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Hi all, Julie here. Happy Friday! I made it home safely to Michigan for the weekend. It’s so nice to have family members that have now been vaccinated to make at least the intimate gatherings feel safe. I still have no desire to go to large gatherings any time soon, but at least this is a step in the right direction!

Coinbase Files to Go Public

You know that little crypto company we did a video about recently? It’s going public via a direct listing! Crypto exchange Coinbase filed this week to become a publicly traded company and revealed some interesting financial info that people other than executives and board members hadn’t seen before.

• Coinbase had net revenue of $1.14B in 2020, up from $483M the previous year.
• It reported net income of $322M for the year after posting a loss in 2019.
• It has 43M verified users as of the end of 2020, with 2.8M making monthly transactions.
• Trading in Bitcoin and Ethereum made up 56% of users’ trading volume.

Affirm Debit (Credit?) Card

Newly minted public company Affirm announced this week that it’s going to launch a new card that allows users to pay in installments. It’s being called a debit card, but it’s kind of a credit card too I guess? It’ll be available later in 2021. Instead of paying for a product instantly or having it put on a credit card with a bunch of other items to be paid off in full or accrue interest, the user will be able to split up the purchase into equal installments. Depending on the merchant, the card will offer both interest free and simple interest bearing loans. The Buy Now Pay Later space has been seeing a surge in growth online, so a card like this is a natural way to try to gain market share at the point-of-sale.

Step Reaches 1M Users

Teenage banking startup Step announced that it now has more than 1M users a few months after its launch. This comes on the back of the news that Step recently closed a new debt facility that included a baseball player you might have heard of, Alex Rodriguez.

Step offers users the ability to build credit before they turn 18 through a free, FDIC insured bank account, secured spending card and P2P payments platform. Teens can easily send and receive money from friends and earn rewards while parents can teach kids about financial responsibility by setting budgets and adding in a weekly allowance.

I’d assume Step, like many other teen banking companies, isn’t earning a ton in revenue right now even on 1M users (it has no fees so there’s no subscription revenue, and teens likely aren’t spending a ton on a debit card to rack up interchange). BUT, if it can convert those users into loyal members and cross sell other products to them, that’s where the cash flow could start ramping up nicely.

More Crypto News

Custodian startup Anchorage has raised an $80M Series C funding round led by Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC. Some companies, such as Tesla and Square, have recently started investing in cryptocurrencies. Anchorage wants to play a role here. So, with the fresh funding, Anchorage co-founders Diogo Mónica and Nathan McCauley told The Block that it is aiming to get more institutions participating in the crypto world in new ways. Examples they listed were bringing crypto to users, diversifying their corporate treasuries, and enabling broader use cases that are popping up. Anchorage recently became the first federally chartered digital asset bank, which should allow it to do more in these areas than others in the space.

Two job postings today for you from two awesome companies:

1. ​Growth Marketer, Dwelling. Dwelling has built the absolute best way to buy your first place - think Honey, for home buying. This early stage company has found customers over $5M to put towards their first house purchases, and it's looking to scale up its marketing across all channels. You’ll work alongside a killer team with early experience at Opendoor, Uber, Shopify, and Compass - reporting directly to our CEO.
2. ​Manager, Developer Relations, NVIDIA. Bring your passion for fintech and data science to work at the center of innovation in AI with NVIDIA. This startup looking for a cross between a data scientist and business development leader who has a passion for Fintech and is comfortable working with data science teams at Fintech companies to get innovative AI projects off the ground. Bonus points if you have the business acumen/presence to engage the ecosystem through blogs, meetups, conferences, etc to promote all things at the intersection of Fintech & AI.

Moov did the work we all wanted but didn't deserve: A dictionary of fintech terms! Eat your hearts out, my friends.

Julie VerHage-Greenberg is the co-founder of Fintech Today, where she focuses on editorial content and brand. Prior to joining, she was Bloomberg’s first fintech reporter, covering Robinhood from before it was a billion dollar company, breaking the news that Plaid was acquiring Quovo, and interviewing executives on Bloomberg TV and at several large conferences.

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