Featured Headlines

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 is working on a digital marketplace, using its native currency LBC, for content such as images, video, audio,… 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

March 20, 2021 @ 10:22 am By Xu Gao  |  

China Imposes Further Restrictions on Online Consumer Loans for College Students Over the past few years, some internet finance platforms have targeted college campuses and made inductive marketing through cooperation with technology companies. Such practices led some students into excessive consumption and even debt traps…. Read More

March 18, 2021 @ 12:36 pm By JD Alois  |  

  Two draft documents by the European Parliament, Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, addressing distributed ledger technology (DLT or blockchain) as well as crypto-assets have emerged. The first is a draft document on the proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of… Read More

March 17, 2021 @ 5:12 pm By JD Alois  |  

Earlier today Republic announced a material $36 million Series A funding round led by Galaxy Interactive. The additional capital arrives at a key time as two crowdfunding exemptions have had their funding caps boosted to higher amounts – thus making crowdfunding platforms more viable going… Read More

March 17, 2021 @ 11:46 am By JD Alois  |  

Republic, a top funding portal and broker-dealer providing online capital formation to early-stage ventures, has closed on a $36 million Series A funding round, according to a note from the company. The funding was led by Galaxy Interactive with participation by Tribe Capital, Motley Fool… Read More

March 16, 2021 @ 8:13 pm By JD Alois  |  

It is hard not to know something about the booming Non-Fungible Token or NFT market. Following Beeple’s sale of a digital work of art “Everydays—The First 5000 Days,” auctioned by Christie’s for a whopping $69 million, NFTs officially became a “thing” with non-stop coverage on… Read More

March 16, 2021 @ 8:51 am By JD Alois  |  

  eToro, a digital investment platform, has announced it will become a publicly-traded company in a SPAC deal via FinTech Acquisition Corp. V (NASDAQ: FTCV). The deal includes a $650 million common share private placement from investors including ION Investment Group, Softbank Vision Fund 2,… Read More

March 15, 2021 @ 3:00 pm By Lee Schneider  |  

Once the Coinbase registration statement becomes effective and Coinbase shares trade publicly, a sea change will have occurred in the US without most people recognizing it.  Part of that unacknowledged difference will be the broader awareness of blockchain and cryptoasset trading it brings. It is… Read More

March 14, 2021 @ 12:50 pm By JD Alois  |  

Financial technology or Fintech has been growing at a rapid pace for years now. Starting with online capital formation, today a growing number of sophisticated financial services are going through a much-needed. digital transformation. This can mean better/cheaper access to services for more consumers and… Read More