Issue #381 - Anonymous, But Together – And Driven By Data September 15th, 2022

The popular crypto wallet manufacturer, Trezor, and Wasabi, the Bitcoin wallet, cooperate to bring coinjoin mixing to hardware wallets. The news is impressive if we think about the recent sanctions on Tornado Cash, which used similar methods – not only coinjoin but also zero-knowledge proofs – to guarantee full anonymity in crypto transactions.

Blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies became an important part of the fintech industry. Especially for what concerns Gen Z, the demand for cryptocurrencies is quite high, and the reasons behind this are mainly related to pseudonymity or anonymity – depending on the crypto project, decentralization, and a major control over financial assets.

But the same generation is also interested in major social and economic issues like climate change. How can the two interests coexist in the same person if Bitcoin consumes more energy than Pakistan? To address this green finance-related question, Tim Lea wrote an in-depth article for FinTech Weekly, analyzing the correlation between consumptions and cryptocurrencies – and the Proof of Stake trend, also considering Ethereum’s transition.

Since we’re talking about sustainable finance, a European city was elected the center of sustainable finance education. The city is Edinburgh, the Scottish capital, where financial leaders recently met to address global financial issues. In particular, the University of Edinburgh Business School (UEBS) partnered with the Asian Banking School, which was looking for the right partner to create a new education program for current and future banking leaders that covers fintech and the future of finance, among other topics.

Ten locations, three challenges, one fantastic opportunity! The ‘Space for the Financial World’ hackathon is here! This time we are aiming to advance the digitalisation and greening of the European financial sector. FinTech enthusiasts and professionals alike join us November 4-6 and put your problem-solving skills to the test. Get involved today: https://cassini.eu/hackathons

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Attend the premier conference for data & analytics leaders in North America – Chief Data & Analytics Officers, Fall on October 10-12, 2022 in Boston, MA. New this year is a personalized learning and networking track for data & analytics executives serving the Financial Services industry. Join your peers who understand your challenges and celebrate your successes when it comes to the nuanced intricacies of data & analytics. Qualified data & analytics folks can attend at no cost with a VIP pass.

Cooperation doesn't involve only people, but also artificial intelligence. Braina is among the top essential software: Braina, a mix of “brain” and “artificial”, was created to be your personal virtual assistant. Realized thanks to AI modeling, it works on PCs and is able to recognize commands in different languages – as long as you speak naturally.

In the meantime, regulation and cryptocurrencies meet also in Japan. Anchorage Digital, the crypto platform for institutions, cooperates with GMO-Z.com Trust Company to support the GYEN stablecoin. Anchorage Digital is a regulated crypto platform, and this new partnership favors new fintech use cases for a stablecoin that is fully backed by the Japanese yen.

African fintech is a thriving market, no doubt about this. The founder of Cardano, Charles Hoskinson, knows that very well. During his pan-African tour, Hoskinson delivered several public speeches in support of new possible cooperations between African fintech companies and Cardano. And it looks like he’s “working on something really cool” in Papua New Guinea.

Banks and fintech firms are long-time competitors, but it seems that by offering people what they want, the two are partnering more than expected. What’s the problem with this? For regulators it is far more difficult to fully understand when and how to intervene.

It’s no mystery that the fintech market is going through a difficult period: economic crisis, more aggressive regulatory frameworks, and higher inflation are affecting investments in the market. Even UK fintech investments are experiencing a slowdown, but interestingly enough it seems that the most resilient sector is regtech.

According to Future Market Experiences, the BNPL (Buy Now Pay Later) market should reach a value of over $45 billion by 2031. Despite risks related to the amount of debt people can accumulate, and although regulators want to treat this service as traditional loans, people tend to prefer this business model and retailers can impressively benefit from it. Another concern of regulators is related to data shared by customers, but despite this, many startups were born to facilitate the adoption of this model and top companies integrated it with their businesses. An example is PayPal Holdings, which in September 2021 acquired Paidy, one of the top BNPLs in Japan.

A pivotal element in digital lending is actually data analysis. To implement this kind of analysis, AI modeling and machine learning play major roles: to better assess the credit worthiness of each borrower, artificial intelligence is able to gather and analyze data that doesn’t seem to be directly connected to credit history, like social media profiles and digital behavior of each user. If this improves lending businesses to improve conversion rates, customers share a huge amount of data to use digital lending services.