Who will be Top Dog in Digital Currencies?

On By mehranmuslimiblogIn Bitcoin, cryptoLeave a comment

Digital currencies have been popping up like daisies over the last several years and there doesn’t seem to be an end to it. Some might say that it would be more accurate to compare them to weeds and that an awful lot of them need to be removed from the cryptocurrency environment.

It is certainly true that there are questions marks over the long-term survival of a significant number of them. Brad Garlinghouse, the Ripple CEO, thinks that around 99% of digital assets will “got to zero”. And there are many others who agree with him, even if they don’t put a precise figure on it.

Now the survival of what I might call the ‘smaller’ coins is even more in question, because central banks are moving into the digital asset arena with their own digital currency, and this will put a lot of pressure on all but the strongest cryptocurrencies.

Mati Greenspan, senior analyst at eToro remarked to Charles Bovaird at Forbes: “At the moment the three biggest currencies in the world are racing to make their fiat digital.” In this race, China is winning, because the European Central Bank and the Federal Reserve haven’t put in the effort to keep up. Then we add something like Libra into the mix and for a time it looked like Facebook’s digital coinage had the potential to threaten every other cryptocurrency,. Now, that project looks less certain to be such a major threat.

So what is the likely outcome? Some market observers believe that whatever happens, there won’t be a winner-take-all scenario. Jacob Eliosoff, a cryptocurrency fund manager thinks there will be around 100 widely used cryptocurrencies that will survive. Marouane Garcon, managing director of Amulet said, “There won’t be a single currency because of too many political differences in the world, but just like fiat currencies some will be stronger in value than others.”

Furthermore, bitcoin, which is currently the leading digital currency, may not be the ultimate winner, but it is likely to be in the winning group. Jake Yocom-Piatt from Decred had this to say: “Instead of a large amount of capital and attention spread across many currencies, we will increasingly see that same capital and attention spread across a smaller number of SOVs, leading to a corresponding increase in their value.”

Who do you think will win the race to be Top Dog in this race? The central bank coins, stablecoins like Libra, or bitcoin and its peers?

Will Neobanks Reward Investors?

On By mehranmuslimiblogIn FintechLeave a comment

Venture capital firms have been flocking to invest in neobanks, and they must be hoping that they will see big rewards. Expectations are high, but it appears that some questions are being asked about whether or not the hype around fintech will yield the financial returns that everyone hopes for.

It is true that the neobanks are attracting plenty of customers; N26 and Revolut being two good examples of customer growth. According to Accenture, UK-based digital banks could add 35 million customers over the next year, and they have around 13 million at present. Its data also shows that in the first six months of 2019, the UK neobanks added five million customers, indicating that the sector is picking up momentum this year.

However, there are some challenges remaining. First, the traditional banks still occupy the biggest slice of the market, and then there are the financial regulators like the FCA, which are extremely averse to any finance related institution cutting corners. Plus, as John Detrixhe points out, we have seen that companies in other ‘disrupting’ sectors, Uber and WeWork, have demonstrated that big valuations and intense customer growth are not sure signs of success. He also says that the fintechs need to ask themselves if they will continue to be seen as a niche product, or will customers eventually see them as a one-stop financial service.

Hence, there seems to be some changes happening in fintech investment, with investors looking at fintech tools beyond neobanks that will prove to provide bigger gains. This move is based on the idea that digital banks will never really disrupt the traditional banks.

So, they are looking at fintech software, such as cloud-hosted software and systems that make it easier to sign up for a new account. In other words, there is a belief circulating that the incumbent banks can fend off the newcomers by adopting new technology that allows them to offer the same benefits as their digital competitors.

These fintech tools are not as sexy an investment as Revolut say, but they could perform better in the long term, because if the incumbent banks can provide the same service as Revolut, then why would customers switch?

The situation in Europe is different to that in other regions where there are millions of people who are unbanked. Europeans have fewer problems with banking access, but perhaps don’t always have a great customer experience. So there is still plenty of investor enthusiasm in the West. Detrixhe says, “Eighteen of Europe’s biggest fintechs are now valued at more than $1 billion, according to Richard Diffenthal, a partner at Hogan Lovells. Investors are lining up to give them even more money.”

The one advantage that neobanks have over the traditional banks is that the incumbents can’t just rip up their legacy and start afresh. They are having to implement change one small step at a time, and that will take time. The neobanks need to use this opportunity, i.e. the incumbent banks slow-moving change, to accelerate their position as a trustworthy alternative to the banks that have been trading for hundreds of years. Then they will provide the returns that make investors happy.

5 fintech trends for 2020

On By mehranmuslimiblogIn Banks, crypto, Digital Innovation, FintechLeave a comment

As we approach the end of 2019 it’s the time of year when sector pundits start to look at trends for 2020. You’ll find these within nearly every imaginable product group, and fintech is no different. This year, as in mnay others, the trends are identified at the major conferences, such as Money 20/20, which took place in Las Vegas in October.

