Island Fintech Weekly (12 September)

Island fintech goes crypto! Check out the first crypto-focused edition of IFW.

Sep 12, 2021

Greetings Islanders,

Welcome to the first crypto edition of IFW!

While crypto continues to take over the world, the space in Southeast Asia has only started getting interesting, with a huge opportunity for growth. As this newsletter summarises everything that has gone on the past week in the world of fintech, this edition will be a mixture of what is going on in the crypto industry in Southeast Asia, along with what’s going on in other parts of the world. Without further ado, let’s dive right in!

Note: If you’re interested in contributing content or getting involved with Island Fintech Weekly, reach out!

🎣 Dips

Binance.com halts some product offerings in Singapore after a MAS warning: Crackdown comes after regulators said that the company may be in breach of the country's Payment Services Act.
MasterCard acquires leading cryptocurrency intelligence company CipherTrace, in a move to integrate CipherTrace’s operations into its own cyber security solutions for digital assets.
Bitcoin has become legal tender in El Salvador, but there are mixed feelings about it: People love them for remittances, but economists think it is a threat to economic stability.
Paypal acquires Paidy, the Japanese BNPL player for $2.7 billion, with the aim to gain more market share in Japan, the third largest e-commerce market in the world.

🐋 Dives

🐋 NFT market blows off steam after a record-breaking month of sales.

NFTs were all the rage in the past month of August. All of a sudden the crypto world was flooded with NFT projects on various chains, as people looked to other chains like Solana and Fantom for their affordable gas fees. If you would like to learn more about NFTs, The Verge has an interesting article on the chronology of the release of different NFTs here.

However, price floors and volumes have seen a decline since the start of September, which can be seen in the charts below:

Sales volume started declining at the beginning of September. Source: Dune Analytics

Overall approximate NFT floor prices on OpenSea started declining at the beginning of September as well. Source: Dune Analytics

As with most projects or inventions in its early stages, prices and sales volume tend to be volatile and unpredictable. In fact, we have actually seen a similar NFT market frenzy cooldown back in April and June.

But if you are truly in it for the art, the price action of NFTs should not bother you so much. After all, aren’t we all in it for the art (and the tech)? 😉

🐋 Robinhood rolls out recurring buys for crypto.

Robinhood is back again with more advancements in the crypto markets. In a blog post published on 8th September, the company announced that the new feature would allow for users to set up buys on their favorite coins on a daily, weekly, biweekly, or monthly schedule of their choice.

The purchases can be as low as 1 dollar, and like other purchases on the app, are commission-free. Considering that users do not need to pay any transaction fees, setting up a recurring buy would be an extremely attractive offering to users who are less trader-like, and who would like to buy and hold regardless of how the markets are doing.

This move seems only logical for Robinhood - crypto accounted for almost 50% of transaction-based revenue in the second quarter of 2021, with 62% of this crypto revenue coming from dogecoin.