The fintech boom has been accelerating innovation for payments and cross-border transactions. Banks and non-banking firms alike are adding a touch of fintech to their services. To this end, Unit, a fintech startup that creates enabling tools for companies to create fintech services, has gained more funding to expand its mission.

Unit announced it has raised $51 million in Series B round led by Accel. Existing investors Better Tomorrow Ventures, Aleph, Flourish Ventures, and TLV Partners also joined the round.

The company was designed to be the simple and robust platform to empower the next generation of fintech builders, and has grown fast since launching out of stealth last year. This means, companies can build banking products in minutes using Unit tools.

Having raised $18 million in December, the Series B round brought Unit’s total fund to nearly $70 million.

“The new round will help us expand into more financial products, more integrations and a richer feature set, including SDKs and front-end components. All of our initiatives, from new product features to content, are designed to make it even easier for companies to launch new banking products,” the company said in a statement.

To that end, Unit announced the launch of Unit Go, the first-in-market solution that will allow companies to create live bank accounts and issue physical and virtual cards in minutes. Founders and developers will now have the ability to sign up for a free account, build in Unit’s live environment, and instantly test their products using real funds. Unit Go is currently in beta and will be publicly available in the fall of 2021.

The company said it has seen deposit volume grow by over 300%, and banked end-customers by 600% in the last three months. The goal is to capitalize on this progress and expand its services to a wider pool of users, even amidst competition with other players, like Railbank, Treasury Prime and Stripe, in the booming fintech field.

“We continue to be inspired by what both young and established companies have built on Unit, and we plan to continue sharing their stories with the world,” it said.

Unit said its interaction with hundreds of builders has cemented its belief that the next decade in fintech will be defined by tech companies using their unfair advantage — the flywheel of distribution, trust, software, and data — to launch massively successful fintech products in their verticals. That thus sets the company on a mission to help these companies bring those products to life, unlock value, and expand financial access for all.

Unit was founded by Itai Damti and Doron Somech, who are using their tech development ideas from the previous startup they founded, to accelerate Unit’s growth. The duo previously co-founded — and bootstrapped — Leverate, a Tel Aviv-based B2B trading tech provider. Unit has dual headquarters in Tel Aviv and New York City.

For now, only about 20% of Unit’s customers are what might be considered true fintechs. The remaining 80% are companies that are not but rather want to embed banking as a service into their offering, Damti said.

He added that the company takes what was once “a very expensive and complex process of 18 months” that includes finding and managing a bank relationship, building a compliance team and building a tech stack “that gets you to a competitive banking offering, and turns it into one API and one dashboard that helps companies launch accounts cards, payments and lending within five weeks.”

“We are acting as a company that connects banks to the tech ecosystem and banks are critical vendors and partners to us, but we see them as a built-in element within Unit, because we believe that the most excellent experience in this ecosystem can only come from software companies,” Damti told TechCrunch.

He explained that Unit is technically distinct in that it is actually building a ledger, which he describes as “the most critical and sensitive part of the ecosystem.”

By owning the ledger and not delegating, he said, Unit is “able to offer a radically better experience.”

“As far as the transaction environment, the cleanliness of the data that we provide and the fees that our customers are able to control and tweak, owning that ledger piece is super critical for the experience,” Damti said.

With Unit rolling out the tools, making financial services easier, many companies are expected to get into the fintech business before 2022.

As the cryptocurrency predicament continues, investors’ push to restore the market to its all time high value of more than $2 trillion, has hit hurdles ranging from concerns about mining energy impact on the environment and the show of displeasure toward the digital coins by many governments.

China’s recent clampdown on miners and financial institutions dealing in cryptocurrency compounded the situation, as the South Asian giants hosted more than half of cryptocurrency miners.

The clampdown has not only halved the cryptocurrency market value, it has also created a vacuum that needs to be urgently filled to salvage the much touted market from total plunge.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, a big fan of cryptocurrency whose investment in environmentally friendly electric vehicles forced them to part ways with cryptocurrency, promised to return as soon as miners reduce carbon emission generated by mining to 50%. That means, significant shift to clean energy. Musk’s promise offers hope for cryptocurrency rebound given that his February announcement that Tesla would accept bitcoin for payment spurred cryptocurrency to its greatest rally so far.

The vacuum created by China’s crackdown on cryptocurrency has resulted in “mining migration”, with most of the miners moving abroad to continue their work, their destination – Texas among other places.

Texas has become a choice destination for the migrating miners for many reasons. CNBC chatted with experts who explained why the US city has become the next stop for most miners leaving China.

Because miners at scale compete in a low-margin industry, where their only variable cost is typically energy, they are incentivized to migrate to the world’s cheapest sources of power.

“Every Western mining host I know has had their phones ringing off the hook,” said Castle Island Ventures founding partner Nic Carter. “Chinese miners or miners that were domiciled in China are looking to Central Asia, Eastern Europe, the U.S. and Northern Europe.”

