SoftBank — Fintech and DeFi Research Archive

Posts tagged SoftBank

The difference between Gen Z and Millennial online culture, resulting in DAOs, decentralization, and creative financial communities

Gen Z is becoming a cultural force, reshaping culture and online society. This is starting to echo in fintech startups and crypto protocols. We explore how financial communities are beginning to congeal into DAOs, their nature and structure, and potential longer terms outcomes. The analysis identifies the differences in Millennial and Gen Z approaches — however imperfectly — to explain the frontier of social tokens and why ShapeShift chose decentralization, while Revolut chose decacorn funding.

DAOs are not socialist communes built for the benefit of humankind. Rather, they are techno-fortresses to defend, and make valuable, exclusive online tribes.

Whereas Millennials dream about a VC-funded unicorn startup, permissioned into wealth with capital from traditionally successful investors, Gen Z and crypto natives dream about bottoms-up community syndicates with trillions to spend on the sci-fi future, unshackled from regulatory overhang and the sins of the 2008 quantitative-easing past.

generational change, marketing, social & community, DAOs, decentralized financeLex SokolinJuly 19, 2021Revolut, Ethereum, SoftBank, Tiger, Mirror.xyz, BanklessDAO, PleasrDAO, Not Boring, ShapeShift, Seed Club HQ

How signalling explains SoftBank's $4 billion call option trade, SushiSwap's vampire attack, and why we make Art

This week, we look at:

PayPal and Square being larger than Bank of America and Goldman Sachs
The SoftBank $4 billion in tech oligopoly call options, and why people feel uneasy
Uniswap vs. SushiSwap, and Bitcoin vs. Litecoin, and why these forks felt wrong
How understanding signalling can help make better decisions

decentralized finance, philosophy, venture capitalLex SokolinSeptember 7, 2020PayPal, Square, SoftBank, Uniswap, SushiSwap, Bitcoin, Litecoin, Benjamin Graham

Why $2 trillion is barely enough for the coming unemployment spike, expected 20%+ GDP slow-down, and small business crunch

Another heavy week. It is hard to find the right, or even the interesting, thing to say. I look at why the $2 trillion in US bailouts may not even be enough to stave off the economic damage. In particular, I am alarmed by the large and fast rise of unemployment claims (higher than 2008 peak), estimates that GDP may fall by 20-30%, and the broad impact on small business. Small businesses have 27 days of cash on hand, and power half of our economies through both employment and output. So how do we meet this challenge? What strength should we draw on in the moment of doubt to become the artists of tomorrow?

macroeconomics, covid pandemic, asset management, small business, fixed incomeLex SokolinMarch 23, 2020Covid, GDP, SoftBank

Unicorn valuations are bad for your health -- the Prisoner's Dilemma of WeWork and Magic Leap

Why are high valuations bad? You've heard me talk about how the trend of Fintech bundling, and the unicorn and decacorn valuations led by SoftBank and DST Global, are creating underlying weakness in the private Fintech markets. Of course, they are also creating price compression and consolidation in the public markets (e.g, Schwab/TD, Fiserv/First Data) across sub-sectors. But public companies are at least transparent and deeply analyzed. Private companies have beautiful websites, charismatic leaders, and impressive sounding investors. Often when you look under the hood, it's just a bunch of angry bees trying to find something to sting.

philosophy, venture capital, game theoryLex SokolinDecember 16, 2019SoftBank, DST Global, WeWork, Magic Leap, Snap Inc, Apple, Google, Brex

Ok, Boomer -- a meme for the broken political economy

Chlöe Swarbrick, a 25-year old climate MP was presenting her climate change case to the New Zealand parliament, and was heckled by an older audience member. Without missing a beat, she acknowledged and dismissed the challenger with a pithy “Ok, Boomer.”

