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Hi all, Julie here.

Some of you said you’d rather not have much personal stuff in the newsletter, so the intro is short and sweet today.

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Company News

iPhone Payment Terminals

One of my favorite colleagues to work with at Bloomberg was Mark Gurman. He’s got a great scoop this week about Apple’s plan to turn iPhones into payment terminals. The new service would let small businesses accept payments directly on their iPhones without any extra hardware. It’s been in development for over a year, according to Mark. Basically ever since it paid $100M for Canadian startup Mobeewave. That team developed technology for smartphones to accept payments with the tap of a credit card. Square/Block shares have fallen a little bit since the news came out, but investors seem to be mostly shaking the news off. Remember, Block has diversified a lot over the last couple of years, so this would be much less of a hit now than it would have been just 3-4 years ago.

$HODLing Robinhood

There’s not really any way to sugarcoat Robinhood’s earnings on Thursday. User growth is not existent, revenue per user isn’t great, and active user numbers are (still) falling. CEO Vlad Tenev admitted his disappointment on the call and tried to assuage shareholders by reminding them of the product launch plans it has for 2022. Crypto wallets, maybe NFTs, tax-advantaged retirement accounts and more.

Funding and Deals

Insurtech Funding: Ascend

Ascend, an insurance payments fintech, announced a $30M funding along with $250M in lending to finance insurance premium loans by Hudson Structured Capital Management (HSCM Bermuda). The equity portion was led by Index Ventures. Ascend’s payments APIs automate end-to-end insurance payments, and it offers a BNPL financing option for distribution of commissions and carrier payables. The team says that much of the customer interest comes from traditional insurance agents and small independent insurance agents.

Esusu Wants Rent to Help Credit

We’ve talked about credit scores a decent amount in this newsletter. One area in particular that we haven’t covered though is rent and credit scores. A lot of people pay their rent on time. A lot of people don’t get credit for doing so. Esusu is a New York fintech that just raised $130M and wants to fix this. It partners with property owners and housing providers and works with 35% of the largest landlords on the National Multifamily Housing Council (NHMC) list. The team captures on-time rental payment data of renters who opt-in to its platform and reports to the three major credit bureaus to strengthen their credit scores. Esusu charges property managers and owners a $3,500 set-up fee and $2 per unit monthly. Renters, on the other hand, pay an annual subscription fee of $50 to report their rental payment data to credit bureaus.

Crypto Funding

Fireblocks has raised a new round at an $8B valuation, four times what the company was valued at in July. The new $550M round was co-led by D1 Capital Partners and Spark Capital. The company enables financial institutions, including Bank of New York Mellon, BlockFi and eToro, to provide direct custody of digital assets. It reportedly supports custody across 25 different blockchains and has grown its client base to 800 with more than $2T in assets secured on the platform.

Crypto Watch

White House Crypto Order

Not confirmed, but there were reports this week that the White House is preparing an executive order to regulate cryptocurrency as a matter of national security. The order would assign agencies to analyze the various forms of digital assets and create a framework for regulation, according to Barron's. Things could get spicyyyyy.

Crypto Lending Scrutiny

Speaking of regulation, interesting story on Celcius given the huge drop we’ve seen in crypto over the last couple of weeks. For those that don’t know, Celsius is one of several crypto-lending platforms attracting deposits by offering high rates that are paid in cryptocurrencies. The rate at Celsius varies from about 3% to 8% on Bitcoin, 4% to 7% on Ether, 9% to 11% on Tether, and its top rate of 18% on a coin called Synthetix. Investors get the highest rates if they accept yields in a token called CEL. Celsius and others say they’re able to pay these high rates because they invest the deposits and earn even bigger returns, in part by lending cryptocurrency to traders, who are willing to pay high rates to use it for bets. Couple of problems: regulators aren’t very fond of this and are looking to make some changes. Two: the funds aren’t FDIC insured so you could technically lose all of your money.

Crypto For the Kids

LeBron James and Crypto.com have teamed up to teach kids about crypto technology and the ways it could impact their lives. The students at Lebron’s I Promise School will get to learn about the space and careers in it from experts provided by Crypto.com. Note: Crypto.com recently purchased the naming rights to the Staples Center in LA as part of a 20-year, $700M deal. The venue was renamed Crypto.com Arena on December 25.

Crypto Hack

It was only a matter of time until we had another hack. $80M has been stolen from DeFi protocol Qubit Finance, with the attackers exploiting the protocol to take 206,809 Binance coins through Qubit’s QBridge deposit function, making it the seventh largest DeFi hack ever.

Reports say the attacker basically took advantage of a logical error in Qubit Finance’s code that allowed them to input malicious data and withdraw tokens on BSC when none were deposited on Ethereum. “The exploit and loss of funds have a profound effect on thousands of real people,” the company said. The team said it contacted the exploiter to offer the maximum bounty as set by its program. It didn’t disclose how much the bounty would be, or if the hacker was receptive.

A Meta ETF, Not A Bitcoin ETF

Fidelity is looking for ways to create a fund that will track the metaverse. According to a filing with the SEC, the company wants to create a pair of ETFs that will track companies engaged in the metaverse and cryptocurrency industries. The “Fidelity Metaverse ETF” will seek to provide returns comparable to a proprietary index comprised of stocks of companies that generate at least 50% of their total revenue from categories such as computing hardware and components, digital infrastructure, gaming technology and wearable technology. The Fidelity Crypto Industry and Digital Payments ETF will seek to replicate the performance of an internal index comprised of companies engaged in businesses such as mining, cryptosupport services, blockchain and digital payments processing. The ETF won’t invest in actual cryptocurrencies or initial coin offerings. Shocker.

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!

​Recruiter at BTC Inc​

At BTC Inc, its mission is Hyperbitcoinization across all of its brands - Bitcoin Magazine, The Bitcoin Conference, UTXO Management, and Earn Carrot. It believes that Bitcoin opens the door to a global, inclusive monetary network free from censorship, government manipulation, and poor financial incentives. It is now searching for an experienced full-cycle recruiter to join BTC Inc as it expands its teams.

As a Recruiter, you’ll own the entire recruiting process from start to finish. You’ll collaborate directly with hiring managers and leadership to bring on critical hires needed for its business. You’ll work closely with the Head of People to help improve processes and identify new sourcing strategies. If you thrive on ownership and work collaboratively across teams to make great hires, apply above!

Congrats Nik!

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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