One likely destination is China’s next-door neighbor, Kazakhstan. The country’s coal mines provide a cheap and abundant energy supply. It also helps that Kazakhstan has a more lax attitude about building, which bodes well for miners who need to construct physical installations in a short period of time.

Didar Bekbauov runs Xive, a company that provides hosting services to international miners. Xive also sells the specialized equipment needed for mining.

Bekbauov says that he’s stopped counting the number of Chinese miners who have called him to ask about relocation options, ranging from operations with 15 rigs to thousands.

“One miner told us that only government electricity plants have restricted mining and private ones will continue to service miners,” Bekbauov told CNBC.

“But most of the electricity is generated by government power plants, so miners will have to move. That makes them uncertain and desperate to find other locations,” he said.

Whether Kazakhstan is a destination or simply a stopover on a longer migration west remains to be seen.

Arvanaghi is bullish on North America and thinks the hashrate there will grow over the next few months.

“Texas not only has the cheapest electricity in the U.S. but some of the cheapest in the globe,” he said. “It’s also very easy to start up a mining company … if you have $30 million, $40 million, you can be a premier miner in the United States.”

Wyoming has also trended toward being pro-bitcoin and could be another mining destination, according to Arvanaghi.

There are, however, a few major limitations to the U.S. becoming a global mining destination.

For one, the lead time to build the actual physical infrastructure necessary to host miners is likely six to nine months, Carter told CNBC. “The U.S. probably can’t be as nimble as other countries in terms of onshoring these stray miners,” he said.

The move logistics may also prove difficult. There is a shipping container shortage, thanks to the tail winds of the Covid pandemic.

But perhaps the biggest question is the reliability of the Texas power grid. A storm that devastated large swaths of the state in 2021 has reignited a debate over whether Texas should winter-proof its systems, a potentially costly project that might affect taxes or other fees for those looking to tap into the state’s power grid. More recently, ERCOT, the organization that operates Texas’ grid, asked consumers to conserve energy amid what officials called an unusual number of “forced generation outages” and an upcoming heat wave.

For the time being, there isn’t that much mining capacity worldwide that is ready to absorb the Chinese miner diaspora. While they scramble to find a new home, we could see hashrate go offline – and stay offline.

In practice, that would mean all the remaining miners are more profitable for a period of time.

Having more geographic dispersion would even out the global balance of power, and it would also reduce the ability of any one sovereign nation to co-opt or control the network.

We may also see special crypto economic zones pop up in the next few months.

“You will see jurisdictions adopting a very favorable stance and creating the equivalent of special zones to encourage miners to host locally,” said Carter. “We’re seeing it at the state level here. You’re also going to see it at the country level, you might even see subsidized electricity for mining.”

Musk recently moved to Texas, where his space company, SpaceX is now headquartered. Musk’s company is building “a more than 100 megawatt energy storage project in Angleton, Texas” which is connected to an electric grid that nearly failed during the recent winter storms that roiled the state. It could also mean that many migrated miners will have the chance to migrate to clean energy, increasing bitcoin chances of being accepted by Tesla once again.

Capital market players in Nigeria, can SPAC work in Lagos? This thing is working in America and I want to know if that can be done in Lagos. It seems very interesting and could be another way for the alpha.

SPAC (special purpose acquisition company), also known as a ‘”blank check company”, is a shell corporation listed on a stock exchange with the purpose of acquiring a private company, thus making it public without going through the traditional initial public offering process’ (Wikipedia).

SPACs, or ‘SPACs, or special purpose acquisition companies, are shell companies that have no business or assets but are designed to raise money through an initial public offering, or IPO, and then later use that money to merge with or acquire a private, operating company. The raising of money to later buy a company has led to SPACs being called “blank check” companies.

SPACs were very popular in the 2020 initial public offering (IPO) markets. Companies like DraftKings (DKNG), Nikola (NKLA), and Virgin Galactic (SPCE) have made headlines and drawn the attention of investors. So, how do SPACs work, and why are they so popular? And should you be concerned about their shaky reputation? Learn why some investors are looking closer at these companies’. (TD Ameritrade)

Titan, a cousin of Bitcoin, has crashed. It went from all-time high $52 to $0 within 24 hours. That has been the challenge: these cryptos are generation-advancement away from risks. Someone announces something better than Bitcoin and the coins may become worthless. With the FBI demonstrating that it can track coins and link them to exchanges or storages, a race to the replacement of Bitcoin has started. But no matter what you do, there will be exchanges and all exchanges are registered with governments before people exchange real money for digital currencies. In other words, cryptos can never be wholly anonymous because exchanges are under the control of governments! So, get real.

Get me right: the world of cryptocurrency needs the government to save it. Yes, the best thing that can happen to that subsector is regulation from the government. There is no way you can watch an “asset” crash 100% within 24 hours, and yet pretend that nothing happened.

