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Hi all, Julie here.

Sad news to share today. Earlier this week, Brandon Dewitt, the co-founder of MX, died after a long battle with cancer. We’re sending all of our thoughts and prayers to his family and loved ones as they mourn his loss during the holiday season. While there’s never a good time to lose a loved one, it always seems particularly hard this time of year.

Today's Partner, Laika

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Company News

N26 Bails On America

I mean, we all kind of saw this one coming. Even N26 employees that I’ve talked to before didn’t think this was going to work. But hey, never know for sure until you try (and spend millions of dollars)? Stay tuned for a future post on what this says about challenger banks and global expansion.

Meme Stock Lawsuit Dismissed

Here’s a win for Citadel and Robinhood. The pair got a proposed class-action lawsuit brought by retail investors dismissed. The group has accused the firms of colluding during January’s meme-stock frenzy. U.S. District Judge Cecilia Altonaga in Miami said that the plaintiffs failed to show there was any agreement between Citadel and Robinhood to act together. The investor group has until December 20 to possibly file an amended complaint.

Paytm IPO Flop

Well, that didn’t go as planned. India’s biggest-ever IPO, Paytm, saw a 27% plunge on its opening day. What happened? Well, the founder’s grand ambition to make Paytm’s IPO the country’s largest-ever backfired. The company, with support from its bankers, pushed up both the price and the size of the stock offering to the breaking point, leaving retail investors that piled in at a loss.

Funding and Deals

Crypto Funding

Ethereum blockchain startup ConsenSys has raised $200M from HSBC, Coinbase Ventures and others. The funds are going to focus on an Asian expansion and devoting even more resources to NFTs. It’s valuation is now north of $3B. Perhaps they can also find a way to lower gas fees? Thanks in advance.

Gemini Takes External Capital

The Winklevoss twins’ Gemini decided to raise external funding for the first time, nabbing $400M at a $7B valuation. Cameron and Tyler had funded the exchange by themselves until this point. Ironically, the funding is said to be aimed at helping the company dive deeper into the metaverse, where Facebook/Meta is also focusing a lot of time these days. Of course, Forbes asked the twins about Meta, and Cameron contrasted a decentralized model of the metaverse with the Facebook path.

“There's a centralized path, like Facebook or Fortnite, that is one step away from being a metaverse, and that’s totally fine. But there is another path, which is the decentralized metaverse and that's the metaverse where we believe there's greater choice, independence and opportunity, and there is technology that protects the rights and dignity of individuals.”

Crypto Watch

More Sports Marketing

I’m fairly sure Crypto.com alone has spent, like, $1B on sports marketing now? The Staples Center in LA will be renamed the Crypto.com Arena on Christmas as part of a $700M and 20-year agreement. Happy holidays indeed.

Fiat Wins, For Now

Neither Jordan nor myself participated in the effort to buy the constitution in the Sotheby’s auction, but Jordan tuned in while I was hanging Christmas lights (priorities). I just went on Twitter after to watch the chaos ensue as ConstitutionDAO did not, in fact, buy the constitution. UPDATE: In a move that is truly symbolic of 2021, it has been announced that the CEO of Citadel, Ken Griffin, submitted the winning bid for the constitution. Griffin is no stranger to controversy with retail investors, but even I didn’t see this one coming. Get ready for some quality memes.

Macy’s NFTs

I mean, Macy’s needs to make money somehow right? The iconic Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is releasing a series of parade-themed NFTs on Thanksgiving Day. The collection of 9,500 NFTs will be sold through Sweet’s NFT marketplace, built atop the Polygon blockchain. While the NFTs will be free to mint, 10% of their resale profits will be donated to the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

Together With Fintech Meetup

An Online Event that Delivers Real Results? Hell Yeah! Fintech Meetup’s meetings-only format is focused on just one thing--getting you the opportunities you need to drive your business forward. With 30,000+ meetings, you can fill your pipeline, create partnerships, close deals, get funding, find investment targets, make announcements (and many other use cases).

Who’s coming? Everyone. Meet with 3,000+ participants from:

• Fintechs including Akoya, Alliance Data, Alloy, Alviere, Argyle, Autobooks, Azimuth, Botdoc, Certa, Checkout.com, Dave, FISPAN, MANTL, Nuance, Nymbus, Revolut, Ripple, Signal Intent, Sila, Socure, Synctera, Urban FT (to name just a few!)
• Banks including Bank of America, Citi, Federal Reserve, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JP Morgan, Santander, Wells Fargo & more
• Networks including American Express, Discover, Mastercard & Visa
• Investors including Bain Capital, General Atlantic, Mosaik Partners, Next Level, Point 72, Vestigo Ventures & more
• Plus Credit Unions, CUSOs, Community Banks, Tech Cos and more!

Online, March 22-24. Qualifying Startups get special startup rate tickets, qualifying Banks & Credit Unions eligible for FREE tickets. Get Your Ticket!​

​Senior Software Engineer at Moov

​Developer Advocate at Moov

Two awesome remote roles for the job board today. Moov is empowering innovation by helping platforms and creators build payments solutions with ease and speed. The team believes that every software is becoming a payments company, and by equipping developers with the best tools we can tackle complex problems together.

First up: Senior software engineer. In this role, you'll be on the front end of next-generation financial products, owning the full release lifecycle from feature development to public and hosted release.

Next, a brand new role for the company as a developer advocate. Here, you’ll identify external opportunities to engage audiences to build awareness, excitement, and engagement around Moov OSS libraries and integration capabilities. You will build and maintain a strong and credible presence in the developer community by writing technical blog posts, demos, and documentation for Moov's SDKs and APIs. Reporting to our Director of Ecosystem Partnerships you will be a key part of our company’s success and will be part of a rapidly scaling company.

If either of these roles sound like the right fit for you, apply above!

Lastly, happy birthday to the one and only Alex Gillette! Thank you to your girlfriend for sharing this gem on Insta :)

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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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