Fintech

Bitcoin traded above $3,000 for the first time on Sunday, continuing this year’s massive surge and helped by increased demand from Asia-based investors.

After trading in a range for the last week, bitcoin climbed to an all-time high Sunday of $3,012.05, according to CoinDesk.
The new record comes at a time when alternative digital assets are seeing robust inflows, with ethereum’s ether token setting a new all-time high of more than $300 today as well.

Wall street is experiencing a bullish cycle that is more than seven months old. How long will it last? Doubts regarding the sustainability of this trend continue to rise; they are more than justified if we consider that this season of the year is the less favourable from a statistical point of view. One month ago, the S&P 500 had given an early warning signal through a pullback of more than 1% within a single session. It didn’t happen since months but the market had more or less ignored such signal since the uptrend had quickly resumed. It happens often this way: a first pullback occurs, then the stock hunters intervene at the earliest opportunity to jump into the market at prices just a bit lower than the highs, a typical behaviour reflecting the ripeness of the uptrending cycle and, by consequence, its vulnerability.

Brazil has seen a recent boom in fintech with startups providing digital, low-interest banking solutions. These innovative alternatives are in turn causing big banks to reevaluate their own services. In Goldman Sachs’ latest report to the New York Times, Brazil’s fintech leaders are revolutionizing the traditional banking sector.

Entitled “Fintech Brazil’s Moment,” the 45-page research report estimates that the more than 200 financial technology companies in Brazil should generate a potential revenue pool of about $24 billion over the next 10 years. Payments, lending and personal finance are three promising segments, as is insurance, the report found.

Fintech is taking the world by storm, and investors are starting to notice. While 2016 was dubbed what some might say as “challenging” for the fintech market, overall investment in fintech totalled $24.7 billion, according to KPMG. That figure is impressive enough on its own, but it pales in comparison to the $46.7 billion invested in 2015.

As KPMG suggests, 2016 was a “challenging year for fintech investment,” with thanks to the Brexit vote and circumstances surrounding that outcome. The US presidential election was also a contributing factor, while there was also a slight slowdown in China.

Robo-advice is less popular than financial advisers, friends or even the internet, according to research published today (31 May).

Despite an increased focus on using computer programmes and automation in financial decision-making, most consumers do not feel comfortable with this new technology.

Cryptocurrency is not only Bitcoin: when Ether was announced in 2015, it seemed like a very ambitious project. By this time, bitcoin had already established dominance in the cryptocurrency industry, but it had been created with a different purpose that would diverge from bitcoin’s primary use as a cryptocurrency.
Ethereum would build a network, much like bitcoin, which was based on blockchain, but Ethereum would allow other apps to be created on it. The idea being to allow companies to take advantage of blockchain technology and run their own stuff. In return, Ethereum users would earn ether for keeping the network running. After receiving funding, Ethereum users were rewarded with ether, whose value was about $3.

Abigail Johnson, chair and CEO of Fidelity Investments, went public with her enthusiasm for blockchain technology, bitcoin, ethereum and what the future holds for both open-source, public blockchains and more private alternatives, during Coinbase, a bitcoin and blockchain conference held in New York City.

In her talk, Johnson discussed the "future scenario" where blockchain technologies have thrived, remarking that she thinks this has a "reasonable chance" of coming to pass despite the relative newness of the technology.

The massive cyberattack that targeted 300’000 devices in 150 countries around the world one week ago, including important social infrastructures, businesses and private users, raises serious question about growing internet vulnerabilities and computer safety. It is still unclear who is the responsible for the ransomware attack, government agencies around the world are investigating, but one thing is certain: the growing menace of cyber-attacks is escalating, governments and companies are expected to increase spending on IT security after being caught out by the attack and the firms providing IT security services are poised to expand.