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Hi all, Julie here.

I’m not feeling great today so I'm gonna make this one fast. Don’t forget about our LatAm Twitter Spaces happening on Wednesday at 7et! It’s an all female panel so I’m exceptionally excited about it :)

Lastly, if you are a VC, Angel Investor or Founder, I’d love your thoughts on what’s going on in the private markets vs the public markets. I haven’t seen much of a down tick in terms of private market valuations or investor interest, but I’m curious if others have. I’m betting on a lot of companies being flush with capital and not having to raise for awhile, which will avoid new rounds at lower valuations. I’d also expect a lot of flat rounds when they do raise again. Just reply to this email if you have thoughts :)

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Company News

Plaid’s Big Acquisition

So y’all have probably heard about this by now since I totally forgot to put it in the newsletter on Friday, but Plaid bought Cognito for ~$250M. For those unfamiliar with Cognito (me), it helps with ID verification, KYC, and anti-money laundering. This allows Plaid to layer more services atop its core remit of consumer bank account connections via developer hooks. Not surprising, but cool to see it keep progressing :)

Speaking of Plaid, Zach Perret, John Pitts and Ginger Baker hosted a fintech predictions event earlier today. I’ll post the full recording in Wednesday’s newsletter, but here are some of the predictions from Zach. You have to watch the full thing if you wanna know if John and Ginger agreed with these ;)

1. Unbundling, rebundling and back again
2. Rise of neo-super-apps
3. New payment types reach critical mass
4. Real-time credit decisioning revolutionizes consumer credit
5. Climate tech <3 Fintech
6. Web2 > Web3….via Web2.5

Shopify Troubles

Canadian e-commerce and payment giant Shopify fell by the most in almost two years late last week after a report that it terminated contracts with several warehouse and fulfillment partners. The report said that Shopify was expected to have about half of its previous capacity for e-commerce orders for merchants. The company confirmed that it has canceled contracts but didn’t get any details. A number of analysts lowered their share price targets over the past week. The stock has now tumbled around 50% from it’s peak.

Funding and Deals

Berlin Startup Funding

SMB corporate credit startup Moss has raised a new $86M funding round. The company is known for offering corporate credit cards for small and medium companies so that they can more easily spend and track expenses. Tiger Global is leading the round at a $573M valuation. The key difference between it and its competitors, according to Moss, is that it offers credit rather than debit cards. Overall, Moss has processed 250k transactions and issued 20k cards issued in Germany and the Netherlands.

Facet Wealth’s New Round

The fintech company known for offering financial advice at an “affordable subscription price” has raised $100M in new funding led by Durable Capital Partners. The SEC registered investment adviser allows users to get a personalized financial plan, and subscription prices range from $1,800 to $6,000 annually. It serves north of 10k clients.

Crypto Watch

El Salvador BTC

The nation purchased an additional 410 Bitcoin for $15M sometime around last Friday, according to a tweet from its president Nayib Bukele. The January 21 message was in response to an older tweet from the 14th, where the president wrote: “I think I might have miss[ed] the dip this time.” El Salvador has now bought at least 1,801 Bitcoin, based on public reports about the country’s purchase history.

FTX Wants Margin Trades

Cryptocurrency exchange FTX.US has added a board of directors as the company looks for regulatory approval to extend leverage to derivatives traders. The board is a requirement by the CFTC to offer leveraged trading. Who knew! The CFTC also requires a risk model that is able to calculate the initial amount of margin that needs to be posted, the amount of variation margin — or responses to price movements —needed and when liquidation occurs. Margin trading allows traders to leverage their positions using funds borrowed from the exchange. If it sounds risky, it’s because it is (to both consumers and exchanges). Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken was fined $1.12M in September 2021 for failing to register its margin products with the CFTC. Coinbase Pro disabled its margin trading services in November 2020 in response to growing regulatory concerns.

Coinbase Makes An SEC Hire

Crypto giant Coinbase has hired Thaya Knight of the SEC as its senior public policy manager.

Knight was, until this month, counsel to SEC commissioner Elad Roisman. On LinkedIn, Knight wrote that she was “very pleased to be joining the public policy team at Coinbase this week. Looking forward to doing great and exciting work with this terrific team!" Last year, Coinbase's public policy push focused in part on the creation of a dedicated crypto regulator. Could be a key hire with a lot of moving parts when it comes to crypto regulation.

JPM Closes Uniswap Founder’s Bank Accounts

Hayden Adams tweeted Sunday that JPM closed his bank accounts without notice or explanation. The move comes a few months after the SEC reportedly started investigating Uniswap Labs, the main developer of the world's largest decentralized exchange protocol Uniswap. Brian Quintenz, the former chairman of the CFTC, weighed in on Twitter. His theory was that the Fed or the OCC’s bank examiners might have deemed Adams too risky.

Together With Fintech Meetup

​Fintech Meetup Is Almost Here! Get Your Ticket Before Prices Go Up On Friday!

All of Fintech’s leading companies will be at Fintech Meetup–don’t miss out on the easiest way to fill your pipeline, meet new partners and get business done! We’re facilitating 30,000+ double opt-in virtual meetings so you can meet everyone you need to meet. Your prospects, partners (and competitors!) will all be there!

1,000+ leading companies have already signed up, including:

• Fintechs, including Alloy, Argyle, Array, Boomtown, Bread Finance, Checkout.com, Dwolla, Equifax, Emburse, NIUM, Ripple, Sila, Socure and Upstart (and many, many more!)
• Payments, Networks and Tech Cos, including American Express, Discover, Finastra, FIS, Fiserv, Mastercard, SWIFT, The Clearing House, Visa and Western Union
• Neobanks, including Dave, First Boulevard, Cash App (Square), Revolut, Varo Bank and WebBank
• Investors, including Bain Capital Ventures, Commerce Ventures, General Atlantic, Mosaik Partners, Next Level Ventures, Point 72 Ventures, Tribeca Venture Partners and Vestigo Ventures
• Major banks, including Bank of America, Citi, CIT Bank, Cross River, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, J.P. Morgan, Santander and Wells Fargo

Virtual, March 22-24. Startup rate available for qualifying cos. Hurry– Get Your Ticket Now!

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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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