Global

May 8, 2019 @ 10:44 pm By Cali Haan  |  

Officers of the Spanish Civil Guard in Spain assisted by Europol have arrested eight people and charged eight more for allegedly, “…providing large-scale crypto money laundering services to other criminal organizations.” Europol says the bust of this “cryptocurrency laundering as a service business” comes follows operation… Read More

May 8, 2019 @ 10:25 pm By JD Alois  |  

This week, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) held the annual meeting of its Private Sector Consultative Forum in Vienna, Austria. The event was hosted by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Part of the discussion addressed the growing crypto market and… Read More

May 8, 2019 @ 3:13 pm By JD Alois  |  

Schadenfreude? Binance, the largest crypto exchange in the world, suffered a humbling hack where a hot wallet was compromised and criminals absconded with a mere $40 million. Other exchanges and crypto insiders have been quick to comment on the ignominious event. Julie Plavnik, CBDO at… Read More

May 8, 2019 @ 8:11 am By JD Alois  |  

Crypto exchange Zebpay has opened up trading services to the Australian market with a new office in the Fintech hub of Melbourne.  Zebpay currently claims over 3 million active users. The company is headquartered in Singapore. Zebpay is also extending its Lightning Network to Australia… Read More

May 7, 2019 @ 10:54 pm By JD Alois  |  

In March, Bitwise Asset Management pitched their case regarding the creation of a Bitcoin ETF to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). While providing a compelling argument as to why the SEC should move forward with their ETF, the presentation also provided some interesting insight… Read More

May 7, 2019 @ 9:49 pm By JD Alois  |  

QEDIT, a provider of zero knowledge proof blockchain, has announced a new partnership with Ant Financial, VMWare and RGAX – a subsidiary of the Reinsurance Group of America. The announcement follows a significant $10 funding round led by MizMaa Ventures with participation from Ant Financial,… Read More

May 7, 2019 @ 2:40 pm By JD Alois  |  

Challenger bank Tandem has been recognized by CFI.co (Capital Finance International) as the “Best Neo Bank UK 2019.” According to Tandem, the CFI.co judges stated that “Tandem differentiates itself from other banks in the way its people always consider how well a new initiative will… Read More

May 7, 2019 @ 11:26 am By JD Alois  |  

European peer to peer lending platform Robo.cash has published a note on platform investors indicating that after the first month of investing, users tend to invest 30% more. The second month, investors bump it up by another 10%. The intimation is that new investors test… Read More

May 7, 2019 @ 9:44 am By JD Alois  |  

Following the success of the state-sponsored Singapore Fintech Festival, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has partnered with the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) to launch a new event – the inaugural Afro-Asia Fintech Festival. The conference will take place in Nairobi this coming July…. Read More

May 7, 2019 @ 8:46 am By JD Alois  |  

Raisin, a Fintech that enables consumers to discover higher interest rates for their savings account, has analyzed European savings behavior in honor of Europe Day. More specifically, Raisin reviewed the UK, Spain, and Germany. Regarding Germany, Raisin’s largest market and their home base, the country… Read More

May 6, 2019 @ 10:11 pm By JD Alois  |  

Peer to peer lender Fincera (OTCQB: YUANF) has issued their 2018 year-end results. The Chinese online lender reported top line revenue for the year ended December 31, 2018 at RMB 1,412.0 million (USD $205.7 million), an increase of RMB 388.1 million from RMB 1,023.9 million… Read More

May 6, 2019 @ 9:40 am By Cali Haan  |  

The US government has asked a judge in Arizona to detain Reginald Fowler, 60, who was arrested April 30th and charged with bank fraud, operation of an unlicensed money transmitting business and conspiracy for allegedly providing “shadow banking” services to cryptocurrency exchanges. Regarding the case, the… Read More

May 6, 2019 @ 8:21 am By JD Alois  |  

Thunes (previously DBA as TransferTo), a cross-border payments Fintech, has completed a $10 million Series A financing led by GGV Capital.  Thunes is a Licensed Payments Service Provider in the UK. Headquartered in Singapore, Thunes connects mobile wallet operators, corporates, merchants, money transfer operators, payment… Read More

May 5, 2019 @ 9:47 pm By JD Alois  |  

Beyond Meat Inc. (NASDAQ:BYND), completed an initial public offering (IPO) last week raising approximately $240 million on a valuation of $1.5 billion at $25/share. Once listed on NASDAQ, Beyond Meat jumped far beyond its initial pricing quickly rising in value topping $3.8 billion at over… Read More

May 5, 2019 @ 8:49 pm By Cali Haan  |  

Controversial cryptocurrency company iFinex, operator of several crypto exchanges and the issuer of billion-dollar “stablecoin,” Tether, has issued a “marketing document” outlining its plans to create a new IEO (Initial Exchange Offering) token, LEO, that the company may use to cover operating expenses and hypothetically… Read More

May 5, 2019 @ 6:20 pm By Cali Haan  |  

Police in Germany and the US moved in this week to arrest three men in Germany they believe operated “Wall Street Market,” the world’s second largest Dark Net market for drugs and other illicit products, The Telegraph reports. Two more men associated with the case,… Read More

May 4, 2019 @ 3:54 pm By JD Alois  |  

Cryptosecurity firm Ciphertrace has published their Q1 report tallying scams, frauds, and other nefarious acts in the crypto sector and the first three months of 2019 were productive ones for the bad guys. According to Ciphertrace, during the first three months of 2019, $1.2 billion… Read More

May 4, 2019 @ 2:49 pm By Cali Haan  |  

De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB), the Dutch central bank, has “developed and evaluated four prototypes based on distributed ledger technology (DLT) over the past three years,” but results are underwhelming so far, The Banker reports. This conclusion was provided by Petra Hielkema, director of payments and… Read More

May 4, 2019 @ 2:39 pm By JD Alois  |  

It appears that Canada’s financial services sector is making progress on incorporating blockchain tech for identity verification. SecureKey Technologies is out with a note saying their digital identity network, Verified.Me, is now available for use at TD, Scotiabank, RBC, Desjardins, and CIBC. SecureKey says that… Read More

May 3, 2019 @ 2:20 pm By JD Alois  |  

Too much of a good thing? Perhaps. Crowdcube listed a crowdfunding offering for Freetrade on April 25, 2019. Soon after the offer went live, the Crowdcube site went down. According to a post by Crowdcube CTO Rich Pearce, Freetrade generated the highest number of investments… Read More