#fintech

Project “Zuck Bucks”: Meta plans virtual coin after cryptocurrency flop | Ars Technica
▻https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/04/project-zuck-bucks-meta-plans-virtual-coin-after-cryptocurrency-flop

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Meta has drawn up plans to introduce virtual coins, tokens, and lending services to its apps, as Facebook’s parent company pursues its finance ambitions despite the collapse of a project to launch a cryptocurrency.

The company, led by chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, is seeking alternative revenue streams and new features that can attract and retain users, as popularity falls for its main social networking products such as Facebook and Instagram—a trend that threatens its $118 billion-a-year ad-based business model.

Facebook’s financial arm, Meta Financial Technologies, has been exploring the creation of a virtual currency for the metaverse, which employees internally have dubbed “Zuck Bucks,” according to several people familiar with the efforts.

This is unlikely to be a cryptocurrency based on the blockchain, some of the people said. Instead, Meta is leaning toward introducing in-app tokens that would be centrally controlled by the company, similar to those used in gaming apps such as the robux currency in the popular children’s game Roblox.

According to company memos and people close to the plans, Meta is also looking into the creation of “social tokens” or “reputation tokens,” which could be issued as rewards for meaningful contributions in Facebook groups, for example. Another effort is to make “creator coins” that might be associated with particular influencers on its photo-sharing app Instagram.

According to one memo shared internally last week, Meta plans to launch a pilot for posting and sharing NFTs on Facebook in mid-May. This will be “quickly followed” by testing of a feature that will allow membership of Facebook groups based on NFT ownership and another for minting—a term for creating—NFTs.

But the push has been plagued by setbacks and regulatory scrutiny. Earlier this year, the global cryptocurrency project that it spearheaded, diem, was wound down and its assets sold to Californian bank Silvergate, after US regulators refused to give the pilot the green light over monetary stability and competition concerns.

Amid internal frustrations, Meta’s financial division has suffered what one former employee described as a “mass exodus” of staff over the past six months. Its head David Marcus left at the end of last year, along with key engineers, compliance staff, and nearly its entire legal team.

Those who remain are looking into how to create or support digital currencies in its metaverse—an avatar-filled virtual world that Zuckerberg hopes will eventually generate billions of dollars in commerce for digital goods and services.

The new plans represent a far cry from diem and the dream of creating a cryptocurrency. Staffers are now trying to find the least regulated way to offer a digital currency, two people said, with a digital token that is not based on the blockchain emerging as the most attractive option.

It would not be the first time Facebook has introduced such a currency to its ecosystem. It launched Facebook Credits in 2009, a virtual currency that enabled users to make in-app purchases, typically in games such as FarmVille. This represented 16 percent of revenues at the time of its initial public offering in 2012, according to Barclays, but was shut down in 2013 because it was too costly to maintain.

Where some of Meta’s efforts are focused on digital payments, other efforts are part of broader plans to use blockchain technology to introduce more “decentralization” across its platforms, amid a growing buzz in Silicon Valley around the so-called Web3 movement.

Web3 advocates typically seek to wield distributed ledger technology to allow users more control and ownership over their data and disintermediate big tech groups that typically monetize that data as part of their ad-based business models.

But Meta appears to be embracing some Web3 ideals. It is exploring whether to store data on a blockchain, how it might give users more control over their digital identity and whether their identity or accounts can be transferred to, or used across, other platforms beyond Meta’s apps, according to one planning document.

Meanwhile, its plans to reward users for credible content with social tokens might allow Meta to remove itself as a central content moderator and give Facebook communities more power in moderating themselves, according to the document.

#Facebook #NFT #Meta #Monnaie_numérique #Fintech #Web3

#Wirecard. Le scandale financier qui secoue l’Allemagne

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En 2020, Wirecard, une #start-up allemande devenue un géant du #paiement_en_ligne, s’effondre suite à des révélations de fraudes d’une ampleur inouïe. Retour sur l’ascension et la chute d’un mouton noir de la « fintech ».

