Finextra Research: Latest fintech news, analysis, interviews, features and opinion by industry experts

Kima bids to build a 'DeFi credit card’

Israeli startup Kima is running a project with Mastercard's FinSec Innovation Lab to connect decentralised finance (DeFi) applications with fiat systems.

14 May 2024

News/crypto

EBAday 2024: The future of CBDCs, tokenised deposits and stablecoin adoption

Tokenised money is on the horizon in numerous countries. This week, the Bank of England’s Sarah Breeden announced that a discussion paper will be released in summer 2024 to draw on input from the private sector to complement the work being conducted on stablecoin regulation and retail central bank digital currency (CBDC).

22 April 2024

News/payments

David Birch confirmed as EBAday 2024 challenge speaker

Exploring digital money, digital assets, digital identity and the future of banking, David G. W. Birch has been confirmed as the keynote speaker for one of the most compelling sessions at EBAday every year.

05 April 2024

News/payments

French fintech ditches remittances in favour of DeFi

Tempo France claims it is the the first fintech in the money transfers market to suspend classical remittances in order to focus exclusively on decentralised finance (DeFi).

27 March 2024

News/startups

EBAday 2024: Calling early-stage startups to showcase products

The 19th edition of EBAday, the largest annual European event for payments and transaction banking, will return on 18th – 19th June 2024 at CCL in Lisbon, Portugal.

15 March 2024

News/startups

Singularity raises $2.2m to help institutions access DeFi

Singularity, a startup developing a protocol to provide institutions with compliant and confidential access to DeFi, has raised $2.2 million.

23 February 2024

News/regulation

CFTC takes aim at ID discovery in DeFi

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is urging policymakers to address identity issues in Decentralized Finance (DeFi) operations.

09 January 2024

News/regulation

Iosco issues DeFi policy recommendations

International securities regulator Iosco has set out nine policy recommendations designed to address market integrity and investor protection concerns connected to decentralised finance (DeFi).

20 December 2023

News/crypto

COP28: Ethereum pre-Merge carbon emissions estimated to be 27.5m metric tonnes

Research from the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) and the Ethereum Climate Platform (ECP) reveals that the Merge – the upgrade that switched the ETH consensus mechanism from a proof-of-work protocol to a proof-of-stake system – ensured that Ethereum now has a much lighter greenhouse gas footprint than other high carbon-emitting blockchains.

01 December 2023

News/crypto

Ex-Revolut leaders build digital wallet

A group of former Revolut, Coinbase and Spotify staffers have unveiled Zeal, a digital wallet for managing crypto and interacting with web3 and decentralised finance apps.

21 November 2023

News/people

Ousted OpenAI boss to work for Microsoft

Sam Altman, the former CEO of OpenAI, the developer of generative AI platform ChatGPT, has resurfaced at Microsoft just days after he was pushed out by the board of directors.

20 November 2023

News/startups

Irish association calls for national fintech centre

A lobby group representing Ireland's financial services sector has called on the government to establish a physical centre for fintech firms.

20 November 2023

News/crypto

BlackRock expands crypto strategy with Ethereum ETF application

In a filing through Nasdaq, the world’s largest asset manager revealed its plans to create an ETF that holds Ethereum’s ether token (ETH), bolstering its cryptocurrency strategy.

10 November 2023

News/crypto

Bitwise distances itself from fraud charges levelled at firm of same name

Bitwise Asset Management distanced itself from charges issued by the SEC and US Department of Justice (DOJ) yesterday, which take aim at the former CEOs of defunct startup Bitwise Industries Inc.

10 November 2023

News/crypto

Global regulators form asset tokenisation policy forum

Financial regulators from the UK, Singapore, Switzerland and Japan are collaborating on a new project to explore fund and asset tokenisation use cases and decentralised finance.

31 October 2023

News/startups

Untangled Finance raises $13.5m to bring institutional grade private credit on-chain

UK fintech Untangled Finance has raised $13,5 million for it platform to bring institutional-grade credit with a built-in liquidation mechanism on-chain.

11 October 2023

News/crypto

BIS applies DeFi principles to cross-border wCBDC tests

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and the central banks of France, Singapore and Switzerland have successfully tested the cross-border trading and settlement of wholesale central bank digital currencies (wCBDCs) between financial institutions, using new decentralised finance (DeFi) technology concepts on a public blockchain.

28 September 2023

News/crypto

Tether commits to AI strategy with €400 million NVIDIA chip purchase

Damoon, a Tether company in which Northern Data Group owns a majority stake, has purchased over 10,000 NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs, a type of chip, at a total cost of approximately €400 million.

22 September 2023

News/regulation

Bit Trade sued by ASIC over design and distribution failures

Australia's corporate regulator has initiated civil proceedings against Bit Trade Pty Ltd for failing to comply with design and distribution obligations for its margin trading product.

21 September 2023

News/regulation

SEC predicts further crypto charges as enforcement battle continues

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has warned that more charges are coming to exchanges and DeFi.

20 September 2023