by Samuel Mbaki | May 3, 2023 | Banking
Bitcoin bull and former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan has released a statement on Twitter claiming that the US actively ignores looming financial meltdowns. He also said that he is still optimistic about Bitcoin hitting the $1M tag but in 90 months now rather than 90 days.
Balaji concedes that Bitcoin won’t hit $1M in 90 days and is not happy with US economic meltdown
Bitcoin enthusiast Balaji has confirmed that the famous bet that Bitcoin would hit a $1M price tag within 90 days is officially closed out by mutual agreement. He made this statement via Twitter, saying that he conceded the possibility of that happening and has fully paid the bet amount and exceeded it by 50%.
Balaji said that he paid the amount in provable on-chain donations as follows:
1) $500k to Bitcoin Core development via Chaincode: http://bit.ly/core500k
2) $500k to Give Directly: http://bit.ly/gived500k
3) $500k to Medlock: http://bit.ly/med500k
In his Twitter statement, he said that he honored the bet because he believes in the public good but is disappointed that it’s not feasible to rely on the public sector anymore for alarms when something needs to be fixed.
He claimed that Treasury’s Janet Yellen knew the 2008 financial meltdown was coming but didn’t bother telling anyone. He said that Yellen claimed the economy would face a mild recession only for a global collapse to happen 158 days later.
An excerpt from his tweet read:
“So I spent my money to send a provably costly signal that there’s something wrong with the economy and that it’s not going to be a “soft landing” like Powell promises — but something much worse.”
He added links to articles covering the 2008 financial meltdown and a video asking people to gather information and figure out if we are indeed headed for soft economic turbulence.
[1]: https://archive.is/CMsIM
[2]: https://archive.is/N9ETF
[3]: https://archive.is/1yWtb
[4]: https://balajis.com/fiat
Watch Fintech Express for updates on the 2023 banking crisis and other fintech-related stories.
by admin_786 | May 1, 2023 | Banking
Nigeria’s Securities and Exchange Commision has expressed interest in licensing digital assets companies to operate in the country. The Commission, however, wants to allow the trading of assets based on financial products like Equity, Debt or property but not cryptocurrencies.
Nigeria SEC: Digitize traditional financial products but not cryptos!
The Western African country is gearing up to legalize the trading of traditional financial products in the tokenized form at the expense of cryptos like BTC, ETH and other altcoins.
According to the head of Nigeria’s SEC, Abdulkadir Abbas, the country will only authorize listings of tokens that are not essentially crypto. He added that the Authority aims to register Fintech Firms as digital sub-brokers, crowdfunding third parties, tokenized coin issuers and fund managers. However, the Authority will not register crypto exchanges until there is a clear regulatory framework for the crypto market in the country.
He noted that the license applicants would also have to undergo a year of ‘incubation’, allowing the country’s SEC to study their operations, work culture and how they will render their services. He added that by the 10th month of the applicant’s stay in the country, the SEC would be able to determine whether the applicant is fit to hold the license or would have to be asked to stop offering services there.
The new report regarding SEC’s stance on crypto regulation comes after Nigeria’s Central Bank banned financial institutions from offering crypto services earlier in the year. The bank had launched the digital Naira, and its adoption was going slower than expected. As a result, it banned the usage of other cryptocurrencies as means of payment.
Despite that Ban, Nigeria is still topping in P2P trading of digital assets. According to data from Google Trends, Nigeria ranks second in the world y search interest of crypto assets behind El Salvador. Other data from Chainalysis shows that the country was among the top 20 globally regarding crypto adoption in 20233.
Keep watching Fintech Express for updates on this and other crypto-related news.
by admin_786 | May 1, 2023 | Banking
U.S. banking giant JP Morgan has been confirmed as the new owner of First republic bank after presenting a winning bid. The First Republic Bank collapsed in April, prompting the regulators to take control of it. It’s now the third major bank to fail in only two months.
JP Morgan to the rescue!
JP Morgan, one of the largest banking institutions in the U.S., has rescued the drowning First Republic Bank. JP Morgan presented a winning bid and took control of the FRB bank on MAY 1, 2023, in a deal spearheaded by the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation (DFPI).
The DFPI appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as the receiver in the deal it accepted from JPMorgan Chase bank to assume all deposits. It said that the reason behind the deal was to protect investors, as the bank did not have any feasible plan to revive its operations.
‘To protect depositors, the FDIC is entering into a purchase and assumption agreement with JPMorgan Chase Bank, National Association, Columbus, Ohio, to assume all of the deposits and substantially all of the assets of First Republic Bank,” the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation said in a statement
The bank had a valuation of over $200B before April 13, 2023, only to disclose that it had lost over $100B in customer deposits in Q1 2023, which made its shares collapse. The bank’s $3.51 on Monday’s Pre Market, which is too low, is considered to be the $170 per share it was trading in the past year.
