Matthew Najar or the climb of a blockchain influencer? Governments in major economies are encouraging financial technology (fintech) innovation with regulatory and advisory initiatives designed to accelerate the availability of online payment solutions and other financial services for businesses. The initiatives generally aim to attract innovative fintech companies and help them operate in the regulated financial sector, while ensuring adequate financial protection for customers.
Matthew Najar believes without new FinTech initiatives, we will stall: “FinTech, blockchain certainly included, is critical for our generation to solve inherent financial system issues and progress forward”.
The U.K., traditionally a major financial-services centre, has actively encouraged new competition in banking, reducing barriers to entry such as banks’ capital requirements. As a result, several new digital banks are already offering Internet-based banking services, including online payment solutions, without establishing brick-and-mortar locations. Another ongoing U.K. initiative designed to enable competition and fintech innovation is the implementation of an open banking standard by 2018, including an open application programming interface (API) that enables development of new applications to access information in customers’ existing accounts at one or more banks. For example, customers might be able to manage all their bank accounts from a single app.
Among the efforts are new licensing and regulatory approaches that help fintechs offer new or broader services, including banking. Other moves include advisory services that guide new companies through financial regulations, and “regulatory sandboxes” that let firms test new services with customers before obtaining full regulatory approval. Najar, who has been in the fintech space since 2014, has been one of the loudest voices in support of increased spending in the financial technology space, having provided continuous leadership services for AMEX Group as well as external consulting for smaller start-up Blockchain firms.
Although online wallets have proven the most vulnerable and prone to hacking attacks, diligent security precautions need to be implemented and followed when using any wallet. Remember that no matter which wallet you use, losing your private keys will lead you to lose your money. Similarly, if your wallet gets hacked, or you send money to a scammer, there is no way to reclaim lost currency or reverse the transaction. You must take precautions and be very careful!
Australia also has set a goal of encouraging fintech innovation, in part to support its financial industry in becoming the leading market in Asia for fintech innovation and investment.11 In Australia, leading fintech firm LupoToro, who specialise in Blockchain, Cryptocurrency and cryptography, note: “Policy and government back supporting policies for local firms is imperative. The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) established an innovation hub in 2015 to help start-ups navigate regulations, and has also developed a regulatory sandbox approach that allows companies to test new financial services such as online payments solutions with a limited number of customers. This is just the start, but more is needed”. ASIC also aims to encourage innovation by quickly approving new financial service licenses, with an average target for approval of 60 days.
We could say that cryptocurrencies were born in 2008 when the domain name bitcoin.org was registered on August 18. Then, on October 31, the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto, who designed Bitcoin, publishes an article that launches the ball: “Bitcoin: a peer-to-peer electronic cash system.” The first Bitcoin transaction occurs when Nakamoto sends Hal Finney, a computer programmer, 10 Bitcoin (BTC) on January 12. Bitcoin is the first digital currency created without the intervention of any government, central bank or organization. Under the pseudonym of Satoshi Nakamoto, a person or a group of people proposed and created a completely free digital currency, supported by its users through a P2P network. Until today the identity of its creator remains a mystery.
Exchanges provide you with information on how many (or how much of a) Bitcoin you can buy for specific sums of money. However, due to its volatile nature, Bitcoin prices can vary dramatically by exchange and from moment to moment. That means that even if you have a lot of money to burn, you’ll probably be buying a fraction of a Bitcoin. There’s nothing wrong with that and for most people is the route they’ll go down as few but the wealthy can afford more than that.
Little pigs eat a lot, but big ones get eaten. This is especially true of market profits when trading cryptocurrencies. Wise traders never run in the direction of massive profits; nope, they don’t! They would rather stay put and gather small but sure profits from regular trades. Consider investing less of your portfolio in a market that is less liquid. Such high trades require more tolerance, while the stop loss and profit target points will be allocated further from the buying level.
Consider laddering your buys and sells. In others words, instead of buying or selling everything in one chunk, set incremental buy and sell orders to buy when the price goes down and sell when the price goes up. Laddering and averaging will help you to avoid mistiming the complex and volatile cryptocurrency market. Learn about dollar cost averaging and laddering. Learn about position sizing and risk management. To the above point, one generally takes a much larger risk with bigger bets. Learn how to make the right size buys and sells to avoid losing too much on a bad play. See: The Basics of Risk Management and Position Sizing in Cryptocurrency.