1. Product bundling

Fintech startups have typically released single products. Transferwise is an example. As a result, what a bank offered had been ‘unbundled’ by the fintechs. Now there is a move to rebundling products to provide a one-stop experience, but it’s still early days.

2. An holistic experience

Fintechs were initially about financial inclusion and affordable options, but now there is a move towards creating an holistic customer experience that focuses on financial health. Financial health is becoming more vertically focused. This trend includes companies that target specific demographics (e.g. seniors or kids), job categories (e.g. gig economy) and industries (e.g. dental practices).

3. A more global vision

US-based conferences in the past tended to focus on the domestic market, but this year has seen attendees arrive from around the major world regions. It forces the Americans to think more globally and recognise that some of the largest fintechs in the world are global, including the neobanks, such as Nubank in Brazil. We will definitely see an acceleration in the growth of fintech globally, as Asia and Europe are already outperforming North America.

4. More focus on security

Cyber threats are certain to rise, not least because quantum computing is about to come into play and its method of computing will upset the current cryptographic security.

5. From vertical to horizontal

In the beginning fintech startups were vertical, as they travelled alone, so to speak. But the big news is that in the next few years, it will look at horizontal integration as it introduces its innovative ideas to other industries, and also make it possible for non-financial firms like Amazon to offer financial products. It was apparently noticeable that a significant number of C-Suite execs from other industries were at the Las Vegas event.

Of course, fintech is still in its infancy, and we will see many more changes, probably in the not too distant future, as fintech evolves to meet a range of needs worldwide.

Bitcoin heads towards its teen years

On By mehranmuslimiblogIn Bitcoin, cryptoLeave a comment

On the 31st October 2019 Satoshi Nakamoto’s baby turned 11 years old. It’s quite remarkable to think that in two years time the white paper that changed the world will be a teenager.

Of course more people are preoccupied with Halloween on this day, at least in Europe, and the UK delayed its Brexit as well for the second or third time (everyone is losing count), which grabbed the news headlines. However, it is somewhat sad to see that after 11 years, the mainstream media still ignores Bitcoin, and all the celebrations were left to the crypto-focused press.

The original white paper is only nine pages long and opens with a remarkably humble statement: “I’ve been working on a new electronic cash system that’s fully peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party.” Some might say that this is the understatement of the century, because the author makes it sound as if it is mundane, and yet 11 years on we know its potential to create billionaires, as well as spawning an entire crypto industry now filled with a host of altcoins, as well as goodness knows how many fintech startups related to cryptocurrency.

A groundbreaking white paper

We should never forget just how groundbreaking the bitcoin white paper was. For the first time somebody had delivered a blueprint for an anonymous, trustless, decentralised currency. Of course, it didn’t appear out of nowhere. Fore example, Nakamoto says in his white paper that the proof-of-work protocol was developed from Dai Wei’s B-money thereby ensuring a ‘one CPU one vote’ policy.

Another important aim was to be a deflationary currency. This was achieved by stating that a finite number of bitcoin would be available. In this case 21 million. Fiat currencies by contrast can be printed or minted whenever a central bank/government decides, and that is an inflationary move. Eventually you end up like Venezuela in a state of hyperinflation, if you keep printing money, but your national borrowing keeps growing and there’s nothing to repay it with. Then you see people with notes piled up in a shopping trolley just to buy a loaf of bread. This situation is alien to the bitcoin ecosystem.

Nakamoto had beef with fractional reserve banking

Satoshi Nakamoto was not a fan of the banks that run the global monetary system, precisely because of issues like hyperinflation. But his pet hate was fractional reserve banking. In this system a bank can accept deposits, make loans or investments, but it is only required to “hold reserves equal to only a fraction of its deposit liabilities,” as Martin Young explains at BTC News. The problem with this type of banking is that when the reserves don’t match the money deposited by customers, and there’s an event that creates a domino effect, then the bank collapses and the customers lose their money. Which is exactly what happened in 2008. Let’s not forget that Nakamoto published the white paper only six weeks after Lehmann Brothers spectacular crash.

Eleven years on, bitcoin has become iconic for its many supporters, and hated by a few. It is also true to say that the majority of people worldwide still don’t understand it, and are being fed all kinds of scary stories by the media, which doesn’t encourage them to understand the upside of cryptocurrency.

It may be true that we haven’t yet reached anywhere near the mass adoption figures that the first cypherpunks hoped for, but in another 11 years, I believe that celebrations of bitcoin’s birthday will be more widespread and that it will be more widely accepted. It may even be a lifebelt for many when the next global financial crisis hits us.