The FRB bank has become one of the recent major banks to fall after Credit Suisse and Silicon Valley Bank. The trend of these banks collapsing has become an issue to investors and customers who have seen the loss of deposits across all banks. Leaders like President Biden and the Governor of the Bank of England also think that banks will be tested for a while longer.
Keep watching FintechExpress for updates on banking and other finance-related news.
by Fintech Express | Apr 13, 2023 | Banking, Finance
The social media giant, Twitter, has partnered with financial services provider eToro to allow crypto and stock trading. This development comes after Elon Musk recently revealed that he wants the social media platform to be the most significant financial establishment alongside providing other services to its users.
Elon Musk’s Twitter eyes the finance sector
Twitter has partnered with the financial services platform eToro to allow its users to trade stocks and cryptos. The new functionality will take effect on April 14, 2023, and will be a giant leap in the Billionaire’s dream of making the platform a giant in financial services provision and eventual “Super app” level.
A new feature will be rolled out on Thursday to allow Twitter users to view market charts and get access to an expanded range of financial tools. It will connect users to trade stocks and other financial assets traded on eToro, per an exclusive report by the social media giant CNBC.
At the time of writing, Twitter had already integrated real-time market charts from TradingView on index funds like S&P 500 and some major companies like Tesla. To access this information, a user must use Twitter’s “Cashtags” feature to search for a crypto/stock ticker symbol and insert a dollar sign informed of it. The UI will show price information from TradingView.
According to the report, the new partnership will expand the Twitter hashtags to cover more asset classes. It will also have a button to redirect the users to eToro’s site, where they can trade them.
“As we’ve grown over the past three years immensely, we’ve seen more and more of our users interact on Twitter [and] educate themselves about the markets,” Yoni Assia, eToro’s CEO, told CNBC in an interview.
“There is very high quality content, real-time content on financial analysis of companies and what’s happening around the world. We believe this partnership will enable us to reach those new audiences [and] connect better the brands of Twitter and eToro.”
Keep watching FintechExpress for updates on this and other finance-related stories.
by Fintech Express | Mar 29, 2023 | Banking, Finance
Bank of England (BoE) Governor Andrew Bailey has asked banks to be vigilant as the current market is unfavorable, echoing President Joe Biden’s latest sentiments that the ongoing banking collapse is not anywhere near its end.
Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey asks banks to be vigilant
Financial and political leaders are actively touching on the ongoing financial collapse. Banking stocks are nose-diving globally following a series of Bank collapses that were started by the fall of Silicon Valley bank.
Now, the BoE Chief, Andrew Bailey, has come out to tell the banks to brace themselves as the current market will not be easy. He made these comments on March 28, 2023, where he vowed to be vigilant amid the current market shake, which he termed a “testing out” to find banks’ weaknesses.
Bailey revealed to U.K.’s Treasury Select Committee that the U.S. is clearing its mess in regional banking and that Credit Suisse was an institutional issue that is not widespread in the U.K. He also added that the country’s banking system is strong and has good liquidity.
Bailey compared the U.K. and the U.S. banking systems saying that the set regulations for the treatment of interest rate risk in the banking book (IRRBB)- that refers to the prospective risks to bank capital and earnings from adverse movements in interest rates-as the main reason why the British banking system still stands while US one is on shaky ground.
President Biden says the banking crisis is not over yet
At around the same time, U.S. President Joe Biden said that the White House’s response to the banking crisis is not over. He said he believes his team has handled the crisis well but is still watching to see what happens even though they are convinced they are moving in the right direction.
Biden also explained that his administration looked at legislative changes to ensure such a crisis would never happen again. However, he expressed concerns that it may be difficult to do so as they have a split Congress. Keep watching Fintech Express for updates on macro-finance and other related developments.
by Samuel Mbaki | Mar 27, 2023 | Banking, Cryptocurrencies
Several Chinese banks are reportedly seeking to offer financial services to crypto firms in Hong Kong despite a crypto blanket ban in mainland China. Hong Kong has been active lately in crypto regulation and plans to have a new licensing regime for crypto exchanges this June.
America out China in?
New information has surfaced via a March 27 report by Bloomberg stating that Chinese banks, including Bank of China LTD, the Bank of Communications Co., and Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, are lining up to support crypto establishments in Hong Kong.
One source stated that a Chinese bank sales representative even visited a main office of a crypto company to pitch banking services despite the current ban. Reports have also been surfacing that China could be on the way to reconsidering the blanket ban on cryptos.
Such developments would be vital, considering that some lawmakers in the US are not so happy with the crypto space. They are using enforcement measures to regulate the space, charging crypto exchanges and platforms heavily for not registering while not offering chances for them to do so.
However, the readoption of crypto in China is still unconfirmed and only time will tell how far it will go and the role it might play in revitalizing the crypto space. Keep watching Fintech Express for updates on this and other financial technology-related news.