A cryptocurrency token called TITAN collapsed on Wednesday, going from about $60 apiece to near zero in a matter of hours. The sales frenzy, attributed to a sell-off driven by whales – people who hold large amounts of a cryptocurrency in this context – also destabilized a so-called stablecoin known as IRON.

A stablecoin is pegged to a reserve asset like the dollar, the idea being there’s less volatility when investors know they can redeem their fanciful crypto credits for paper depicting dead presidents or some other thing likely to retain value.

IRON, however, proved to be anything but stable because it is only partially collateralized (about 75 per cent) by the US dollar. The remainder of its value came from TITAN tokens, and when the TITAN price collapsed, IRON took a hit too. Among those caught up in the crypto run was tech moneybags Mark Cuban.

Cryptos need governments to save them. They can draft a regulation and beg governments to make laws because it is evident that self-regulation of money mints demons!  And I am happy one of the crusaders agree:

Popular billionaire investor, Mark Cuban who is a huge supporter of the cryptocurrency market, specifically Decentralized Finance (DeFi), has called for decentralized finance (DeFi) and stablecoin regulation after losing money on his investment in Titan token which crashed from an all-time high of 52$ to $0. Although the cryptocurrency market is used to significant levels of volatility, this massive crash of 100% is pretty rare, especially in such short a time.

[…]

The token crashed because it had become overpriced and people began to sell, thereby triggering a high amount of volatility, overwhelming arbitrage opportunities and causing everyone to run to the door. Many comments on social media seem to believe that Mark Cuban had a hand in the downfall of the token.

Bloomberg reached out to Mark Cuban, he provided this response:

“I read about it. Decided to try it. Got out. Then got back in when the TVL start to rise back up as a percentage of my crypto portfolio it was small. But it was enough that I wasn’t happy about it. But in a larger context it is no different than the risks I take [in] angel investing. In any new industry, there are risks I take on with the goal of not just trying to make money but also to learn.

Even though I got rugged on this, it’s really on me for being lazy. The thing about de fi plays like this is that it’s all about revenue and math and I was too lazy to do the math to determine what the key metrics were. The investment wasn’t so big that I felt the need to have to dot every I and cross every T. I took a flyer and lost. But if you are looking for a lesson learned, the real question is the regulatory one. There will be a lot of players trying to establish stable coins on every new l1 and L2. It can be a very lucrative fee and arb business for the winners.

There should be regulation to define what a stable coin is and what collateralization is acceptable. Should we require $1 in us currency for every dollar or define acceptable collateralization options, like us treasuries or? To be able to call itself a stable coin? Where collateralization is not 1 to 1, should the math of the risks have to be clearly defined for all users and approved before release? Probably given stable coins most likely need to get to hundreds of millions or more in value in order to be useful, they should have to register.”

Meanwhile, some countries like South Korea are delisting shady cryptos in their exchanges: “South Korean cryptocurrency exchanges such as Upbit have, this week, moved to delist or warn against specific digital assets they have judged to be “high-risk” for investors.”

Countries all over the world are doing their best to protect citizens from the downsides of cryptocurrencies and South Korea is leading the charge by taking regulations of the industry to another level. […]

This new directive has been brought about by the increased level of regulatory requirements by financial regulators into cryptocurrency service providers’ operations. Last week, Korea’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), which is tasked with oversight of the cryptocurrency market, reportedly reached out to no fewer than 33 crypto trading platforms that operate in the country insisting that the regulator will be conducting field consultations before September 24th, 2021

Since 2019, I have been watching a redesign in Nigeria’s leadership ecosystem. Now, I see that we have three classes of leaders in Nigeria:

#1 – Business leaders: they control the economy and their children are here with me in America. They all have US green cards (never taking citizenship due to US tax burdens). And they have paid aircraft uplifts from the Benin Republic in case something bad begins to happen in Nigeria. They do not comment on national matters because of their stomachs!

#2 – Elected or Selected Leaders: they control the state apparatus and are those who speak on NTA and Radio Nigeria. They go with many cars and security men. They are the ones who manage the budget and spend the money. They live in government buildings and offices.  Most are now mere symbols with only titles and no impacts on the citizens.

#3 – Circumstantial Leaders: They are admired by many of their people. They are old school in their playbooks. They see a massive leadership void in regional security and they provide hope to their people. They tell them that provided I am here, #believe. They are growing influence because #2 have underperformed. They are in all the regions and they exert huge impacts today.

Nigeria’s greatest risk in the next two years would be what happens if #3 makes a mistake. Yes, one simple mistake and large scale reprisal will get Nigeria to its knees. And if you go after them, then you have opened another front.

Across human history, it’s about one thing: who can give you and your family security? Any who does becomes your leader; #2 in becoming irrelevant and that is something to concern you.