Le plus grand scandale financier de ces deux dernières décennies en Allemagne a commencé comme une success-story. Start-up fondée en 1999 et pilotée dès 2002 par l’Autrichien Markus Braun, la société de paiement en ligne Wirecard profite de la croissance exponentielle d’Internet pour élargir massivement sa clientèle. Proposant d’abord ses services à des sites spécialisés dans la pornographie et les jeux d’argent, l’entreprise s’achète rapidement une respectabilité. Vingt ans après sa création, Wirecard a bravé tous les obstacles pour s’imposer comme un fleuron de l’économie numérique allemande et l’un des principaux concurrents de Paypal. Cotée au Dax, l’indice boursier national, et valorisée en Bourse à hauteur de 14 milliards d’euros, la société s’enorgueillit d’un impressionnant portefeuille de quelque 300 000 clients. Sa chute sera aussi fulgurante que son ascension quand, en juin 2020, des fraudes d’une ampleur inédite la concernant sont révélées. Au total, 1,9 milliard d’euros ont disparu des comptes de l’entreprise.

Accointances douteuses
Comment des irrégularités aussi colossales ont-elles pu passer sous les radars des autorités de régulation ? Des alertes circulaient pourtant dans le milieu de la finance depuis 2009 et un analyste avait même fourni en 2016 des preuves solides de fraudes chez Wirecard, sans faire réagir l’Autorité fédérale de supervision financière… De la Bourse de Munich à Singapour, cette ahurissante affaire, hautement romanesque, mêle blanchiment d’argent, falsifications, intimidations et menaces de mort, dévoilant la face sombre d’une « fintech » aux accointances pour le moins douteuses. Pour retracer la chronologie de ce dossier, Benji et Jono Bergmann ont rencontré plusieurs de ses acteurs : journalistes d’investigation, commentateurs et analystes, sans oublier le lanceur d’alerte Pav Gill, avocat et ancien employé de Wirecard, qui forme avec sa mère un étonnant duo de justiciers. Si l’ex-PDG Markus Braun, en prison, attend son procès, son ancien bras droit, le charismatique Jan Marsalek, s’est évaporé et reste l’un des criminels en col blanc les plus recherchés de la planète.

▻https://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/100289-000-A/le-scandale-financier-qui-secoue-l-allemagne-wirecard
#film #film_documentaire #documentaire
#lanceur_d'alerte #finance #Markus_Braun #Jan_Marsalek #escroquerie #industrie_numérique #technologie_numérique #fintech #industrie_du_jeu #jeux_d'argent #Tobias_Bosler #justice #globalisation #mondialisation #rapport_Zatarra #GI_retails #fraude_comptable #blanchissement_d'argent #Michael_Schütt #Bluetool #BaFin #corruption #Allemagne #Jigajig #DAX #Al_Alam #Edo_Kurniawan #paiement_électronique #EY

Robinhood Promises Free Trades. Did Alex Kearns Pay With His Life? – Mother Jones
▻https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/04/robinhood-gamestop-free-trades-alex-kearns

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aiju Bhatt and Vlad Tenev came up with the idea for Robinhood in 2012, after witnessing Occupy Wall Street. The protests, they’ve said, represented a boiling over of grievances among their generation, directed at the big banks that set off the 2008 financial crisis. Tenev and Bhatt, then in their mid-20s, friends going back to meeting as physics majors at Stanford, wanted to build something that might give their fellow millennials access to the wealth-growing power of the market. At the time brokerages charged $7 to $10 per trade. The idea for a $0 fee trading app, named after a wealth-redistributing outlaw, was born.

While the app was in development, Robinhood built up its antiestablishment identity and courted millennials with teaser videos that razzed traders on the stock exchange floor, and with a lineup of celebrity investors—eventually growing to just about everyone from Ashton Kutcher to Jay-Z—who’d all come of age in the same Y2K moment as their target audience. Online, they created a minimalist launch page where interested people could drop their email address for access to beta versions of the app—and gamified it by allowing people to move up the line by referring friends.

