Simon Taylor
@sytaylor
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#Fintech Geek. Ranting @
London, UK
Joined January 2009
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Arresting cryptographers for writing software is the end of credibility for the west.
Bad move. Worse timing.
Naive
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The Ultimate SWIFT and Russia Sanctions explainer
You've probably been reading lots of people explaining SWIFT, but most explainers miss some key details like 👇
1. SWIFT is not a payment system.
SWIFT is a messaging system (like email) used by 11,000 banks in 200+ countries
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Today: Learning to tweet holding a tiny baby
Welcome to the world little girl
Mum and Dad love you 💗
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Behold
A McKinsey word salad about Generative AI in finance.
TL;DR create committes and a command center and whatever the hell this cube thing is
Lol wut
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So
@Europol
say €2/3bn is laundered via crypto. If a €500bn market that's 0.5%
Compared to an estimated $2trn of money laundering in wider financial services this is tiny and much easier to detect / prevent.
Im surprised it's being briefed against. Cc
@ukhomeoffice
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Thing I didn't realize until just now.
@ensdomains
supports DNS domain names
Meaning your .com can also be your .eth
Delightful backward compatibility choice
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76% of Shopify revenue came from financial services last year.
Embedded finance is undefeated as the best way to drive for SaaS businesses if they solve adjacent customer problems
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This is precisely what working in a bank is like (by
@gapingvoid
). We need to do something meaningful!
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People now spend more on emotes and skins for video games than the movie industry made in 2019 📈 💸
In 2020, people spent $54B on skins, virtual goods, and extra lives in games like Fortnite & Candy Crush. It's one example of how fungible and non-fungible tokens enable an internet-native economy, says Patrick Rivera. And it's just the beginning.
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The more time you spend in Fintech, the more you realize
👉 Payments are easy, but the edge cases are hard
👉 Lending is easy; getting paid back is hard
👉 Getting live is easy; staying alive and regulated is hard
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Instagram now has NFTs on
@0xPolygon
While JP Morgan conducted DeFi trades on Polygon
Of all the "L2's" - Polygon is becoming the Redhat / enterprise default
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A tiny technical change that will reshape payments:
Visa allows banks and payment companies can pay each other with Stablecoins.
This will make dollars lower cost, lower risk and 24/7.
How? 👇
📰 Visa is making USDC Stablecoin settlement available on the fast and cheap…
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If you have more than 10 Bitcoin you're in the top 1% of all bitcoin holders
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Hands up if every time you discover a new Neobank or Fintech company you scroll to the bottom to see who the sponsor bank is?
#fintechnerds
where you at?
✋
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Eth is down against the Venezuelan Boliviar over the week
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If you liked this thread, and you want to go further down with questions like
How does SWIFT messaging work?
What does this move mean for Crypto?
+ My thoughts on why Stablecoins would be an upgrade
Check out the full post here 👇
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Metaverse and NFTs now are where social media was in 2009 ⌚
Your boomer friend doesn't understand how it will make any money 💰
But every teenager lives there 🏘️
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Visa just did $5.1bn of adj net income on $8.8bn of revenue
This company is INSANELY profitable
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PSA FINTECH NERDS
THERE IS A WIRECARD SCANDAL DOCUMENTARY ON NETFLIX
This is not a drill 🤠
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The sentiment on Crypto appears to be shifting in my network
Fintech talents who hated it / didn't get the point now at least acknowledge it's interesting
Fintech talents who had been open to Crypto are now obsessed with it.
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AML is the worlds most in-effective policy experiment
This is a phenomenal piece on just how utterly useless AML rules are
Effectiveness is estimated at 0.1%
Policymakers: But crypto!
That's called the distraction technique...
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Banking software wasn't designed to solve today's problems
It was designed to automate yesterdays processes
Few are re-thinking banking software from first principles outside of the Neobanks building it all themselves
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Fintech 1.0 = Better UX
Fintech 2.0 = Embedded finance
Fintech 3.0 = Defi (better infra)
H/t
@JohnStCapital
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ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY FUCKING MILLION FOR WEBINARS??!!!
Jesus Christ this is peak silicon valley boys club
is a spectacular failure and someone just needs to kill it
It's not a "hard thing about hard things story"
They had insane resources and failed
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Finance products are a commodity. So get big, sell lots, hit profitability.
Fintech products are a service. Solve a problem, charge a premium, grow rapidly.
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Look what I just spotted at check out. $5 off for using pay by bank
👀👀👀
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So
@CryptoKitties
is Pokémon for Capitalists. It's
#esports
meets
#blockchain
Oh and you can get people to pay to breed with your crypto kitties.
This is the new economy.
People are weird.
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The company was one way we organised for the last 300 years. The religion was another. The government another.
Cryptoeconomics are poo poo'ed by many. But a new way to align incentives globally at the species level is an interesting signal longer term.
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With decentralised exchanges now all the rage we have to learn the lessons of centralised exchanges
1) user experience has to be better
2) performance has to be better
3) don't fight the law
Expanded below...
