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 Ethereum is holding all the aces
Ethereum is one of the top digital assets in the cryptocurrency ecosystem. It’s the second most famous and the second largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, second only to Bitcoin. Ethereum’s claim to fame is its smart contracts capabilities. Until recently, it was the first and only general-purpose blockchain, with a Turing complete virtual machine and native programming language able to use code of any algorithmic intricacy. Ethereum is behind significant technological leaps. It powers the rise of decentralized applications (dApps)and the explosion of decentralized finance (DeFi), with more than $6.7 USD locked in as of August 2020. Today, Ethereum is Bitcoin’s Layer 2 network. There are 18x as many Bitcoins existing as wrapped tokens on Ethereum (RenVM, WBTC), than there are BTC locked on the Lightning Network. Ethereum is on the brink of a colossal change to the way its network functions, moving to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism. This will dramatically decrease the complexity of the cryptographic work and lead to massive throughput gains for the whole network. As the COVID-19 pandemic has awakened the global economy, Ethereum could be the the technology that powers alternative and programmable forms of finance that people are seeking.
Editor note: Bitcoin, the best known crypto, is getting established as digital gold. Read this to understand Ethereum, second in market cap and established as the leading decentralised operating system, maybe like Microsoft for the blockchain era.
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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 Model portfolios remain a non-transparent part of asset-management
Model portfolios in the investment world are nothing new. They have been around for a long time and have always been unregulated. No model portfolio provider is required to report any or all of its model portfolios allocations, performance, or costs. In my early days of investing, most investment houses had a few model portfolios to recommend for various investor goals. Some model portfolios had a tax efficiency focus, others an income focus, or a growth at low-cost focus etc. Diversification and cost efficiency were always the main advantages of choosing model portfolios.
Model portfolios were mainly built using mutual funds. Financial advisors had a choice of mutual funds for each asset class recommended by the model portfolio.
Fast forward to 2020.
Editor note: Efi’s article describes why you have to pay attention when using the simple-sounding model portfolios
Alan Scott Managing Director EMEA at 24 Exchange @Alan_SmartMoney wrote Stablecoin News for the week ending Tuesday 25th August
This weekly snapshot is the news that matters in the Stablecoin market.
Wednesday Guest author Amber Sutherland wrote the last of her 5 part series: A bankers guide to AI Part 5. What are the third-party dependencies? How will this technology affect my operational resiliency?
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 An elephant will not forget…
All good things become other good things and as such will be my tenure at the Daily Fintech. Seventeen months ago, I was welcomed to the blog’s author cohort by DF’s Managing Editor, Bernard Lunn. In the ensuing period I was a privileged author working with and conveying insurance and Insurtech news and goings-ons. I’ll take this finale column to thank you and recall some of the weekly Insurtech columns that struck a chord with me.
Editor note: A big thank you to Pat for being our guide to the complexities of Insurtech. Stay tuned for next week’s announcement of who will be taking over from him.
Christian Dreyer @x3er, our Swiss based CFA who focusses on how XBRL changes our world wrote XBRL News: DRR, G-SII & SDMX
Editor note: This weekly snapshot is the news that matters in the XBRL market.
Bernard Lunn, CEO of Daily Fintech and author of The Blockchain Economy wrote: Interview with Rintu Patnaik about the future of Insurtech
Insurtech started later than BankTech but the disruption seems to be happening faster. As the Insurance market globally is over $5,000 billion a year, this is a big deal and why we have been covering Insurtech every day since this first post in 2015.
As 80 percent of Insurance growth comes from Emerging markets, it made sense to talk to somebody in one of these markets.
So I was delighted when Rintu Patnaik, an Insurtech expert based in India, agreed to speak to me about how Insurtech innovation will change our world.
Editor note: read this for insights on trend lines in this $5 trillion market.
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Friday Howard Tolman, a well-known banker, technologist and entrepreneur in London. wrote: Alt Lending Macro watch: Jackson Hole 2020
Editor note: This week Howard concentrated on the macro implications of rhe central bankers get together at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, because stimulus drives lending (not necessarily profitable lending) and central bankers control the stimulus lever.
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Source: https://dailyfintech.com/2020/08/28/this-week-in-fintech-ending-28-august-2020/