“The fact that we’re a brokerage leads people to think that a service like Robinhood should exist to make money,” Tenev said at the conference. “But that’s really not the case. The purpose of Robinhood is to make buying and selling stocks as frictionless as possible. If we make money as a side effect of that, that’s great.”

But Robinhood’s profitability wasn’t a side effect of being frictionless. It was very much the point. From founding, its business model was dependent on customers trading frequently, allowing the company the chance to earn a different kind of commission—known as PFOF, or “payment for order flow”—from every transaction. The payments are essentially a finder’s fee given to Robinhood by so-called market makers, the Wall Street firms who make money executing individual investors’ trades. Since launch, Robinhood has enthusiastically embraced PFOF, arranging favorable rates that eclipsed other brokerages’, making it the company’s single largest source of revenue. The money flows evoke a key lesson of the digital age: If something is free, then you’re not the customer—you’re the product being sold.

“Robinhood and the high frequency trading firms have the same incentives, which is to cause there to be as much trading as humanly possible, to create as much flow as humanly possible, which maximizes profits for the executing dealers and Robinhood,” says Dennis Kelleher, the president of Better Markets, a Wall Street reform nonprofit.

As Sen. Elizabeth Warren pointed out in a February letter to Citadel’s CEO, the practice means the “more shares they see, the more bread crumbs they take.” It can also encourage brokers to seek market makers that will give them the best PFOF, rather than the best prices for their customers—despite an Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) mandate known as the “best execution” rule that requires brokers to always seek the best deal for customers

From its founding days, the app’s interface was overseen by Bhatt, who pushed an inviting feel in contrast to the intimidating or alienating vibe of other brokerages’ interfaces, full of analyst ratings and finance-speak. “We make use of simple colors to remove as much information as possible,” a company designer told a trade publication.

“Baiju is someone who really cares about minimalism and clean design,” an early Robinhood design staffer told me. “It was important to him to build a trading platform in the most minimal way possible.”

Robinhood also pioneered the selling of fractional shares, which Natasha Dow Schüll, an anthropology professor at NYU who wrote a book about addictive gambling design, compares to penny slots—small stakes bets that make users feel less risk and thus invite them to trade more. The app’s default settings flood users with emoji-laden push notifications that can coax customer trades. For new joiners, the notices direct them to lists of the app’s most popular stocks, or of “Daily Movers”: the 20 stocks with the biggest daily percent change in price—regardless of if the price went up or down. As Vicki Bogan, a professor and behavioral finance expert at Cornell’s business school, told a recent congressional hearing, such “cues, pushes, and rewards” work to “exploit natural human tendencies for achievement and competition…to motivate individuals to make more trades.”

Parts of the app remind Schüll of Las Vegas casinos, where carpet is installed so it never presents a right angle, a stopping point that forces walkers to make a decision. “The last thing you want to do when you’re engaging a gambler—or in this case, a trader—is to put them in a position of a rational decision maker,” she says. “You want to have the carpet smoothly and seamlessly turn into the gaming area, so that the easiest thing for the person to do is to continue moving forward. You see that absolutely in the design of this app. It’s about instantaneity, immediacy, ease of access—you just kind of flow right into it.” This March, the House Financial Services Committee echoed concerns that platforms like Robinhood “encourage behavior similar to a gambling addiction.”

#Robinhood #Gamestop #Marchés_financiers #Manipulation_mentale #Addiction #Jeu #Finance #Fintech

Leaked pics reveal Google smart debit card to rival Apple’s | TechCrunch
▻https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/17/google-card

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Would you pay with a “Google Card?” TechCrunch has obtained imagery that shows Google is developing its own physical and virtual debit cards. The Google card and associated checking account will allow users to buy things with a card, mobile phone or online. It connects to a Google app with new features that let users easily monitor purchases, check their balance or lock their account. The card will be co-branded with different bank partners, including CITI and Stanford Federal Credit Union.

