Big Changes Are Coming to FIN!

Plus, dub investors bet on copy trading's appeal to social media-savvy investors.

Number of the Week: $100 million (explanation below) 

Big Changes Are Coming to FIN!

When I launched FIN in October 2020, I didn’t have a firm idea of where it would end up. (At that time—the height of the pandemic—there was a lot of that going around!) Substack newsletters were a compelling new trend that intrigued me. Mostly, my impetus came from a journalistic observation: The worlds of finance and technology had begun to merge in profound ways that were not being routinely captured in most mainstream publications (such as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal).

I didn’t know exactly what the scope of the newsletter would be, but I knew I wanted to weigh in—fintech was just too alluring. In the first few weeks, I didn’t write about cryptocurrency, but the skyrocketing price of Bitcoin made that mandatory before 2020 ended. I pride myself for writing about artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) in FIN’s second full installment. But again, I didn’t know how big a deal AI was about to become; today, you could devote an entire newsletter to AI and finance.

Since its launch, the range of FIN stories reveals just how fast-moving and, at times, unexpected the fintech industry is—with a pace that is only accelerating across AI, crypto, payments, and insurtech, among other areas. FIN did its part to capture, probe and predict the innovations that best represent the future of fintech while also examining the many failings and obstacles along the way. We landed an exclusive interview with Square cofounder Jim McKelvey. We documented the problematic growth of Buy Now, Pay Later plans. We chronicled the downfall of Facebook’s attempt to create an international digital currency. We broke the news about New York State’s groundbreaking restrictions around Bitcoin mining. FIN also became one of the top-50 tech newsletters on Substack.

After producing a few hundred posts and signing up thousands of loyal readers, it’s time for FIN to enter its next, exciting phase. Since June, I’ve been very lucky to have Holly Sraeel, a seasoned financial and technology journalist and editor, working with me to produce the newsletter. She’s been an invaluable editor of my FIN stories, as well as an incisive contributing writer herself.

As of March 3, Holly will become FIN’s editor in chief and publisher, and readers will benefit from her deep industry knowledge and her plans to expand FIN into a larger, cross-platform community. (You should read more about her vision below.) As I head off to my next adventures, I want to thank all the readers, sources, advertisers and supporters who made this journey possible. FIN has been a great ride for me, and it’s only going to get better for you. You can follow my newest endeavors here. —James Ledbetter

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When Jim first shared that he was planning to move on from FIN and asked me if I would be interested in succeeding him, I initially had a Bob Newhart-esque reaction to the news. And who wouldn’t? Jim is a deep thinker and a brilliant writer, with an innate ability to look at something and see around the corner—perfect for covering the fintech industry. For anyone who has followed Jim’s illustrious career as a six-time book author, journalist and editor at places like Inc., Reuters and Observer (among other notable stops), it’s easy to see why the chance to work with him was something I had long aspired to do. We share a passion for rich journalism and have complementary strengths in approaching the business of media.

But let me start at the beginning: Jim and I have known each other personally for what seems like forever (that’s a story for another day). At various junctures over the years, our paths and beats have intersected. We’ve worked for a couple of the same media organizations—Thomson (me) / Reuters (him) and 7 DAYS (he was a staff member, while I was a regular contributor)—but we never actually worked together. In our editorial leadership roles at a number of companies, both of us were deeply immersed in covering global business, particularly financial services; regulation and monetary policy; and the impact of technology, notably fintech, on business, culture and society. FIN would be the first time that we officially collaborated in media. If Jim is the deep thinker in this duo, then I am the passionate media brand builder and operator. When I signed on in June, I became fully invested in working with him to increase FIN’s readership, expand its regular areas of coverage across fintech, and bring FIN content to other platforms.

To that end, I am committed to building out FIN as a cross-platform community for fintech leaders, companies and funders, with news analysis, insight, research and opinion that provide a fast-forward framing of the potential impact and influence of fintech globally. Over the coming weeks and months, FIN will introduce more regular coverage of AI/ML, cryptocurrencies, payments and lending, insurtech, and wealth tech, etc.; debut FIN’s Fast Forward podcast; and introduce FIN Live, invitation-only salons and panel discussions that feature prominent fintech leaders, insiders and venture capitalists in intimate, conversational settings to discuss the industry's most pressing, controversial, and radical innovations and issues of the moment. And don’t worry: Jim will remain in the FIN fold, participating as a podcast, salon and panel guest whenever possible.

As FIN moves toward its exciting relaunch date of March 3—with a fresh redesign and new components—I know that I am building a community on the solid foundation that Jim so artfully created and now is graciously handing off to me. It’s a thrill and privilege.

So, to our expanding FIN community, we ask this: What do you want to see more of as we build out our platform? Email your thoughts to me at holly@finnewsletter.com. You can also find me here and sometimes here. And you can follow FIN on LinkedIn here and X (formerly Twitter) here.

Here’s to seeing more of what’s around the corner as FIN hits the fast-forward. —Holly Sraeel

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FINvestments

🦈Number of the Week: Despite the sharp downturn in crypto investment over the past year, Eigen Labs, the development studio that created EigenLayer, just secured $100 million in Series B funding from Andreessen Horowitz’s a16z crypto fund. The funding is for EigenLayer’s Ethereum (ETH) “restaking” protocol, which aims to enable staked ETH, currently locked up as a security deposit so that validators can participate in Ethereum's proof-of-stake-based consensus mechanism, to be restaked across decentralized applications and services without having to remove it from the consensus mechanism. The protocol is reportedly in a phased roll out. EigenLayer is now the fourth-largest protocol by total value locked (TVL). As of February 15, its TVL increased 5.73% to $6.99 billion and was up 307% over the past month.—HS

🦈One-tap trading from dub—a copy-trading platform that allows social media-savvy retail investors to mirror the moves of high-profile investment managers, hedge funds and the like—just got a $17 million seed funding boost. The current round, intended to expand operations and development, was led by Tusk Venture Partners, with Uber's Dara Khosrowshahi, Robinhood's Nathan Rodland, Apex Fintech Solutions' Bill Capuzzi, and others participating as individual investors. (The funding also included a $2 million venture debt facility from Silicon Valley Bank, now part of First Citizens Bank.) Investors are betting that dub will have significant appeal to digital natives looking to increase their wealth by replicating the strategies of big league investors.—HS

🦈Artificial intelligence-based fintechs and regtechs continue to benefit from the already-massive, ongoing inflow of capital. London-based Napier AI is one such beneficiary, recently closing a $57.1 million round led by Crestline Investors. Its AI-driven anti-money laundering (AML) compliance platform analyzes transaction data to root out suspicious activity and help financial institutions, such as digital challenger Starling Bank, comply with AML regs. —HS