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Hi all, Julie here.

Writing this from the hair salon before the ice storm hits. If I’m gonna freeze, I might as well look good doing it. Thanks again to Wiza and the African fintech crew for coming on Twitter Spaces with me today to talk about the space! 500 of you joined in to hear what’s going on in the region :) And if you missed it, you can listen to the recording here.

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Company News

PayPal Gets Hit On Guidance

Shares of PayPal had one of their worst days ever after earnings were a slight miss and guidance was hella disappointing. The stock ended up closing down ~25%. The most troubling thing that I saw was that it missed on user growth targets due in part to 4.5M “illegitimate” accounts that joined the platform. Other payments companies like Block and Affirm got hit hard too in anticipation of their growth also possibly slowing. Full disclosure, I already own Affirm and I bought 2 shares of PayPal at $135 this morning.

Funding and Deals

NFT Superhero Empire

Pixel Vault, a huge NFT collection of superhero-esque characters just closed a $100M funding round from Adam Bain and Dick Costolo’s 01 Advisors and Velvet Sea Ventures. The company intends on using the funds to create a “decentralized Disney” where fans and owners of the characters participate as owners and builders of the franchises. While this project is about empowering the community and the NFT owners, the community also isn’t hurting for money. It has seen nearly 100,000 ETH in lifetime transaction volume — more than a quarter of a billion dollars at current prices.

Crypto Watch

Consensys Buys MyCrypto

ConsenSys announced that it is acquiring MyCrypto, which is a wallet interface for securely managing Ethereum addresses. The team will pair up with ConsenSys' MetaMask, which is another popular Ethereum wallet. The goal is to create one great offering together and enhance each other's capabilities (web browsers, mobile apps, browser extensions etc). Something I learned in reading about the deal is just how crazy MetaMask's growth has been. It saw its monthly users go from 1M in October 2020 to 21M in November 2021. Wowza. Along with that growth came issues of people criticizing the platform and its capabilities. Hopefully this deal fixes a lot of that.

FTX M&A

Oh hey, more crypto M&A. I’m still waiting for FTX to buy Robinhood, but in the meantime, the massive crypto exchange is buying Japanese rival Liquid for an undisclosed sum. FTX has been looking to quickly expand into the Asian region, and this acquisition will surely help with that (plus FTX has plenty of money to do so). Liquid is one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges by volume, with nearly $72M in daily trading volumes. The company is not without its issues though. It suffered a huge hack last year which saw the cybercriminals make off with more than $90M worth of funds. In perhaps a sign of things to come, FTX lent Liquid $120M in debt financing shortly after the hack.

FTX Warning In South Africa

Andddd speaking of FTX, South Africa’s financial regulator said traders should be “cautious and vigilant” when using the platform. Rough. The Financial Sector Conduct Authority issued two notices this week warning against dealing with Bahamas-headquartered FTX and Seychelles-based ByBit. It said the companies aren’t authorized to give financial advice or intermediary services in South Africa. Like many geographies, South Africa is trying to figure out how to regulate the space. There are a few rules that could be passed this year, but a lot is still in flux.

Together With Fintech Meetup

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​Mobile Engineer (iOS & Android) at Zeta​

Zeta is a financial institution for the modern-day family. It believes that mastering your money together is a core skill for every relationship. Using a combination of technology, support and advice, it’s aim is to help the 130M American families who deserve better. From learning to combine your finances to paying for down debt together, saving for your first house to prepping for child #1, Zeta’s mission is to help couples and families thrive. It is now looking for an engineer to build simple, elegant and affordable tools to help families gain insight into their money. It has already begun creating products, data systems, UIs, and mobile apps but there’s still a lot of ground to cover. If this sounds like you, apply above!

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.

113 Cherry St #92768, Seattle, WA 98104-2205