A source provided TechCrunch with the images seen here, as well as proof that they came from Google. Another source confirmed that Google has recently worked on a payments card that its team hopes will become the foundation of its Google Pay app — and help it rival Apple Pay and the Apple Card. Currently, Google Pay only allows online and peer-to-peer payments by connecting a traditionally issued payment card. A “Google Pay Card” would vastly expand the app’s use cases, and Google’s potential as a fintech giant.

Google the financial services company?

By building a smart debit card, Google has the opportunity to unlock new streams of revenue and data. It could potentially charge interchange fees on purchases made with the card or other checking account fees, and then split them with its banking partners. Depending on its privacy decisions, Google could use transaction data on what people buy to improve ad campaign measurement or even targeting. Brands might be willing to buy more Google ads if the tech giant can prove they drive a sales lift.

The long-term implications are even greater. While once the industry joke was that every app eventually becomes a messaging app, more recently it’s been that every tech company eventually becomes a financial services company. A smart debit card and checking accounts could pave the way for Google offering banking, stock brokerage, financial advice or robo-advising, accounting, insurance or lending.

#Monnaie_numérique #Google #Fintech

Is Cryptocurrency Really Made for Everyone ?
▻https://hackernoon.com/is-cryptocurrency-really-made-for-everyone-83e69800184?source=rss----3a8

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” was a famous statement made by the philosopher George Santayana, who was convinced that history repeated itself. And he had a lot of evidence to base his theory on, however, you don’t need to be a philosopher or a technical wizard to tell that the cryptocurrency world is repeating the same mistakes that computer companies made back in the early days of the Internet.In this article, you’re going to understand why the technology that we can’t live without today, computers, existed for decades before getting into people’s homes and how cryptocurrency could repeat this unfortunate history if projects like Darb weren’t around to try and solve the faults that are keeping the ordinary people away from the technology.Computers are for (...)

#bitcoin #education #blockchain #startup #fintech

Digital Transformation & #innovation Ep. 3: #partnerships — The Business of the 21st Century
▻https://hackernoon.com/digital-transformation-innovation-ep-3-partnerships-the-business-of-the-

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Digital Transformation & Innovation Ep. 3: Partnerships — The Business of the 21st CenturyAre you ready for a ride?The age of big cruisers is over. Titanic has sunk deep down and it’s time to embrace smaller and more diverse fleets. And when I say more diverse fleets, I don’t mean racial or gender diversity. I’m talking about diversity in expertise and background. I’m talking about partnerships.Partnerships are the foundation of business in the 21st century, especially in the tech industry. We all know how a partnership with another tech company can help one improve their stack and work towards common goals, which is natural and good, but we seem to forget that most crucial partnerships are one with traditional industries.“But, but, they don’t even know the difference between relational and (...)

#fintech #goldman-sachs #apple

Are You Calling The Apple Card ‘Disruptive’?
▻https://hackernoon.com/are-you-calling-the-apple-card-disruptive-ba122048ef3c?source=rss----3a8

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Tech Giants Aren’t Disruptive. But They Could Win The “Game” Over Banks.There I was, together with millions of people around the world, “virtually” standing in front of Jennifer Bailey as she introduced the new Apple Card. It took hours, if not minutes, for media outlets to start rolling out headlines describing this credit card as “disruptive”. But as a former General Manager at Visa and the current CEO of a leading digital payment solution, I wondered: “Is Apple Card really a disrupter of the payments industry?”To answer this question, we must first be on the same page, at least, linguistically. Journalists and bloggers are now using the word “disruptive” to describe any situation in which an industry is shaken up by new or existing players. But “shaken up” does not imply change. Interestingly, (...)

