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Investing

·Oct. 28, 2019

Square’s Robinhood competitor and Robinhood’s Square competitor are rented from API providers, delegating billions

I look at two mental models explaining why and how financial APIs have led to the creation of billions in enterprise value. The driving news is that Square Cash is competing with Robinhood in free trading, powered by trading API company DriveWealth. Last week, we saw that Chime, Robinhood, and Monzo were powered by payments API company Galileo. Should these enablers be worth the billion-dollar valuations of their clients? Are APIs inevitable technology progress? Or are we just seeing venture financing spilling desperately into a rebundling play to find profitability?

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Fintech

·Feb. 6, 2024

F-Prime releases the 2024 State of Fintech Report

F-Prime released their latest State of Fintech report and it shows an industry back on the upswing but with still a lot of work to do.

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asset management exchanges / cap mkts Investing

·Oct. 1, 2021

Robinhood’s order flow disrupting equities and crypto market structure, with Paul Rowady of Alphacution

In this conversation, we chat with Paul Rowady is the Founder and Director of Research for Alphacution Research Conservatory and a 30-year veteran of proprietary, hedge fund and capital markets research, trading and risk advisory initiatives. Alphacution is a digitally-oriented research and strategic advisory platform focused on modeling and benchmarking the impacts of technology on global financial markets and the businesses of trading, asset management and banking. This data-driven approach allows Alphacution to reverse-engineer the operational dynamics of these market actors to showcase the most vivid and impactful themes among the field of available research providers and platforms.

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big tech China Investing IPO / SPAC paytech

·Sep. 21, 2020

Is Ant Financial the best Fintech in the world? Let’s analyze the IPO!

In this conversation, Max Friedrich of ARK Invest, Will and Lex break down Ant Group’s highly anticipated IPO.

Ant, a spinout from Alibaba and the parent of Alipay, one of China’s leading payments companies, filed papers to IPO in Shanghai and Hong Kong.

Max, Will and Lex dig into Ant’s business, from the origins to today, discuss growth opportunities and potential headwinds and explore the multi-faceted relationships between Ant and other big tech companies and national governments.

We cannot understate how impressive Ant Financial has become, connecting 700 million people and 80 million merchants in China, with payments, savings, wealth management and insurance products integrated in one package. The company also highlights the likely road for traditional banks — as underlying risk capital, without much technology or client management.

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financial advisors generational change Investing roboadvisor Social / Community

·Apr. 26, 2021

What TikTok’s GenZ financial influencers mean for RIAs, wealthtech, and financial advice

This week, we look at:

TikTok has become a platform with billions of views for investing and stock recommendations to teens. This emotional and persuasive labor can be traced from Jim Cramer to Roaring Kitty.
78% of Millennials (vs. 31% of Boomers) plan to use more digital tools in wealth management and 81% of them think that technology has made investing more efficient (vs. 61% Boomers)
This generational change has implications for investing technology, digital wallets, and the role of people in the financial advice process

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Crypto exchanges / cap mkts Investing

·Oct. 30, 2020

Understanding Robinhood, Derivatives, and Market Makers with Paul Rowady of Alphacution

In this conversation, we talk with Paul Rowady, who is the Director of Research for Alphacution Research Conservatory. Paul has a deep background in capital markets, derivatives, and the macro structure of the industry. He has been uncovering the transformation of that structure with data driven analyses, making visible the economics of market makers like Citadel and retail order flow aggregators like Robinhood. This is a rich discussion of what trading stocks is really like. And make sure to check out Alphacution.

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digital lending insurtech Investing IPO / SPAC neobank venture capital

·Aug. 1, 2021

What do SPACs and IPOs say about Coinbase, Robinhood, Lemonade, SoFi, and other fintech darlings?

We look in detail at the state of marking recently-private-fintechs to the public market in mid-2021. Multiple industry segments have seen IPOs, direct listings, and SPACs transition fintech darlings into traditional stocks. How is performance doing? Is everything as magnificent and rich as we expected? Have multiples and valuations fallen or held steady? The analysis explores the answers and provides an explanatory framework.

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digital transformation Investing IPO / SPAC macroeconomics mega banks monetization / commercial neobank

·Mar. 22, 2021

Understanding the Fintech user growth behind the $10.4 billion eToro SPAC and coming Chime IPO vs. the melting Megabanks

This week, we look at:

Chime, eToro, and Wise targeting the public markets through IPO and SPACs, and their operating performance
The overall growth in fintech mobile apps, their install rates and market penetration (from 2.5 to 3.5 per person), and whether that growth is sustainable
The implications for incumbents from this competition, and in particular the impact on money in motion vs. money at rest
Broader financial product penetration and an anchoring in how the technology industry was able to get more attention that we had to give

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Banking

·Mar. 13, 2024

Capstack Technologies has the cure for SVB ills

Capstack Technologies’ founder and CEO Michal Cieplinski believes he has the antidote to the Silicon Valley Bank meltdown, and Citi Ventures agrees.

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covid pandemic Investing macroeconomics neobank roboadvisor

·Apr. 27, 2020

Betterment launches bank accounts into a world that has changed completely

This week, we look at Betterment launching a bank account and payments feature. They are not the first, but they could be the best! Still, it feels like the world has moved on. Barriers to entry around digital finance have collapsed, and shifted industry goal posts. Hundreds of companies are integrating API-based solutions that connect to banking and investment entities. Amazon, Google, and Apple are there already. And let's not forget the incredible pressure from the COVID recession: 20MM+ unemployed, $100 billion decrease in global remittances, 1 in 8 banks being unprofitable. Is it time for incremental improvement, or a sea change?

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