Crypto

There is huge growth projected for digital financial services in Southeast Asia but up to 50% of the population are unbanked and will therefore remain excluded from this explosion.

By now we’ve surely all heard of NFTs. Seemingly overnight they’ve grown from a niche internet phenomenon to a household buzzword with everyone from Gary Vaynerchuk, Tim Berners Lee, Banksy and even Lionel Messi having a piece of the pie.

Crypto is democratising finance and it’s a beautiful thing to see.

TL;DR: someone (we don’t know who), managed to make off with over $350,000 with a loan that in essence cost them no more than $8.71 in the murky but oh so interesting world of decentralised finance (or DeFi for short).

Happy New Year fintech fans! Let’s kick things off in style.

It’s been a fantastic year for fintech and financial services, with so much happening across the world. Partnerships have sprung up between incumbents and fintechs with groundbreaking changes happening both on regulatory and commercial levels. Some we predicted, and some we didn’t. Here’s a quick recap of what we got right, and what we didn’t.

Fresh off the finale of his massive hit podcast The Missing Cryptoqueen, Jamie Bartlett sits down with us to talk about Dr. Ruja, crypto scams and more.

11:FS went to New York Fintech Week! We had some amazing chats, met some amazing people and even paid a visit to Katz’s Deli (amazing) when we weren’t busy hosting talks and recording podcasts on central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).

It’s been an incredible year for fintech, but one thing’s for sure. 2019 is going to be an even wilder ride.

As a uni student, it drove Ollie Purdue crazy that his bank couldn’t provide him with basic info to help manage his financial life. How much money was he likely to have at the end of the month? Could he cut back on work and have more fun – or did he need to increase his hours to pay the bills? At age 20, he founded Loot to create a better banking experience that used data in a smarter way. In episode 232 of FinTech Insider, Ollie, CEO of Loot, shares the story behind his company, including how he got bank execs to talk to him when he was still in school.

When the world’s most famous VC firms move you should pay attention. a16z is the firm most synonymous with Silicon Valley, big tech and venture capital. Now they’re coming to crypto with a $300m Fund. If crypto is dead, then maybe now crypto is much much more interesting than it was 6 months ago. After the winter comes the spring…

Offering customers access to cryptocurrencies is fast becoming a must-have feature for fintechs in the banking and investment segments. Startups are racing each other to launch the broadest range of services possible in this space.Revolut has today taken another step forward in this arena by adding XRP and Bitcoin cash to the range of cryptocurrencies customers can buy, hold, and sell within its app.

The modern day Delivery Lead has evolved in recent years and now the position has a whole host of new challenges to deal with. 11:FS Head of Delivery Adam Davis explores what that really means.

For Fintech Insider’s news show Jason, Simon and David are joined by 11:FS Research team’s Ross Gallagher, Capco’s Charlie Wood and Fluidly CEO Caroline Plumb, to take on the week’s stories including Brexit, open banking, Robinhood app, and PensionBee’s stand against Aegon. Listen in full here, stream below or read on for highlights.

Banks that take deposits and make loans have been around for over 600 years, which pretty much makes it as mature an industry as you can get. Surely banking is more like 99% complete than 1% done?