Issue #392 - Is It Just The Beginning? December 1st, 2022

The FTX collapse has legal consequences for its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried. The young entrepreneur is known not only for FTX, but also for being a philanthropist and a financial supporter of Democrats. But we're also discovering that Bankman-Fried gave large sums of money to different news organizations before the collapse of FTX. Joe Concha, media critic, asks for "total transparency" from these organizations.

BlockFi, the cryptocurrency lender mainly focused on small businesses, finally filed for bankruptcy in the US on Monday, following the fall of FTX.

The colossal hack that involved Twitter allowed hackers to record the data of over 5 million Twitter users. Twitter confirmed that the bug that allowed the hack was fixed in January 2022, while it seems that hackers started selling data in July 2022. Despite the bug being fixed, security experts - following the report released by BleepingComputer over the weekend - affirm that stolen data can still be used to steal other sensitive data.

New meeting, new interest rate. The Federal Reserve's Federal Open Market Committee will meet in December, and it's almost certain that they will communicate another interest rate hike.

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The Chief Product Officer (CPO) at Magnifi, Tom Van Horn, joins Paul Sweeney and Matt Miller, hosts of Bloomberg's show, to discuss the future of fintech and artificial intelligence, talking about the AI tool that helps investors to make better decisions.

Web3 and decentralized finance (DeFi) absorbed the venture capital space in 2022. Crypto is the sector that received more investments, surpassing fintech and biotech.

Despite the fact that fintech is going through tough times, some fintech firms still manage to succeed and raise their valuations. One of these success stories is Novo, the small business banking platform based in Miami, which managed to raise $35 million in its last funding round, reaching a pre-money valuation of $720 million.

The Australian fintech startup Ettle has completed the first transaction with its newly created stablecoin, AUDE. This stablecoins is pegged to the Australian dollar and its blockchain runs on Ethereum and Algorand - but the fintech firm is evaluating other blockchains compatible with Ethereum.

African fintech thrives, and it's improving the quality of life and allowing for impressive innovation in the continent. Orda, the African cloud operating system provider, has recently raised almost $3.5 million to further digitize restaurants and other food businesses in Africa.

Even if the UK has been considered, for a long time, the best place to build a fintech - especially a global fintech, now the best place may be the US - and Brad Goodall explains why.