#banking #blockchain #digital-transformation #apple-disruption #fintech

How #blockchain Can Fix the Problem of Insider Trading
▻https://hackernoon.com/how-blockchain-can-fix-the-problem-of-insider-trading-c8153a50055?source

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Insider trading may sound bad. But where the law is concerned, it’s the letter that counts.In the 2016 Supreme Court case Salman v. United States, the Court cleared up some fuzzy loopholes in previous wording around the rules of insider trading. And the rules seem to leave room for creative use of blockchain investing platforms.On the heels of the Salman decision, several questions about the boundaries of insider trading have been cleared up. But an important one remains, and it’s one that leaves a lot of room for collaborative investing on the blockchain.Salman Solidified Insider Trading ParametersThe Salman decision found a grocer named Bassam Salman guilty of knowingly trading on confidential information and profiting upwards of $1.5 million after acting on an insider tip from his (...)

#fintech #supreme-court #finance #insider-trading

Which Region will be the First to Become Entirely Cashless?
▻https://hackernoon.com/which-region-will-be-the-first-to-become-entirely-cashless-ad6141bb6354?

If you’re confident enough to leave your wallet at home and rely only on your credit card or mobile device when taking a taxi, getting a cup of coffee, or buying groceries then you know that being cashless is not as big of a deal as it was a few years ago.Blockchain technology seems to be the best promoter of this new lifestyle, however, the transition is already occurring even without its help. Maybe using the NFC (near field communication) function inside your phone is not that popular, but swiping a card is something that even your grandparents learned to do.Everyone is aware of where payment systems are heading in the future, and it’s certainly not cash or any other physical assets: it’s all electronic.From Sweden, where only 2% of transactions are currently made in cash, to (...)

#blockchain #startup #bitcoin #education #fintech

The Disruptor of Credit Cards — #apple Credit Card.
▻https://hackernoon.com/the-disruptor-of-credit-cards-apple-credit-card-5451f539ecca?source=rss-

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The Disruptor of Credit Cards — Apple Credit Card.With Apple launching their credit card, there is so much to look forward to. It is different from all the other products in the market in more ways than one. Let’s dive into why it’s disruptive and what to expect from possibly the MOST BEAUTIFUL card you may have seen by far.Before I jump into what this card is capable of, let’s take a moment to appreciate the beauty of this product:Jaw Drop*Source: ▻https://www.apple.com/apple-card/Today, I was reading Havard Business Review’s article on “What is Disruptive Innovation” and there it was argued that a disruptive innovation needs to have one of the two characteristics:Originate in Low-end Markets: “The disruptor often aims to provide low-end consumers with a *good enough product¹”Originate in (...)

#product-management #fintech #payments #apple-credit-card

Your old bank’s best chance is to go quantum
▻https://hackernoon.com/your-old-banks-best-chance-is-to-go-quantum-5b1173f9402f?source=rss----3

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Your Old Bank’s Best Chance lies in going QuantumPeaking into a possible next-gen financial services phenomenon and how blindly adapting to DLTs without proofing them may be a fiascoCutting corners leveraged businesses since the beginning of trade. He who offers it cheaper and faster leverages on its own efficiency to overcome its competitors.The surge of decentralized technologies have done just that.Whenever there is a tight turn, whoever is on the road may either slow down to keep on a regulated drive or opt out for a faster way by cutting the corner of the curve.The illusion of a long straight line disarmed traditional industries, namely finance, rather incompetent, unprepared and disbelieving in recent developments, as if the democratization of access to money and its management was (...)

#finance-and-banking #blockchain #fintech #disruption #future

A Guide to Using StableCoins to Increase and Protect Your Assets
▻https://hackernoon.com/a-guide-to-using-stablecoins-to-increase-and-protect-your-assets-9fac28b

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Guide to Using StableCoins to Increase and Protect Your Assets2019 Complete StableCoin GuidePart 7 of 7Enjoy shorts from my book while Kyle Rea of cREAtiveCastleStudios finishes graphics!If you haven’t read the first part of my book, you may “catch up” here.StableCoin Definition.Simply stated, a StableCoin is a #cryptocurrency pegged to another asset. Or, a global digital currency solely unrelated to a central entity. StableCoins make for practical usage of cryptocurrencies by allowing for secure, convenient transactions without the high volatility traditional cryptocurrencies hold.Now let’s move on….Types of Stablecoins: Asset-Collateralized vs. Non-CollateralizedAsset-Collateralized StableCoins.The socially agreed upon currency most countries use is termed ‘fiat’, which literally means (...)

