During this last week of April, our experts brought you the following insights based on their experience as investors, entrepreneurs & executives.
Monday Ilias Hatzis our Greece-based crypto entrepreneur (Founder & CEO at Kryptonio a “keyless” non-custodial bitcoin and cryptocurrency wallet, that lets users manage bitcoin and crypto, without private keys or passwords and Weekly Columnist at Daily Fintech) @iliashatzis wrote Is Bitcoin energy money?
Two weeks after bitcoin was created, Satoshi Nakamoto wrote: “It might make sense just to get some in case it catches on. If enough people think the same way, that becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Once it gets bootstrapped, there are so many applications if you could effortlessly pay a few cents to a website as easily as dropping coins in a vending machine.” Twelve years later, this is still the best advice you can get. Today, there are only 100 million people using bitcoin. That’s only 1.3% of the world’s population and 2% of the banked population. The numbers are still extremely small when 98% still believe and use in fiat money. People invest their money in crypto, but they can wait to turn it back into dollars, when profit targets are met. As the cost of investing in bitcoin has skyrocketed, so has the potential profit from mining it and the debate about cryptocurrency and energy consumption. Bitcoin critics often assert that bitcoin mining consumes more resources, specifically energy, than the benefits it creates. Bitcoin and decentralization is undoubtedly the future of money, but many battlefields need to be won to grow awareness and drive usage.
Editor note: Required reading for anybody who believes that proof of work mining is bad for the planet.
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Tuesday Bernard Lunn, CEO of Daily Fintech and author of The Blockchain Economy wrote:4-part series on Digital Identity. Part 4 = The investor says this is a big opportunity.
Digital identity is a big market, worth USD 13.7 billion in 2019, forecast to grow at a CAGR of 17.3% to USD 30.5 billion by 2024 (according to Markets and Markets™). To quote Markets and Markets:
The increased focus on enhanced customer experience is anticipated to be a major driver, and the trend is expected to continue for the digital identity solutions industry. Additionally, the need of multi-purpose single digital identity and technological advancements in terms of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and blockchain have bolstered the potential use cases across verticals.
Digital identity impacts every vertical market but most immediately two big ones – Finance/banking & Healthcare.
Editor note:This is the final in our 4-part series on Digital Identity, looking at the market from the investor perspective.
Wednesday Alan Scott Managing Director EMEA at 24 Exchange @Alan_SmartMoney wrote his weekly roundup of Stablecoin news.
Guest Author Jack Wright wrote:Following the Greensill Capital scandal, when will investors learn to stop trusting Softbank?
When you begin to scratch the surface, the number of red flags on show in the lead up to Greensill Capital’s declaration of bankruptcy last month is quite bewildering. As if Greensill’s related-party laden client list, it’s list of government procurement deals under parliamentary inquiry, or it’s murky syndication of subprime debt weren’t enough, Softbank were an investor.
By now, the market should not only be questioning the wisdom of following an investor with seemingly unlimited cash benchmarked in Japan, a negative interest rate jurisdiction where economic returns have been throttled by consumer price deflation since the mid 1990’s. It should also ask whether Softbank’s Vision Fund – the vehicle used to inject billions into Greensill and other high-profile failures like WeWork – exists solely to enrich the fund’s investors, or if it serves a different purpose for Softbank’s founder, Masayoshi Son.
Editor note: This post, on the connection between Greensill and SoftBank, is by guest author Jack Wright who brings his perspective working on the distribution of JPMorgan Chase’s Asian equity capital markets and equity research product to hedge funds in New York.
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Thursday
Rintu Patnaik, an Insurtech expert based in India, wrote: Advances in Location Intelligence propel Property and Parametric Insurance
In property insurance, precision in assessing risks is a prerequisite for pricing policies competitively and curtailing excessive claim pay-outs. With better location intelligence, carriers minimize risks, accelerate claim procedures, improve fraud detection and expand their customer base. Location intelligence (LI) has become crucial to enabling organizations in several industries to achieve strategic business goals, with the LI global market expected to grow to $32.8 billion by 2027. Underpinned by geographic information system (GIS), LI enables businesses to map, analyze and share locational data. In parametric insurance, it forms the core technology when environmental perils are trigger points.
Editor note: Read this to understand a huge market enabler, rich with multiple opportunities, driving a big part of Insurance.
Christian Dreyer @x3er, the Swiss based CFA who focusses on how XBRL changes our world wrote his weekly roundup of XBRL news.
Bernard Lunn, CEO of Daily Fintech wrote:Daily Fintech Announces 3 Licensees Serving the Educational Market
Content is being delivered to Newsbank, Cengage, EBSCO using our NewsML export software.
Daily Fintech recently signed contracts with three leading licensees which serve the educational market. These new relationships provide libraries, professors, students and other researchers access to the latest information and insights on the world of financial technology (Fintech).
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Friday Howard Tolman, a well-known banker, technologist and entrepreneur in London, wrote: his weekly roundup of Alt Lending news.
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Coinsmart. Beste Bitcoin-Börse in Europa
Source: https://dailyfintech.com/2021/04/30/this-week-in-fintech-ending-30-april-2021/
