James Ledbetter

Tremendous resources are wasted on would-be treatments that never even make it to the clinical trial stage because, often, tests conducted on animals provided misleading results. Dr. Jo Varshney is out to fix that.

For the first many years of fintech’s existence, even most of the “democratized” companies and services have still felt elite. That dynamic is evolving.

Esusu, a company that digitizes apartment rental payments and helps renters build credit history, announced a Series B round that values the company at more than a billion dollars. To mark the occasion, here is an enlightening interview with Esusu founder Abbey Wemimo.

A financial microclimate that did not exist even two years ago and is strongly dependent on the trading price of Bitcoin has lost tens, probably hundreds, of billions of dollars in value in a matter of weeks. Plus, why don't bank/fintech partnerships succeed?

Canada has authorized Bitcoin-backed exchange traded funds for nearly a year. This exclusive interview with Purpose Investment’s COO and Head of Product Vlad Tasevski provides a glimpse into that future. Plus, why fintech is soaring in Mexico as Citigroup retreats.

Robinhood has taken some steps to provide at least the appearance of a properly run company. ut the stock’s continued illness suggests that stronger medicine is necessary. Plus, the digital yuan preps for its closeup.

Regulation is coming, the West's superapp quest will continue, CBDCs are coming soon, and more fintech predictions for the year.

What might have happened if taxpayers—rather than investors—had directly funded Theranos’s blood-prick research?

A lot of countries would like to bury Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. But can it realistically be done?

45 percent of Democrats and 58 percent of Republicans don’t know or have no opinion on cryptocurrency regulation. But that picture may change as crypto companies with important policy issues at stake become bigger players in the political arena.

The crypto industry has been on a global lobbying offensive this year, successfully circulating the message that blockchain technology could help boost growth in renewable energy. Senator Elizabeth Warren is not having it. Plus, Wise storms the US market.

Cryptocurrency investors are more generous givers than average investors. American megafoundations have enabled crypto donation and NFTs are increasingly powering the world of charity. Plus, what the hell happened to PayPal's stock?

As holiday shopping season hits us, the payments space is starting to feel like a bar at closing time: a lot of sudden pairings that may not make sense in the morning. Plus, the gritty world of rent-to-own.

Sequoia Capital, one of the oldest and most blindingly successful VC firms in the world is fundamentally changing the way it works. What's next?

Fintech companies around the globe are hatching more ways to capture cash from teens. Even nonparents should be concerned. Plus, why small businesses now love their banks.

This is a hell of a week for news about venture capital. A report in the Times detailed a high-octane lobbying effort by Andreessen Horowitz to shape the way that cryptocurrency—in which it is heavily invested—is regulated.

In this interview, Craig J. Lewis of Gig Wage and Blair Silverberg of Hum Capital discuss how fintech is changing the way that startups are funded.

FIN editor James Ledbetter sat down with Square cofounder Jim McKelvey (in-person!) at our recent Accelerate Finance event. Here's what he had to say.

In the near future, there will be financial assets that are not only shared but genuinely interactive. Plus, which states mine the most Bitcoin?

VC helped create just about every post-’70s tech company you can think of, but now it must evolve—or die. Here's why.

Google and Santander both pulled back on major fintech plans this week. The short lives of these megaprojects provide a lesson in why it is so hard for big multinational institutions to truly innovate. Plus, cracking down on Kraken.

This week, Biden surprised a lot of people by nominating Saule Omarova to head the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.  Could her proposal for a “people’s ledger” eliminate banking as we’ve historically understood it?

A Congressional hearing is typically a poor venue for gaining insight into the American financial regulatory system. That sorry dynamic was on full display this week as Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chair Gary Gensler testified before the Senate’s committee on banking, housing and urban affairs.

Like a barely contained wildfire, the Buy Now, Pay Later sector has been blazing across acres, bringing white-hot valuations and eye-watering acquisitions—and it’s happening worldwide.

Commissioner Hester Peirce has been unusually vocal in expressing her opinion that the SEC has failed to articulate clear and consistent rules. But simply saying “there ought to be rules” isn’t adequate in the long run.

Modern market behavior is too large and diverse to lend itself to neat summary, leading to a lot of blather. Producing timely commentary on cryptocurrency is even more dubious. Plus, customer satisfaction in fintech.

Facebook was on a trajectory in the financial space to create the first non-Chinese superapp. Then Cambridge Analytica happened. Can Diem restore trust in Facebook?

Circle's USDC is a huge "stablecoin." It hopes to make USDC essentially a regulated central bank digital currency. But questions are many, including on Circle's bungled Poloniex deal.

A long-simmering conflict over fintech superstar SoFi got a fresh boost of energy when Rep. Brad Sherman sent a letter to SEC chairman Gary Gensler, calling the recent entry into the stock market “alarming” and “troubling.” Plus, hard lessons in regulating crypto.