#stable-coin #fintech #blockchain-technology #investing

#ai to Transform The Financial Services: Six Examples
▻https://hackernoon.com/ai-to-transform-the-financial-services-six-examples-dface3971532?source=

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Artificial Intelligence is not a new kid on the block, but rather an integral part of a growing number of industries. Forward-thinking executive managers and business owners actively explore new AI use in finance and other areas to get a competitive edge on the market.First used mostly in computer science, AI now has advanced to the most important areas of our life, e.g.:TransportationEducationHealth careFinancial services.The rise of AI in the financial industry shows how fast it’s gaining traction, even in traditionally conservative areas, and how quickly it’s changing the business landscape. Here are just some of the most popular examples of AI in finance.1. AI and Credit DecisionsArtificial Intelligence provides a faster, more accurate assessment of a potential borrower, at less cost, (...)

#artificial-intelligence #fintech #financial-services #banking

The Ultimate Guide to Small Cap Cryptocurrencies (Part 5)
▻https://hackernoon.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-small-market-cap-cryptocurrencies-part-5-4fae38881

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Get ready! This article ends our five part guide to small market cap cryptocurrencies! It’s been a wild ride and we’ve enjoyed diving further into some small market cap cryptos and altcoins that you may not have heard of or looked into before. Before reading this, we recommend brushing up on Parts 1–4 of our guide here:Part 1: ▻http://blockchainseo.net/small-market-cap-cryptocurrencies-part-1/Part 2: ▻http://blockchainseo.net/small-market-cap-cryptocurrencies-part-2/Part 3: ▻http://blockchainseo.net/small-market-cap-cryptocurrencies-part-3/Part 4: ▻http://blockchainseo.net/guide-small-market-cap-cryptocurrencies-part-4/Or, you can find all previous four parts on our Medium page here:Part 1: (...)

#blockchain #fintech #bitcoin #cryptocurrency #crypto

Going Green: Can #blockchain Save the Planet?
▻https://hackernoon.com/going-green-can-blockchain-save-the-planet-34edb9dc3c21?source=rss----3a

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The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently concluded that, at the current rate of human activity relating to global greenhouse gas emission pathways, we are facing a threat of a 1.5°C of global warming above pre-industrial levels. This may not sound like a large number, but the consequences are dire — think rising sea levels leading to flooding of lowland areas, degradation of tundras and rainforests, and increased CO₂ concentration in oceans leading to mass bleaching of coral reef ecosystems. That last one hits particularly close to home, being a scuba-diver myself.To combat this issue, many organisations have looked to technology — blockchain in particular. One such organisation is the Blockchain for Climate Foundation that serves to “put the Paris Agreement on the (...)

#bitcoin #fintech #cryptocurrency #ethereum

The Case for Stablecoins — 2
▻https://hackernoon.com/the-case-for-stablecoins-2-2723a5a78efa?source=rss----3a8144eabfe3---4

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The Case for Stablecoins — 2Two case studies demonstrating how to innovate in fintechImage taken from The Rubin Report’s interview with Peter ThielLet’s start off with a little social experimentOn the left you can see how well received my first post was by three different #ethereum communities. R/MakerDAO, r/Ethereum, and r/ethtrader; I was upvoted 99%, 64%, and 50% respectively. By looking at the screenshot, its even easier to see that for the same post I have three karma ratings of 8, 4, and 0.This might come as a surprise to some but, the Ethereum community is not entirely behind the concept of a stablecoin token built on top of the protocol. Quite frequently the types of responses I would get highlighted how much people disliked centralization in any form. Others seemed to believe that (...)

