Fintech Focus For April 7, 2021

Quote To Start The Day: An unexamined life is not worth living.

Source: Socrates

One Big Thing In Fintech: Fidelity Investments, Square Inc. and several other financial firms are forming a new trade group that aims to shape the way bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are regulated.

Source: WSJ

Other Key Fintech Developments:

• China has created own cyber yuan.
• Atani raises $6.25M for scaling tech.
• NEAR launches bridge to ethereum.
• Blackhawk, Bakkt are partnering up.
• Grata expanded seed funding round.
• Google joins the FinOps Foundation.
• Coinbase reports $1.8B Q1 revenue.
• WealthBox teamed up with Schwab.
• FNZ launches wealth management.
• Crypto raises $1.2M in seed funding.
• Freetrade’s funding success stories.
• Snoop partners with Accepty fintech.
• City of Miami is looking to ethereum.
• BME, BBF launched Hack & Disrupt.
• FactSet on future of risk technology.
• FEX linked to Trading Technologies.
• Lead Edge, SafeSend team on tech.
• MarketAxess taps buy-side liquidity.
• Umbrella has teamed up with Huobi.
• Clubhouse launches payments tech.
• dYdX’s Layer 2 perpetuals now live.
• Grayscale adds Chainlink to its fund.
• Credit Suisse and Instinet tap Paxos.
• Voyager Digital on business, growth.

Watch Out For This: Will.i.am, founder of the Black Eyed Peas, is launching a $299 mask — complete with noise cancellation headphones — with help from N95 manufacturer Honeywell.

Source: Axios

Interesting Reads:

• Going Public added entrepreneurs.
• Why chip shortage sparked a crisis.
• GM to build electric Silverado truck.
• SPACs bringing more opportunities.
• Facebook questioned over breach.
• WFE is researching circuit breakers.
• Mem raises $5.6M for note-taking.
• American struggle post-pandemic.
• SCOTUS: Code copying is fair use.
• 60 Minutes slammed on deception.

Market Moving Headline: The unparalleled retail interest in (call) options has dwindled over the past six weeks. There have been fewer “meme stocks” making headlines and realized volatility has attenuated, perhaps coinciding with employees returning to work. OCC cleared options volumes are now below recent (all-time) highs.

According to Bloomberg, the notional value of the standard March options expiration was the largest ever in terms of single stock exposure rolling off (excluding January which includes LEAPs). Based on recent volume figures, it’s likely that a significant portion of those expiring options were not moved forward.

Source: Cboe