 106 million crypto users. The market is growing really fast, doubling in only 6 months.
Editor note: This bull/bear cycle looks different, perhaps because of institutional money, with long sideways movements punctuated by a few sharp moves up or down. We have moved from flirting with $30k to flirting with $40k.
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Tuesday Bernard Lunn, CEO of Daily Fintech and author of The Blockchain Economy wrote:4-part series on Fintech and the Climate Crisis. Part 1: Capitalism caused the Climate Crisis and can fix it – good ‘cos there is no plan B.
If you want a feel good post, click away. Both these problems cause a huge amount of suffering. The Plan B pitched by a few Silicon Valley billionaires of colonising Mars is hopium at best; Earth is were we all live.
It is a Climate Crisis (not the nicer sounding Climate Change) and it is happening right now. There is suffering and adaptation happening now as well as some forward looking mitigation. Amazingly there is also still some resistance from lobbies funded by legacy fossil fuel companies.
I am an entrepreneur aka an optimist by nature. So I promise some hopeful stuff later; but it would be wrong to just skim over the problems.
Editor note: Some subjects, such as Fintech & Climate Crisis are too complex for our short attention spans, so we do 4 posts one week apart: today is week 1
Wednesday Alan Scott Managing Director EMEA at 24 Exchange @Alan_SmartMoney wrote his weekly roundup of Stablecoin news.
Bernard Lunn, CEO of Daily Fintech and author of The Blockchain Economy wrote: Robinhood $HOOD joins Fintech 50 Index at rank 19 based on a market cap around $32 billion
Fintech 50 Index is 50 publicly traded Fintech stocks ranked by market cap and has been incubated within Daily Fintech, the leading site for Fintech, Crypto and Insurtech trends & analysis.
Robinhood went for a traditional IPO (Initial Public Offering) vs the DPO (Direct Public Offering) chosen by Coinbase in their 14 April public stock debut, but with a relaxation of traditional six-month lockup rules – employees will be allowed to sell 15% of their Robinhood holdings immediately, along with another 15% after three months.
My fictional account of behind closed doors conversation between the HOOD board and the investment banker underwriters goes like this:
HOOD: “we might go the DPO route and just pay you a flat fee and bypass all those lockup rules”.
Banker: “IPO has much better price performance. And we can raise capital that HOOD really needs since the WallStreetBets problems. Our fees will be a rounding error.”
HOOD: “OK but what about those lockup rules?”
Banker: “we can offer employees an early partial exit”
HOOD: “our early investors want that too”
Banker: “that would crash the price.
HOOD: “OK, agreed”.
Editor note: Fintech 50 Index is 50 publicly traded Fintech stocks ranked by market cap.
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Thursday
Rintu Patnaik, an Insurtech expert based in India, wrote: Dynamic Pricing In Action: The Good, The Bad and The Beautiful
In “Is Pricing Innovation In Insurance a Zero Sum Game?”, consumers were more amenable to propositions based on evolving coverage types with dynamic pricing. Markets are pushing carriers to adopt pricing innovations. For many, the result is a zero-sum game, with improvements coming at the cost of reputational risks and increased regulatory oversight. But, those that master the fine balance between profitable pricing models and loyal customers, rule the roost. In this post, examples of pricing innovation in action, are presented.
Editor note: dynamic data-driven pricing is the most fundamental Insurtech innovation. Read this analysis to understand it better.
Christian Dreyer @x3er, the Swiss based CFA who focusses on how XBRL changes our world wrote his weekly roundup of XBRL news.
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Friday Howard Tolman, a well-known banker, technologist and entrepreneur in London, wrote his weekly roundup of Alt Lending news.
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