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The OCC paved the way for banks to 👇
1. Access public chains (Eth, BTC, Celo, USDC) as payments rails
2. Hold each of those coins directly or on behalf of clients
3. Run a node for each of those chains
Biggest legitimization moment of decentralized infrastructure yet 📣
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13. Over time Russia (and China) may be emboldened to build out alternatives to SWIFT.
China is building an alternative to SWIFT called CIPS (Cross-border Interbank Payment System). Today CIPS is small, but China and Russia could provide a regional alternative to SWIFT
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New report from 11:FS - "Rebuilding financial services from the Inside"
Thread 🧵
Get the report here👇
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This year's
@ycombinator
winter batch had 25
#fintech
companies (13% of the total)
Here's my breakdown of each of them 👇
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Crypto isn't a developed markets story
It's a developing markets story 👇
% of consumers who say they own crypto
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Wow
A bank pleading guilty to massive AML failings.
If only there was some global, public record of transactions bringing transparency to finance...
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The UK is the Goldilocks of Financial Services
Small enough to be nimble. Big enough to be a Global Financial Center.
If you want to see the future of finance, look closely. 🇬🇧
Huge thanks
@a16z
Fintech for inviting me to contribute
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Fintech 🧠 Food - 5th Dec - Stripe Treasury, Moov, Amount, Revolut & Smiling curves in financial services
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B2B payments are absolutely massive, and horribly under served
If someone can build a better ACH, the TAM is enormous. This is why the card schemes are looking at becoming "multi rail"
But I've got my eye on stablecoins, still. Can't shake the feeling there's something there
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Revolut is launching eSIM plans, and I think it's a genius move
New mobile offering for Revolut customers will allow them access to roaming without extra charges. Subscribers to Revolut's Ultra ($69 per month) plan will receive up to 3GB of data, which resets monthly. Regular…
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This is why fintech Vs crypto needs more consideration 👀
Uniswap V3 gives "better FX" than TransferWise 👇👇👇
Weekly rant was all about this...
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Why is everyone doing a web3 Wallet?
Recently, Robinhood Revolut & GameStop announced launching a web3 (self custodial) wallet. Is this a hangover from the late-stage web3 euphoria, some cheap marketing trick, or is there a genuine business case here?
🧵👇
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So Bank as a Service is a hot
#fintech
topic, but what is it? 🤔
● BaaS allows any brand to embed financial
services into its customer experience... 🍎
● ...by picking and choosing capabilities
offered by providers… 🛠️
● …and licence holders in a modular fashion. ⛓️
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Wow! Adyen down more than 40% on H1 earnings
Adyen reported 739.1 million euros ($804.3 million) revenue in H1, up 21% from 2022 but below the expected 40%. EBITDA is down 10% from H1 22. Adyen says talent costs increased as it ramped hiring and customers became more…
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11. Russia has been preparing for sanctions for years.
Russia's central bank built up foreign reserves to more than $600bn (40% of GDP), and most of that is held in Euros and Gold. Meaning, it may still be able to run for a long time without SWIFT.
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Humbling moment 🙏
The littlest newsletter Fintech Brainfood now has 10k readers 🚀
It started as a way to just try and *understand* fintech (and honestly it still is). Other than posting occasionally, I've barely promoted the thing. But the readers response has been amazing.
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Everything you need to know about the new Robinhod card.
The Gold credit card 3% with cashback is an unbelievable deal, aimed directly at Apple Card and Chase Sapphire. But can it last if it loses money?
Maybe
ICYMI: Robinhood’s Gold card will cost $5 per month or $50…
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Visa launches Visa+ to make P2P payments interoperable. Here's what you need to know and my analysis 👇
Visa is partnering with PayPal and Venmo to make the P2P services work together seamlessly. Users don't need a Visa card, but they create a unique handle (like @ name) and…
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The biggest thing happening in
#fintech
is every day
#wealth
#savings
and
#investments
e.g. Robinhood, Acorns, Plum and Moneybox.
This is far bigger than "robo advice" and is well worth your attention if you work in product or strategy...
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Massive massive massive news
Square is now a bank
🤯🤯🤯🤯
FDIC approved the deposit insurance application submitted by Square, Inc., to create a de novo industrial bank. Square Financial Services will originate commercial loans to merchants that process card transactions through Square’s payments system.
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Wondering about
@Libra_
? Is it a
#cryptocurrency
? Who's involved? 🤔
I went and wrote what I think are the 11 most interesting things about Facebook's new
#cryptocurrency
👇
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Ooof 🤔🤔
Just 10 Addresses Hold Nearly 50% of All EOS Tokens
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Bank innovation labs be like 🤩
👇🙄
A million LEDs spent to add a starry sky and a canoe to an ATM.
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As a former banker: The Bitcoin ETF matters. Ex-colleagues across big banks I used to work with agree. Here's why 👇
The ETF approvals mean that any pension fund or retail investor can buy Bitcoin without opening a Crypto wallet or ever touching the underlying asset.
🧠 The ETF…
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Ok so Lucite AI is WILD.
