Posted In:

2020


#368
Sayonara 2020!

Published:

Dec 30, 2020


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Posted In:

2020

Published:

Dec 30, 2020


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Happy New Year from all of us at FinTech Collective! Once again we are reaching out to you all (all 12,600 of you) to say a big thank you for reading and supporting our weekly labor of love (aka this newsletter). We wish you all a very healthy, happy and prosperous 2021!

During 2020 we shared over 1,600 fintech related news articles and created some of our own proprietary content. As we write everything ourselves, we enjoy the feedback loop of finding out the number of reads and clicks we get. So, as we have done in years past, we want to share some of that data and take a moment to reflect on some of the content you thought were the most notable. Enjoy reminiscing, and if you have friends or colleagues who will enjoy our weekly missive, please have them sign up here! Link

Oh! And we must not forget our most popular Gif of the year – which pretty much sums up 2020 in a nutshell.

Most Popular Newsletters from 2020


Let’s Stay Friends - Feb 2020
3 years and 3 Prime Ministers later - the UK has left the European Union. Brexit supporters were chuffed to bits celebrating last night - while others didn’t bother to participate in the festivities dubbed ‘Let’s Stay Friends’ - with pubs promoting reduced prices of German beer, French vodka, and Irish whiskey. Fintech startups in the UK are arguing “Brexit Shmexit!” as the UK pulled in more fintech funding ($4.9b) in 2019 than China and India, and double the rest of the EU.

SoFi’s Ferrari Engine - Apr 2020
Putting a Ferrari engine in a Fiat doesn’t make it a Ferrari – but it definitely does improve its performance, as the Fiat Dino once proved. Publicly traded alternative lenders have been facing immense market pressure, with Lending Club, Ondeck, and Funding Circle all down ~90% since IPO. SoFi’s $1.2b acquisition of Galileo definitively adds horsepower and diversifies revenue ahead of their inevitable IPO.

The Toothpaste is out of the Tube - Aug 2020
The US printed more money in June than in the first two centuries after its founding. Last month, the US budget deficit was larger than the total debt incurred from 1776 to 1979. Though talks between US congressional leaders and the White House on a next round of COVID-related spending stalled, government intervention is reaching higher levels than many would be comfortable with. Consequently, Bitcoin crossed back over $10k this week with fortitude, and total value locked in DeFi protocols crossed $3.5b.

1-800-NO-YIELD - Oct 2020
Near-zero yields are making it difficult for pensions and endowments to hit the targets they need to meet their future obligations. As an example, the $400b California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS), which provides benefits for 2m current and future retirees, must earn an annual return of at least 7% to meet those obligations. That’s not an easy task when the safe investments that pension funds usually rely on are paying sub 1%. Creative CIOs are shifting into assets once considered on the fringes of conventional investing.

Most Clicked Stories from 2020


Cockneys announce 'Miley Cyrus' as official rhyming slang for coronavirus - Used in a sentence, it will be something like, “Oi, love, wash yer brass bands, we don’t want a dose of that Miley.” Read more

Inside the Vision Fund’s civil war: deal conflicts, leak suspicions - The Information dives into how Soft bank's Masayoshi Son blew through the money with a rapid-fire series of high-priced investments amid bitter feuds between his investment teams. Read more

The IRS sets a trap for cryptocurrency tax cheats - The WSJ examines how the U.S. Internal Revenue Service plans to alter the standard 1040 form by adding a new question which the taxpayer must check the box “Yes” or “No.” Read more

The Fintech 250: The top fintech companies of 2020 - Congratulations to portfolio companies Anyfin, Flutterwave, Embroker, Ocrolus and Reonomy for making the third annual CB Insights Fintech 250 list. Read more

Most read / listened to FTC Content from 2020


The $80 trillion fintech conundrum: Who wins the future of asset management? - Over the past 20 years, we’ve seen technology transform nearly every sector of the financial world. But, asset management broadly, and the buy-side more specifically, has been slower than other sectors to see digital and data-driven transformation. As we look to the next ten years, we expect to see significant change. To learn more, read this report co-published by the team at FTC and Goldman Sachs. Link here

The future of institutional digital asset management has arrived - Why FinTech Collective led a $50m equity round into NYDIG. Link here

A Conversation with Billy Beane - Gareth Jones has a lively discussion with Billy Beane, inspiration for the movie (and book) Moneyball, during our recently held 8th Annual Meeting of CEOs and LPs. Link here

DeFi: A conversation with Sean Lippel on decentralized finance - Come listen to the conversation in the FinTech Collective podcast booth on how finance is evolving at the speed of open source technology. Spotify: Link here, Apple: Link here

SPACs: A timely conversation with investment bankers Herb Yeh and Paul Abrahimzadeh of Citi - We dig under the hood of what a SPAC is, what they target, and what to do as a CEO if you are approached by one. Link here

Emerging Markets: An introduction to FTC’s emerging cities thesis - Brooks Gibbins and Carlos Alonso Torras discuss trends in emerging markets, some of FTC’s emerging markets portfolio companies and provide an introduction to FTC's emerging cities thesis. Link here

Fireside Chat: Peak Performance with Nick Maloney Podcast - Gareth Jones is joined by world class yachtsman, ocean adventurer and performance coach Nick Maloney for an incredible conversation on the power of pushing oneself to the limit of human potential. Link here

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