Swift released results of new blockchain experiments, but in order to become industry standard for the technology, a shift may be needed.
In this conversation, we chat with Hany Rashwan – the founder of Amun and 21Shares. Hany built the company that put out the first physically backed crypto Exchange Traded Product (ETP). In simpler terms, he created a vehicle for people to buy crypto assets, such as Bitcoin or Ethereum, on the stock market. Alongside Cathie Wood of ARK, 21Shares recently submitted a Bitcoin ETF to the SEC. While he waits for the US to get on board, Hany's products are already offered all over Europe, with more than $3 billion under management.
More specifically, we touch on his early entrepreneurial mindset which lead him to building successful businesses, how currency devaluation in Egypt pushed him to create 21Shares, what an Exchange Traded Product (ETP) is and how it related to Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), the regulatory landscape for crypto-backed ETPs, and so so much more!
In this conversation, we chat with Paul Rowady is the Founder and Director of Research for Alphacution Research Conservatory and a 30-year veteran of proprietary, hedge fund and capital markets research, trading and risk advisory initiatives. Alphacution is a digitally-oriented research and strategic advisory platform focused on modeling and benchmarking the impacts of technology on global financial markets and the businesses of trading, asset management and banking. This data-driven approach allows Alphacution to reverse-engineer the operational dynamics of these market actors to showcase the most vivid and impactful themes among the field of available research providers and platforms.
In this conversation, we talk all things capital markets and investing with Yoni Assia, the founder and CEO of eToro, one of the fastest-growing and largest global digital investing companies, brokerages, and applications out there.
More specifically, we discuss the eating habits of Warren Buffet, community-driven investment challenging incumbent investing practices, the purposes of investing and trading, of financial health, of investment education, of gamification of investment strategy, of capital markets and GameStop and the connection between capital, memes and fashion, and finally machine learning’s influence of investment behaviour.
You work. You get money. You take money and invest it. If you are lucky, it becomes larger. Otherwise, it becomes smaller. If you have a lot of money, you can either start a company or not. If you start a company, you invest in your own ability to influence outcomes and in your own transformation function. There are other, personal utility functions also being satisfied in executing the transformation function. Alternately, you focus on the work of getting capital into other companies. For this allocation and selection work, you are rewarded. To this, you can add the capital of others, until you are doing selection on their behalf.
This week, we cover these ideas:
The Acorns SPAC deal, including its valuation and detailed metrics
The growth levers and obstacles for point-solutions as they scale into the millions of users and hundred of millions of revenues
What a $50 billion fund should do to roll this stuff up
It is looking like a pretty good time to go consolidating individual financial product footprints. Leaving aside whether consolidated companies are good or bad for some particular reason, the simple observation is that there are just far too many point-solution brands out there. Too many to be left alone to operate. And now a number of them are going to be public, which means that a number of them are going to be up for sale.
In this conversation, we talk with Brian Barnes of M1 Finance, about finance “super apps”, the cost-efficiencies of robo-advisors, fractionalized share trading, and tackling the titans of the Wealth Management industry. We also discuss the nuts and bolts of the financial infrastructure making this possible.
M1 Finance bundles together roboadvisory, neobanking and lending into a single “super app”, allowing for combined pricing power (i.e., charging nothing on asset allocation). The firm currently has $3 billion in AUM, a growth of 50% in the past four months and tripling their total in just over a year. Notably, the company has its own broker/dealer and offers fractional shares, and partners with Lincoln Savings bank on the deposit accounts. That makes for a compelling business model from securities lending, interchange, and order flow.
A few delicious morsels for us today, connecting ideas between the automation of the institutional art world, and the rise of non-fungible token art. We are surprised by how things are clicking.
We caught up recently with Lori Hotz of Lobus. Lori used to work in the wealth and investment management businesses of Wall Street (Lehman, Lazard) and comes to art with a background of asset allocation and investment assets. One core narrative in wealth management has of course been roboadvisors and digital wealth, and the automation of the financial advisor process. Whether you are doing client experience, CRM, financial planning, trading, or performance reporting, there are now lots of platforms for everyone from mass-retail to ultra-high-net-worth and family office advisors.
We are syndicating a deep conversation across roboadvice, high tech and payments, and fintech bundling that we had with Craig Iskowitz of Ezra Group Consulting.
Check out Ezra Group Consulting here to learn more about digital wealth and Craig’s consulting practice. He is one of the sharpest software consultants in the RIA space, and his firm works with wealth management firms and fintech vendors to provide technology strategy and market research.
We had a lot of fun in this conversation and cover TD & Schwab, Wealthsimple, M1 Finance, Ant & Tencent, and Robinhood, among others. The full transcript is provided along with the recording — worth a read for the illustrations alone.
This week, we look at:
Lending Club, the peer-to-peer lending innovator, turning off peer-to-peer lending after having a bank in its pocket
Consolidation of the UK's largest crowdfunders, CrowdCube and Seedrs, and their limited economics
The scale of the Morgan Stanley and Eaton Vance deal, creating a $1.2 trillion asset manager
The struggle of peer-to-peer models more generally, and whether the blockchain movement can overcome the Prisoner's Dilemma