#fintech #insurance #peer-to-peer #blockchain

Consider a Loan Instead of #vc Money
▻https://hackernoon.com/consider-a-loan-instead-of-vc-money-48ad3b7b8d3c?source=rss----3a8144eab

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“If you’re starting a business and you take out a loan, you’re a moron,” said firebrand entrepreneur Mark Cuban in an interview with Bloomberg.However, if you’re a budding entrepreneur, hearing or reading such things from sharks can be disheartening, especially if you’re looking to start with little to no capital. To be fair to Cuban, he did go at length saying that businesses can be launched through sheer effort. Nevertheless, it takes money to make money, even just to make it through the day.There are, however, key instances where additional significant #funding may be needed, for example, when business suddenly picks up and you have to ramp up production to keep up with demand. You’d definitely want to take advantage of such opportunities.In these situations, is getting a small business (...)

#fintech #startup #loans

How to Build a Dynamic Website Using #google Sheets and Sinatra
▻https://hackernoon.com/how-to-build-a-dynamic-website-using-google-sheets-and-sinatra-2065da1eb

Check out the completed site from this article here, or the ProductHunt launch page here.I love the #fintech space. So much that I recently completed a program through Oxford University on the subject! This also means that I find myself trying to look up all the fintech-related conferences around the world on a regular basis to try and keep track of them as well as where they are located. Eventually, I decided that this was getting to be a bit repetitive and did what any self-respecting techie would do: built a spreadsheet. For a while, that was it. I had this wonderful master spreadsheet of just about every fintech conference in the world neatly cataloged by location and month of the year and my life was once again simple and all was in order.Then not too long ago, I came across a tweet (...)

#web-development #oauth #ruby

#stellar #blockchain is the right platform for building next-gen #fintech Products. Here’s why
▻https://hackernoon.com/stellar-blockchain-is-the-right-platform-for-building-next-gen-fintech-p

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Blockchain Use-CasesEver since I heard of Stellar, a blockchain project to disrupt the financial world from a publication, I was intrigued. I guess it was around the time they’d raise $3 million from Stripe that I started exploring the potential of Stellar blockchain. The tech-media obsession and incessant comparison of Stellar with Ethereum and other blockchain projects by journalists across the world sure helped too in keeping me intrigued.A few months down the line, me and my team had worked upon a number of POCs and explored the possibilities with the platform. Almost 2 and a half years down the line, today, our team has successfully worked on a number of products based on the stellar blockchain. In this post, I am going to explain why Stellar is the right platform for building (...)

#finance #decentralization

CryptoMap: 3 Reasons Why #germany Is Turning Into A Crypto Hub
▻https://hackernoon.com/cryptomap-3-reasons-why-germany-is-turning-into-a-crypto-hub-3ea5a5c6a7a

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A #government supportive of innovative technologies, a crypto-friendly tax regulation and a curious youth. Ok. The beer too.Germans know well what benefits the latest #fintech innovations can bring. The country always had a leading role in EU in most of the industries and technologies are no exception. Today, we are going to travel to the land of Oktoberfest and hard-working people to see the attitude of people and government towards cryptocurrencies and #blockchain.National Strategy on Blockchain and CryptoEurope’s largest economy joined the hype over cryptocurrencies a while ago as it deployed blockchain in many industries. Currently, the government is launching a process that will make up a comprehensive blockchain strategy in the near future.Germany is looking for help and asks their own (...)

#cryptocurrency

Snax. Social transaction and why sharing is caring.
▻https://hackernoon.com/snax-social-transaction-and-why-sharing-is-caring-afc32c8f1646?source=rs

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Snax. Social transactions and why sharing is caring.A few years ago we have asked ourselves, how can we integrate #blockchain into the everyday lives of people to enable widespread adoption of this amazing technology? After a lot of discussions and brainstorming, we decided that the best way to achieve that would be to provide people with an opportunity to transfer tokens without leaving favorite social media. The idea of Snax was born.Snax is a public blockchain based on the EOS engine. Snax chain will provide people with an ability to create social transactions. Social transactions can be used in many ways — you can donate money to your favorite Hearthstone streamer or support a blog that you like on #twitter, advertisers can pay to social influencers for marketing campaigns, Youtubers can (...)

