Can Fintech Kill Wall Street?

#Fintech

The Computer as a Financial Planner

Peaks:

1. Many web-based services have given investors with smaller portfolios access to advice that they wouldn’t otherwise get. And because these services charge lower fees — no need to pay human advisers, after all — that can increase returns on investments that track indexes.
2. There are pluses and minuses among the three dominant ways to use technology in personal investing. The Robo Way. The Hybrid Way. The Techie Adviser Way

Is A Blockchain Without Bitcoin Possible Or Practical?

Peaks:

1. Finally, someone who gets the concept and importance of the token with value being required in a distributed system, not tied to another inflationary currency! Thanks! Bitcoin gets stability & secure redundancy from this incentive — and it is something that no single country, bank, or company can just create on their own. If they do, they will likely be less secure, incur significant losses maintaining (thus need more fees to pass on), or flat out fail.
2. The more people realize this, the more used, accepted, and important Bitcoin will become.

Why fintech won’t kill banks

Peaks:

All this is putting pressure on banks, not least because few consumers who use snazzy fintech services ever return to their banks thereafter. But it is hard to see fintech killing them off.

If fintech doesn’t kill banks, it might instead sap the sector’s profitability. A future as a sort of financial utility — ubiquitous but heavily regulated, unglamorous and marginally profitable — is hardly a gratifying outcome for banks.Around half of all (retail) bank customers are unprofitable already. If ever more of them flock to fintech startups for ancillary services such as foreign exchange, that proportion will increase inexorably.

Want To Build A Full Stack Startup In Fintech?

Peaks:

1. There’s a misconception in the market today that it has never been easier for fintech startups to get started and get to market.
2. Fintech entrepreneurs should look for investors who understand their regulatory landscape as well as they do, if not better. Instead of emphasizing deal volume and pressure to meet the typical industry metrics, assess investors who understand the true metric of success. Regulations may also shift or delay, which may impact the product roadmap and timeline. Partner with investors who understand those risks and can help mitigate them.
3. You simply can’t do it without regulatory expertise. Your strategy needs to cut across all facets of your business, and your entire team, from founders to engineers, marketers to investors, needs to be on the same page.

#Google

How DOJ Gagged Google over Surveillance of WikiLeaks Volunteer

1. Newly unsealed court documents obtained by The Intercept reveal the Justice Department won an order forcing Google to turn over more than one year’s worth of data from the Gmail account of Jacob Appelbaum (pictured above), a developer for the Tor online anonymity project who has worked with WikiLeaks as a volunteer. The order also gagged Google, preventing it from notifying Appelbaum that his records had been provided to the government.

#Apple

Apple should just buy DuckDuckGo

Peaks:

1. Apple is heading down the wrong path by pushing Google out. The day they ban Google from their phones is the day millions will leave it for Android. Apple is obsessed with privacy to the destruction of its own platform.
2. Privacy is good but to make Siri work Apple needs to data mine its users in a way that’s in conflict with its own privacy principles . that results in a weaker digital assistant.

#Edu

Harvard Gets Its Geek On

Peaks:

1. We’re not going to be MIT. We’re not going to have a department of naval engineering. We probably won’t have civil engineering, at least as traditionally understood.
2. I think the kinds of things that are most likely to happen at Harvard are the things where Harvard’s engineering school can play off other strengths. Harvard has enormous strengths in medical research, for example. Harvard has enormous strengths in applied physics. So the areas of engineering that relate to those two other scientific fields would be natural places for things to happen at Harvard.
3. We’ve always had among the greatest mathematics departments of the world at the same time that we’ve had among the greatest history and literature departments of the world, so why shouldn’t we have those and also have among the greatest engineering schools of the world?

#Software

Mobile is eating the world

#Euro

Watch out Silicon Valley, here comes Europe

Peaks:

1. The first of these advantages is highly visible: the extraordinary development of Europe’s tech hubs. Each hosts a broad range of different start-ups but has also emerged as a world leader in a particular sector, often linked to their city’s historic industries. If I were to start a mobile gaming company, my first act would be to book a one-way ticket to Helsinki but if I were to take on the financial sector, I would stay exactly where I am in London.
2. Its origins are not in Europe but further afield. It can be hard to comprehend the ferocious pace with which the internet has spread across the world, from North America and Europe to Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. The capacity of mobile broadband networks is increasing while the cost of data is declining, making mobile access affordable for a growing proportion of the population.