Opinion

January 29, 2018 @ 2:00 am By Greg Carter  |  

2018 has started strongly. According to the UK Office of National Statistics data, it looks like the UK could be starting to overcome its productivity challenges. Meanwhile, manufacturing output is at its highest level in a decade. And, of course, we’ve seen the global economy… Read More

January 26, 2018 @ 5:01 pm By JD Alois  |  

Prominent Silicon Valley investor Jason Calacanis visited with CNBC’s SquawkAlley this past week while enjoying some time in Davos, Switzerland. Last month, Calacanis told Squawk that Bitcoin is a bubble. This time, Calacanis said Bitcoin could go to zero and gave it a 1/3 chance… Read More

January 26, 2018 @ 9:44 am By JD Alois  |  

  This past week both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission came out with strong statements warning the exuberant initial coin offering industry (ICO) that regulators will no longer tolerate the flouting of existing securities law. ICOs have increased rapidly… Read More

January 25, 2018 @ 12:19 pm By Erin Hobey  |  

Traditional financial models, be on your guard. WAWLLET, reportedly the world’s first multi-asset wallet and personal financial passport, connecting people, banks and financial services, will launch an up-to-89 million-ICO for its WIN Tokens, valued at $3 USD per Token, on 29 January. 44 million WIN Tokens… Read More

January 25, 2018 @ 9:04 am By JD Alois  |  

In December, the Australian Tax Office (ATO) posted an explanation of tax treatment regarding Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. In response to recent media reports that ATO has set up a new taskforce to examine tax issues around cryptocurrencies, FinTech Australia has posted a response. Danielle Szetho, FinTech… Read More

January 24, 2018 @ 3:00 pm By JD Alois  |  

California is a state that has attempted to enact intrastate crowdfunding regulations multiple times. Honestly, I have lost count as to how many times bills have meandered their way through the Sacramento process. Three maybe four times? By now, I am uncertain. So is California… Read More

January 23, 2018 @ 10:36 pm By JD Alois  |  

Several days ago, Senator Marco Rubio and Senator Robert Menendez published a letter directed to the US Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin demanding to know what the US government was doing to foil attempts by rogue nations in leveraging cryptocurrencies to skirt imposed sanctions…. Read More

January 21, 2018 @ 8:02 pm By AdaPia d'Errico  |  

As Oprah Winfrey put it during her acceptance speech at the Golden Globes on January 7th, 2018. The reverberations of her words have re-ignited, for anyone who thought it was a just a trend, the importance of #metoo, the industry-agnostic movement. Actually, it is all-encompassing… Read More

January 18, 2018 @ 9:40 pm By JD Alois  |  

  There are several people in the online lending industry, inclusive of marketplace and balance sheet lending, that truly know just about everything going on in this evolving sector of finance. Ram Ahluwalia, CEO and co-founder of PeerIQ is one of these persons. His company… Read More

January 17, 2018 @ 8:12 pm By JD Alois  |  

The passing of the baton from former Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Director Richard Cordray to acting Director Mick Mulvaney was rife with confusion and questions all driven by parochial politics. In a snub to the President’s prerogative of appointing a new Director, Cordray decided to… Read More

January 17, 2018 @ 1:11 pm By JD Alois  |  

In a speech delivered on January 15th at Bercy, Bruno Le Maire, the Minister of Economy and Finance, announced he has appointed Jean-Pierre Landau, former Deputy Governor of the Banque de France, to head a mission investigating cryptocurrencies. Le Maire stated (translated from French); “We want… Read More

January 17, 2018 @ 1:30 am By Timothy Li  |  

Last year, I boldly predicted 10 Fintech movements that will take place as Earth makes another perfect rotation around our Sun. It’s always fun to look back and see how wrong I was, so let’s stump the chump! Here are my original predictions. Let’s score… Read More

January 16, 2018 @ 3:42 pm By JD Alois  |  

The price of Bitcoin is tanking today, depending on which exchange you are looking at Bitcoin, or BTC, is hovering over $11,000.  It was not that long ago that Bitcoin was barreling down on $20,000 per BTC. But oh, what a day or two makes… Read More

January 16, 2018 @ 1:20 pm By Amy Wan  |  

Last week, on LinkedIn, I called out the North American Bitcoin Conference for having merely 1 female speaker, out of 85 male speakers, and for having their afterparty at what essentially is a strip club. All that, accompanied by event photos from last year’s conference,… Read More

January 16, 2018 @ 12:29 pm By Erin Hobey  |  

deVere Group, an international financial advising network with more than 70 global offices, over 80,000 clients and $12 billion under advisement, has officially entered the cryptosphere, with the launching of a new cryptocurrency app in reply to the “soaring global demand” and in defiance of financial… Read More

January 12, 2018 @ 5:52 pm By JD Alois  |  

Open Banking is kind of a nebulous term. Unless you are very engaged with the UK financial sector it probably means little to you. Yet the concept of Open Banking will have profound ramifications for consumers and businesses in both the UK and Europe. In… Read More

January 12, 2018 @ 12:51 pm By JD Alois  |  

In the land of initial coin offerings (ICO), a world that is starting to look a bit like Xanadu, an estimated $4.9 billion was raised. This number was buttressed by several sources. WSJ.com reported in December that ICOs had topped $4 billion. Crunchbase augmented that… Read More

January 11, 2018 @ 5:21 pm By Joshua Klayman  |  

With thanks to Greg Murphy of Outlier Ventures for his contribution to this article. Now that 2018 is well underway, traditional debt and equity capital providers would be wise to re-examine many of their familiar forms of contracts to identify new risks – and realize… Read More

January 10, 2018 @ 8:14 am By JD Alois  |  

Yesterday, Transferwise, the UK based Fintech Unicorn, announced it had launched a borderless debit card for a group of trial users. Basically it is a current account that can be used anywhere minus the silly fees banks charge consumers. Transferwise will commence a wide release… Read More

January 9, 2018 @ 10:30 pm By David M. Adlerstein and Joshua Ashley Klayman  |  

“Photography is more than a medium for factual communication of ideas. It is a creative art.” – Ansel Adams The past year has witnessed a flurry of remarkable “initial coin offerings,” or ICOs.  The pending KODAKCoin digital token sale jointly announced by Kodak and WENN… Read More