#cryptocurrency #fintech #social-media

Journey Through FinovateEurope 2019
▻https://hackernoon.com/journey-through-finovateeurope-2019-fa74670f8f2d?source=rss----3a8144eab

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Jim Marous and UXDA’s presenter Karlis JonassNo doubt, if there’s a place you could call the innovation epicenter of the financial world, it’s #finovate. It brings voice to the future banking and illuminates what will be the common practice of tomorrow. This year UXDA stepped on the stage beside other world’s leading finance innovators and influencers to demonstrate which direction the financial industry is heading to. UXDA outlined the rising significance of delightful user experience #design in financial services — definitely one of the routes the future of banking will take. Here’s a recap of the most remarkable Finovate memories to inspire every financial professional who aims to reinvent banking.▻https://medium.com/media/ef2ac6d98e08e1e48f6da3de24525bf3/hrefMissionThe world of finance is (...)

#fintech-conference #fintech-event #ux-design

The Awesome Duo: 6 Cases of How #fintech Benefits From AI
▻https://hackernoon.com/the-awesome-duo-6-cases-of-how-fintech-benefits-from-ai-bb408242a1c5?sou

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Photo by Alice Pasqual on UnsplashIf you’ve ever used the Internet to transfer money between accounts or apply for a bank loan or trade, you’re probably aware of how deeply rooted fintech has become in our day-to-day lives. In 2018, about 61% of Americans used digital banking services and this number is set to exceed 65% in 2022. One of the newly-emerged traits of the 4th Industrial Era, fintech is an application of fast-evolving digital technologies to improve and facilitate financial services.Companies are rapidly adopting fintech to keep abreast of the competition. The investments into this industry are also impressive: in 2018, it attracted over $16 billion investment in the UK alone, according to KMPG.On the other hand, entire countries are rapidly adopting AI technologies to compete (...)

#artificial-intelligence #chatbots #machine-learning #deep-learning

The Need for Many Stablecoins and a Metastable Basket
▻https://hackernoon.com/the-need-for-many-stablecoins-and-a-metastable-basket-e38adff6c8f4?sourc

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There’s no doubt that the crypto-verse, and internet as a whole, has been buzzing about stablecoins and their role in the future of digital currency. In fact, since 2014, over $350mm in funding has gone into backing north of 60 stablecoin-specific projects across the world.Source: #blockchain researchRecently, an influx of projects pegged to the U.S. Dollar have been popping up all over and it’s understandably become hard to differentiate them from each other. After all, many have similar value propositions. With all of this in mind, it’s perfectly reasonable for someone to wonder what the need for yet another stablecoin project is. To get the answer, we can draw parallels from use cases in fiat currencies.As a refresher, we’ve addressed properties and qualities of an effective stablecoin (...)

#bitcoin #cryptocurrency #fintech #stable-coin

7 Universities Offering Online #blockchain, Cryptocurrency and #fintech #education
▻https://hackernoon.com/7-universities-offering-online-blockchain-cryptocurrency-and-fintech-edu

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In the relatively young market of blockchain and cryptocurrency, finding accurate information on a specific topic can be time-consuming and sometimes difficult to achieve. In this article, I want to provide reputable online blockchain courses, brought to you by renowned universities.You can enroll in all courses without any admission requirements, except the MSc in Digital Currency. To be eligible for enrollment, you will need to verify obtaining a Bachelors Degree in any random field. The MSc has specific application dates and starting times. Most courses referred to in this article can be followed for free.These online courses are often offered as a Massive Open Online Course or MOOC. MOOCs provide an affordable, flexible way to learn new skills, advance your career and improve upon (...)

#bitcoin #university