5 min read
Hi, I am Jonathan Hayashi. After graduating from University of Rochester with double degrees in Optical Engineering and Financial Economics, I worked in one of the top 3 investment banks in Japan, SMBC Nikko. Later on, I joined one of the largest VC firms in Japan, SBI, and took charge of growth stage investments in Blockchain, Fintech, and AI Sector. I joined Cornerstone Ventures in 2020.
English version:
- Grab, whose financial unit used to focus on SME and recently acquired Bento, launches consumer financial services including investments and lending. (Details) Google signs up 6 more partners, including BBVA and Citi, to offer digital banking service through Google Pay in US. (Details) Facebook is to launch pilots in lending, micro-pension, and insurance through Whatsapp in India. (Details) Goldman Sachs, which launched an invitation-only credit line for SME with Amazon in June this year and a credit card with Apple in August 2019, said in Q2 2020 earnings call that it will further engage in Banking-as-a-Service. (Details)
- Decentralized exchange (DEX) and decentralized finance (DeFi) are booming. DeFi’s volume rose 174% in July, topping $4.3B. (Details) Uniswap is the largest DEX and its daily volume of $126M has exceeded the sum of Binance US, Gemeni and Poloniex. (Details) Huobi sets up “Defi Labs” to invest multi-digits million dollar into Defi projects. (Details) On the other hand, as most DeFi projects are built on Ethereum, the gas of Ethereum has rose 7 times and it caused 559 transactions on Coinbase to delay for max of 105 minutes. (Details) With such rise of demand, Ethereum is up 50% in that past 10 days (Details), and nearly $100M of Bitcoin moved to Ethereum in July. (Details)
- Binance-backed Travala.com partners with Expedia and Booking’s subsidiary Agoda to allow users to pay for their hotel bookings with 30 different cryptocurrencies. (Details) Microsoft-backed IWA is to bring transparency to carbon accounting with blockchain and tokenization. (Details) Boostry (JV of Nomura and SBI), Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank, and Kenedix (REIT manager) enter into partnership to sell real estate backed digital securities. (Details) SBI and SMBC, which announced high-level partnership in April, announce to partner in loyalty point investment and inheritance. (Details) LINE is to list its own cryptocurreny LINK on its own Japanese exchange BITMAX, while LINK has already been listed on its oversea exchange BITFRONT since Oct 2018. (Details)
The Future Is Unwritten.