It's an investment banking analyst as a service.
Here are some slides it pulled together about $AFRM with just the stock ticker and home page as inputs
Now everyone is
@FTPartners
🤯
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🧠 Some personal news.
👇
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2. SWIFT doesn't move money; banks do. Money moves when a bank updates its accounts.
Banks go through a series of messages to say who needs to get paid and for how much. These messages happen instantly but the payments may not get applied immediately because...
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Here's everything you need to know about the proposed Open Banking Rule for the US
📚 What does the rule say?
It defines four roles.
1. A data provider is any credit, debit, prepaid, or deposit account provider.
2. An authorized 3rd party is any app or service with consumer…
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Every meeting I had yesterday
Most Fintech folks are just learning crypto. Most crypto folks don't like / have experience in Fintech.
People who get both look rare
@mdudas
@NikMilanovic
@brunoswerneck
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Tokenization is the largest transformation of finance and markets in over 50 years
This from Bank of America...
👉 Traditional asset tokenization may reach $16tn+, over the next 5-15 yrs
👉 Broadridge's DLT platform settles $1.4tn a month of tokenized repos
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Fintech 🧠 Food - Jan 2nd 2022
📣 DeFi will become the infrastructure of the digital economy
💸 4 Fintech Companies
👀 India's new Neobank
📚 Messari's 2022 Crypto Predictions are 🔥(
@twobitidiot
)
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10. Applying sanctions to Russia will be an operational nightmare for banks.
Russia is a major trader of oil and gas, which will still be allowed. Many transactions are also "future dated" meaning they were booked months ago to happen soon. What does a bank do with those? etc.
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4. Applying sanctions is hard.
Banks apply sanctions by "knowing their customer." Easy when your customer is a consumer. Hard when its a company owned by a holding company in Panama, owned by a trust company in the Cayman Islands. This "complex hierarchy" means detective work.
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Love this by
@Chainalysis
#bitcoin
payment flows. Where money comes from and goes to
Well worth a view
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Revolut launches ultra-premium account.
Revolut's new premium subscription called Ultra will cost £540 ($690) per year and offers £4,100 of benefits, including offers on newspaper subscriptions (like FT), WeWork, and NordVPN. The offer is available to consumers in Europe. The…
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Google launches earbuds that translate to 40 languages in real time.
We live in the future people...
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Apple Pay Later is not a BNPL killer
But it might be the beginning of something else
🧵 👇
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Hey
#blockchain
and crypto crowd.
Facebook is coming 👇👇👇
A solution to fake news? To lack of trust? Decentralisation is Mark's 2018 goal, in 2016 it was AI. Ignore prices, this is THE news.
@coindesk
@colingplatt
@cburniske
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Feature parity isn't product parity
Incumbents tend to view products as a list of features
This is a lossy compression algorithm for product
A Kia has many of the same features as a Porsche, but its feature parity isn't product parity
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If there's a consistent theme in technology and Fintech, it's the low hum of fear.
You're probably reading lots of 2023 predictions, but most explainers miss these key details 👇
1. Financial services is the world's largest profit pool
The prize for disruption is massive
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Just recorded our 200th episode of
@FinTechInsiders
🎙️🎙️🎙️
At
@11FSTeam
we are now
- 80 people
- 2 years old
- 100% delivery focussed
And banking is still only 1% finished
So proud of the team, the work we're doing and winning & love this stuff 😍
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So
@monzo
hits 2 million customers, 8 months after hitting 1 million
Every other bank CEO "but it's not the salary account for most people".
Considering there are 100m personal current accounts in the UK with 30m working adults. That's true for most banks!
and there it is... 2 million customers (screen grab was 5 mins before midnight): 4 years to the day of their first ever tweet and public outing, 2 years 1 month after getting the banking license, 8 months after achieving the first 1 million... team
@monzo
take a bow 👏
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If your web 3 wallet becomes a key that unlocks access to your data for algorithms the world becomes much more interesting.
Nobody has more data about you than you. Not google, not FB, not the government.
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Most Consumer Neobanks lose Money. Is it game over?
1. Less than 5% make a profit
2. Some are chasing charters (or have one)
3. But they have a different cost structure to incumbents
4. And new revenue sources
5. So will they fall away or just get acquired by incumbents?
🧵 👇
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Two podcasts have absolutely changed my year
1.
@HarryStebbings
@twentyminutevc
2.
@patrick_oshag
@InvestLikeBest
In an externally horrible year, both shows have brought so much insight and quality
Really grateful 🙏
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Nubank has 90m customers.
Ninety million
That's more than Cash app or venmo
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Wise is becoming a platform
After displacing the FX revenue banks made from consumer and SMB cross border payments...
Now they're selling back the infrastructure
Baller
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Fintech Brainfood presents: The State of Fintech 2023
65 pages including
1. Fintech: We are SO back
2. Embedded: Everything
3. Banks. Rates didn't save us
4. Big Tech. Welcome to regulation
5. Crypto. Or tokenization?
Plus more charts galore!
Go find it!
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