Issue #380 - The Contradictions Of A Phygital World September 8th, 2022

The Metaverse project Kryptomon, able to merge play-to-earn features and highly valued tokens, launches its “physital” collection on Binance. Users will be able to collect badges and even super rare NFTs thanks to Binance’s mystery box. The “physical” part of the project involves physical wearables. Kryptomon merges the physical and the digital world and leads us to reflect on the new “phygital” revolution that seems to assess the longevity of NFTs despite market downturns.

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Insurtech is in trouble. Fewer investments flowing in, and more employees flowing out: according to Ben Carey-Evans, an analyst at GlobalData, the reason should be researched in the cost of living, which prevents people from signing insurance policies.

Amidst investors’ uncertainty and slow markets, the most important upgrade in the history of the network that controls the second cryptocurrency by market capitalization is approaching: the Ethereum Merge will be a significant event, but considering how many developers and protocols use Ethereum investors should keep an eye on vital aspects of the network to make sure that the Merge will occur without dramatic issues.

The crypto market decline seems to be a good occasion for big moves from big players. One of these moves could be the decision of Binance, the larger centralized crypto exchange by trading volume, to hire Henrique Meirelles as a member of the advisory board of the company. Meirelles has been the president of the Brazilian Central Bank and the Economy Minister of the country.

In the meantime, another African fintech company had to lay off part of its workforce. The company is Kuda, the digital bank based both in Nigeria and the UK, which confirmed the layoff via email after the news was disclosed by TechCrunch.

The crisis might also affect the strategies used by competitors to acquire a skilled workforce. In particular, banks and fintech companies are adopting different approaches toward hybrid work: while major financial institutions like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are planning return-to-office policies, fintech companies are more flexible. But since the current downturn is negatively affecting many fintech companies, skilled workers may opt for stability instead of flexibility.

The Singapore-based fintech company DT One renews its top management positions to go ahead with its plans to expand across different sectors of the digital financial space. In this case, a slow market represents an occasion for innovation and expansion.

A fintech company that doesn’t suffer the effects of fewer investments is Solid: the fintech company, which offers fintech-as-a-service products to help other companies launch their own financial products, has just raised $63 million in its latest Series B funding round. These new investments will help the fintech to enter other sectors like logistics and healthcare.

The UAE fintech company Optasia plans to expand across Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. The company, backed by major investors, focuses on credit-related financial products and targets unbanked people – over 1 billion adults around the world.

To prove once again the strength of the African fintech environment, and the possible cooperation between companies and institutions, the fintech company Flutterwave has obtained a Switching and Processing License by the Central Bank in Nigeria. This license will allow the company, which might also plan an IPO in the US and Nigeria, to offer financial products without intermediaries.