If you find it strange that the infrastructure bill snaking its way through Capitol Hill might fundamentally change how cryptocurrency transactions take place in the United States, you’re not alone.

Six-year-old Revolut boasts 16 million customers worldwide, 150 million transactions a month, and just announced a new travel booking feature. But will it become the superapp of its dreams? Plus, Part II of why stablecoin regulation is coming.

Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell seemed almost vexed by stablecoins in his recent testimony before House and Senate committees. Stricter US regulation is clearly imminent. Plus, why the UK dominates open banking.

The company is the largest digital-only financial provider in the United States. Will this debacle ding its IPO?

A fintech movement that wraps itself in the “democratization of finance” ought to understand that with democracy comes responsibility: to customers, to stakeholders, and to society.

As Gen Z deepens its financial and investing commitment, fintechs that can tap into that cohort’s environmental passion will be the financial leaders of the future.

The federal government and Congress *could* do so much more, but it's unlikely to do so, because too many of its members have been captured by the financial industry.

Hum Capital wants to be the go-to hub for private investing.

Investment executives say exit pressure, valuation pressure, talent pressure, and story pressure have all contributed to the new fintech "IPO mania."

Techonomy is undertaking a major project to identify and honor cutting-edge cloud companies.

Black consumers and Black-owned businesses use fintech companies disproportionately higher than their overall population numbers would predict. Plus, the pay-me-now revolution is here.

Although much remains opaque, the broad outlines of the Biden Administration’s regulatory handling of fintech are starting to come into view.

A watershed moment for Bitcoin and its brethren.

Who Is a Bank? Who Is NOT a Bank? Does It Matter?

No doubt some New York voters find his pledge appealing, but pronouncements like this make people who follow the issue scratch their heads in bewilderment.

The Nobel laureate weighs in on stimulus, growth and inequality.

21st-century technology makes it all too easy to use partnerships between banks and fintechs to create an end-run around local restrictions.

Fintech companies are not the only players here: Facebook and Google are also attempting to expand their role in payments/currency. And keep an eye on Amazon, Uber and Walmart, too.

Amidst an otherwise febrile fintech market, Root has gone underground, falling from a $6 billion IPO market cap to $3 billion. In one important sense, Root’s public humiliation is healthy.

We’ve met the rise of NFTs with a mixture of astonishment, skepticism and curiosity. But we also realized that we can make meaningful contributions to the NFT conversation.

March 2021 was the month when a US-sanctioned exchange traded fund (ETF) focused on Bitcoin and/or other cryptocurrencies turned the corner from prohibited to inevitable.

This week the Israeli company eToro announced that it will go public in a $10.4 billion deal, being acquired by a SPAC created by veteran banker Betsy Cohen. eToro may provide the biggest competition Robinhood will face in the next couple of years.

Among the many painful lessons from a year of COVID-19 and lockdowns is that we live in a volatile world. Businesses of all kinds have been forced to reassess how they think about, and plan around, risk.

Five years ago, when the founders appeared on the cover of Inc. magazine, Stripe was estimated to process $20 billion in annual payments. Last year that figure was estimated at $350 billion.

Companies need to look inward to their own culture instead of outward to the pipeline.

An exclusive interview with Jeff John Roberts, author of the recently published history of Coinbase, The Kings of Crypto. What can Coinbase's S-1 filing tell us about the state of the crypto industry?

PayPal and Square go up and up and up.

Fintech should be able to replace racially-tainted methods of measuring risk with shiny, new algorithms that don’t discriminate.

The BNPL revolution kind of depends on the PL part.

Live by the day-trading mob, die by the day-trading mob.

PayPal is arguably the greatest US-based fintech success story; it has completely upended how the world pays for everything, and at last glance its market capitalization was a little shy of $300 billion. As more vaccines are administered and the world slowly returns to in-person shopping where PayPal is less advantaged, will the company and its stock be able to sustain this breakneck growth?

Reports that President Biden will appoint former CFTC chairman Gary Gensler to head the SEC might seem destined to send panic waves through the financial community, but reality is a little more nuanced.

In a candid keynote address to the W2O Digital Health Summit last week, Mastercard Chief Marketing and Communications Officer Raja Rajamannar attacked the “horrors” of the U.S. healthcare system, which he labeled “unparalleled in the world.”

The pandemic forced finance to pivot to contact-free customer acquisition and transactions. Breakneck growth followed for standalones like PayPal and many startups. COVID accelerated the entire sector.

Technology continues to overhaul how money changes hands around the world, and in many ways the COVID pandemic accelerated that development in 2020. What can the fintech world expect in 2021?

Libra, or, um, Diem is a dim shadow of its original idea.