The recording has since gone viral, inspiring everything from merchandise to Vogue articles. While the incident isn’t the source of the phrase “Ok, Boomer”, today it is the most well known manifestation. So what does the phrase mean? If you are inclined to more colorful language, see Urban Dictionary. But the meaning is obvious on its face — Gen Z is dismissing utterly and without consideration the judgment and protestations of society's elders on multi generational issues like economics, climate change, and social norms.

generational change, macroeconomics, microeconomics, narrative zeitgeist, philosophy, civilization and politics, social & communityLex SokolinNovember 19, 2019Boomer, Gen Z, Millennials, SoftBank, Uber, WeWork, OYO

Blockchain progress through the lens of Binance's $180MM profit and Greensill's $1.5B SoftBank raise

Look at the difference between (1) building out the crypto asset class, and (2) operating infrastruture for a blockchain-based digital economy. There are so many little logic pot holes into which you could fall! There are so many things one could believe that make the whole thing make no sense at all! I am anchoring around two primary data points -- a Multicoin report about Binance's financial progress and its massive (though unaudited) $180 million profit in Q3 of 2019, and a post by supply chain company Centrifuge about marrying cashflow financing with the decentralized web.

crypto, exchanges / cap mkts, enterprise blockchain, supply chain / trade, regulation & complianceLex SokolinNovember 11, 2019Binance, Greenshill, MakerDAO, Centrifuge, Debitum Network, SoftBank, Vauban, Pirate Bay, BitTorrent, Netflix, komgo

Understanding Uber Money and its threat to the financial industry

Uber has entered finance! The end is nigh! The boogeyman is here!

Oh. So what's involved? There's a debit card and a "debit account" powered by Green Dot, the same bank that's behind Apple Pay's person to person service. That means that Uber isn't a bank, but is renting shelf space on one. There's a wallet that will be integrated into the Uber app, within the driver's experience. So tracking your earnings and spending will be a feature that is part of the app -- not unlike what Amazon has had for years for merchants. There is a credit component, letting drivers withdraw money against their payckeck. And there's a Barclays credit card, private labeled for Uber, riding on the VISA rails.

Hear ye, hear ye, beware the disruption and tremble under its glory!

big tech, digital transformation, gig economy, neobank, IndiaLex SokolinNovember 4, 2019Uber, Oxygen, Joust, MoneyLion, Chime, Hello Wallet, Financial Engines, Fair, SoftBank, Careem

Big Fintech: LSE's $27B for Refinitiv, Softbank's second $108B vision, Ping An's $160B Revenue

Fintech is expensive. Fintech is everywhere. If you are a thinking about starting a financial services company, and it does not have technology at its core -- don't. You will lose to someone similarly positioned building a more augmented business. Fintech is the global competition for regulation, talent, and macroeconomic supremacy. Fintech is the trade war between the US and China. Fintech is Facebook and Amazon. Fintech is the next bubble to burst. Fintech has burst already.

venture capital, China, civilization and politicsLex SokolinJuly 19, 2019Refinitiv, Thomson Reuters, LSE, SoftBank, Ping An, Tencent

The Ethics of $2B Lemonade, $100B Softbank Visions, and $500MM of Binance IEOs

I've been seeing a lot of Fintech headlines recently that make me raise my hands in the air, and go "Come on, are you for real!?". I imagine a lot of people feel similarly frustrated by Lemonade looking to go public at a $2 billion valuation on $50 million of revenue, Initial Exchange Offerings on crypto exchanges raising over $500 million this year, Facebook's tone deaf Silicon Valley club crypto money, or SoftBank talking about selling its overpriced $100 billion Fintech unicorn fund in an IPO. So other than getting crankier with age (Happy Father's day everyone!), I want to dig a little bit into the concept of fairness, asymmetric information, economic rents, and how this can help disentangle feelings from thoughts on these news items.

philosophy, ICO / IEO, insurtech, IPO / SPACLex SokolinJune 17, 2019Lemonade, SoftBank, Lending Club, OnDeck

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