This weekly summary from our 8 experts, brings you insights based on their experience as investors, entrepreneurs & executives.
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Your Editor is Bernard Lunn. He is also the CEO of Daily Fintech and author of The Blockchain Economy and occasional opinion columnist.
Monday Ilias Hatzis our Greece-based crypto entrepreneur (Founder & CEO at Mercato Blockchain Corporation AG and Weekly Columnist at Daily Fintech) @iliashatzis wrote The best way to hide something, is in plain sight. Crypto laundering.
During the last week of July, an interesting story surfaced in the news. CWT, a travel management company, paid $4.5 million to hackers who stole reams of sensitive corporate data. CWT that makes $1.5 billion in annual revenues, agreed to pay 414 BTC in ransom to the hackers on July 28 to regain access to two terabytes of files and to stop them from exposing the information. The files included employee data, financial documents, and other information. One of the interesting things of the story was that the ransom negotiations took place in an online chat group. The second was that the hackers used an exchange to launder the money. The hackers, who are still at large, tried to launder their money through some of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, including Binance, Coinbase and Huobi.
Editor note: Read this to understand the nexus of cyber-hacking and money laundering. The arms race between criminals and governments just got more intense.
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Tuesday Efi Pylarinou @efipm our Swiss-based Fintech Adviser, founder of Efi Pylarinou Advisory and a Fintech/Blockchain influencer – No.3 influencer in the finance sector by Refinitiv Global Social Media 2019 wrote Fintech catching up on the recent SPAC IPO boom
July was the month with the Mega-SPAC filing of $4billion. Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital Management filed an amended IPO prospectus for its coming monster-size SPAC focused on the tech sector. Let’s see if some Fintech ends up in this SPAC.
It Has Been a Huge Week for SPAC IPOs. Here’s What You Missed. (Barrons)
In July, there was also a Fintech focused SPAC IPO on NYSE worth $350million.
Let’s welcome and keep an eye on Fusion Acquisition Corp‘s (NYSE:FUSE.U). A blank-check company that will focus on businesses in the Fintech or asset and wealth management sectors, with an enterprise value between $750 million to $3 billion.
Editor note: The explosion of SPAC IPOs (basically a “trust me I will deploy the capital well” pitch) feels reminiscent of the 2017 ICO boom.
Alan Scott Managing Director EMEA at 24 Exchange @Alan_SmartMoney wrote Stablecoin News for the week ending Tuesday 11th August
This weekly snapshot is the news that matters in the Stablecoin market.
Wednesday Guest author Amber Sutherland wrote A bankers guide to AI Part 3. Does the AI have more than one purpose? What is the roadmap?
Editor note: In every industry, banking included, much money will be made from AI automation (and sadly, many jobs lost). This 5 parter gives you some of the nuances and complexity of making that happen in banking.
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Thursday Patrick Kelahan @insuranceeleph1, our US based Insurtech expert (a CX, engineering & insurance professional, working with Insurers, Attorneys & Owners who also serves the insurance and Fintech world as the ‘Insurance Elephant’) wrote Interesting view – watching the river of insurance news and much floats by…
News comes in torrents in the digital environment, even the traditional masthead periodicals are issuing multiple digital headline bulletins each day. Same goes for insurance periodicals, blogs, and newsletters. So, I sit by the digital rapids, trying to catch a few drops from the current. This week’s article is a sample of the tastes I was able to scoop from the stream…
Editor note: Pat’s experienced eye gives us the weekly news that mattered in Insurtech.
Thursday Christian Dreyer @x3er, our Swiss based CFA who focusses on how XBRL changes our world wrote XBRL News: IFRS webcast, Muscat and nowcasting
Editor note: This weekly snapshot is the news that matters in the XBRL market.
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Friday Howard Tolman, a well-known banker, technologist and entrepreneur in London, wrote: Alt Lending -week ending 14th August
Editor note: This weekly snapshot is the news that matters in the Alt Lending market.
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Source: https://dailyfintech.com/2020/08/14/this-week-in-fintech-ending-14-august-2020/
