Base App Sunsets Creator Rewards to Double Down on Trading
Coinbase’s Base App is ending its Creator Rewards program, which paid roughly $450,000 to 17,000 creators over seven months, and is also removing its Farcaster‑powered Talk feed. The move reflects a strategic decision to concentrate solely on tradable assets such as spot, derivatives, and tokenized real‑world products. Final payouts will occur on February 18, after which the app will focus on a single trading‑centric experience. The Creator Coins initiative linked to Zora remains active.
GCash Parent Mynt Keeps IPO Option Open
Mynt, the parent of GCash, is keeping an IPO on the table while accelerating its payments, lending and wealth‑management services. The fintech arm delivered P6.1 billion in attributable equity earnings in 2025, a 64% jump year‑on‑year, and its lending subsidiary Fuse...
IRS Rolls Out New Enhancements to Tax Pro Account
The IRS announced new enhancements to its Tax Pro Account, extending digital capabilities to tax‑professional businesses. The upgrade lets designated representatives manage business CAF access, link CAF numbers to EINs, and view or withdraw active authorizations. These tools aim to...
Deutsche Bank Warns Software Debt Faces AI Threat
Deutsche Bank analysts warn that the speculative‑grade debt tied to software and technology firms—$597 billion and $681 billion respectively, about 14% and 16% of the high‑yield universe—poses a concentration risk comparable to the 2016 energy crisis. They argue that rapid AI adoption...
35% of Consumers Plan to Use Tax Refunds to Boost Savings
Tax season is underway and refunds are already hitting consumer accounts, with 56% of filers receiving a lump‑sum payment. New PYMNTS Intelligence data shows that 35% of those consumers intend to boost their savings, while the majority plan to use...
McHenry Predicts Fast Crypto Deal as Witt Brokers Talks
Former House Financial Services Chair Patrick McHenry and White House adviser Patrick Witt told CoinDesk Live that a sweeping crypto market‑structure bill could be finalized within months, potentially reaching the president’s desk by Memorial Day. They highlighted growing bipartisan momentum in Washington,...
Blockchain Analytics Firm Elliptic Examines Financial Crime Risks of Stablecoins
Elliptic, a blockchain analytics firm, warns that stablecoins—now over $300 billion in market value—are being exploited for large‑scale money laundering, sanctions evasion, and fraud. Organized scam networks in Southeast Asia use stablecoins to move billions of dollars through Telegram markets, over‑the‑counter...
European Digital Finance Association Calls on EU to Raise Securities Crowdfunding Threshold to €12 Million
The European Digital Finance Association (EDFA), representing over 2,500 fintechs, has urged the EU to increase the securities‑crowdfunding cap from €5 million to €12 million. The request, addressed to President António Costa and EU leaders ahead of the February 12 leaders’ retreat, argues...
Crypto Cycles Show Better Risk Management, On‑Chain Asset Growth
Cycles are a normal part of the crypto industry, what is important is what those cycles reveal about how far the industry has progressed and what next stage/trends of adoption/value creation will go on to define the industry. So far this...
MrBeast’s Company Buys Gen Z-Focused Fintech App Step
YouTube star MrBeast’s holding company, Beast Industries, announced the acquisition of Step, a teen‑focused banking app with more than 7 million Gen Z users. Step, which has raised roughly $500 million and counts celebrity investors such as Charli D’Amelio and Will Smith, offers...
Tired of Typing Card Numbers? E-Money Is the Fix Mobile Users Actually Want
Credit and debit cards were built for physical point‑of‑sale, not for mobile screens, and typing 16‑digit numbers on a phone creates friction that drives cart abandonment. E‑money services, exemplified by Jeton Cash, offer a prepaid, card‑free model where users top...
Figure’s CFO Supports Treating Stablecoin as Cash
Figure Technology’s CFO Macrina KgIl is urging the Financial Accounting Standards Board to reclassify stablecoins as cash or cash equivalents, rather than intangible assets. The current GAAP treatment creates ambiguity and extra compliance work for firms holding tokens like Tether....
Google and Entrust Team to Combat Identity Fraud
Identity verification firm Entrust has announced a strategic partnership with Google Cloud to launch an AI‑powered solution that tackles rising identity fraud. The joint offering combines Entrust’s verification platform and fraud intelligence with Google’s Gemini AI models, threat intelligence, and...
Monzo Tops UK Banks for Wrongly Denying Scam Refunds in 2025, Ombudsman Data Shows
The Financial Ombudsman Service released 2025 data showing Monzo led UK banks in overturned fraud‑refund decisions. Of the 3,372 scam‑related complaints referred, Monzo incorrectly denied refunds in 34% of cases, the highest rejection rate among major lenders. The findings highlight...
CME Group to Launch Futures for Cardano, Chainlink, and Stellar
CME Group announced plans to launch regulated futures contracts for Cardano (ADA), Chainlink (LINK) and Stellar Lumens (XLM) on February 9, pending regulatory clearance. The contracts will be offered in both standard and micro sizes, mirroring the structure of its existing...
Israel Crypto Industry Pushes Regulatory Changes Amid Strong Public Support
The Israeli Crypto Blockchain & Web 3.0 Companies Forum launched a lobbying campaign to push regulatory reforms that could add 120 billion shekels ($38.36 billion) to the economy by 2035 and create 70,000 jobs. The effort is backed by KPMG research showing strong...
Reltio Achieves AWS Financial Services Competency
Reltio, a context‑intelligence platform, earned the Amazon Web Services Financial Services Industry Competency, confirming its secure, compliant data solutions for banks, insurers, and capital‑markets firms. The badge follows prior competencies in Travel & Hospitality and Life Sciences and validates Reltio’s...
Georgia Woman Sentenced for $1.5 Million Bank Fraud Scheme
A Georgia woman, Dechanta Benning, was sentenced to 70 months in federal prison for a mail‑theft‑related check fraud scheme. Prosecutors allege the scheme stole between $550,000 and $1.5 million by intercepting business checks, altering payees, and using mobile‑deposit technology. Benning opened...
Ripple Expands Institutional Custody Stack with Staking and Security Integrations
Ripple announced new integrations with Securosys and Figment, bolstering its institutional custody platform with hardware security modules and staking capabilities. The upgrades let banks and custodians manage cryptographic keys on‑premises or in the cloud while offering staking on Ethereum, Solana...
Brian Ferdinand Highlights The Importance Of Discipline In Market Decision-Making
Brian Ferdinand of EverForward Trading emphasizes disciplined, process‑driven decision‑making over reactive trading. He advocates using predefined risk thresholds and diagnostic reviews when performance deviates, treating volatility as information rather than a trigger for immediate action. The framework relies on analytical...
The Big Data Arbitrage: Turning “Bad Debt” Into a Goldmine for Fintech
The fintech sector is turning non‑performing loans into a tradable asset class by leveraging big‑data analytics and AI. High‑fidelity data—such as app usage and communication language—replaces static credit scores, enabling precise recovery forecasts. Blockchain‑based digital passports secure the chain of...
How Website Downtime Monitoring Protects Your Revenue and SEO
Website downtime directly erodes revenue, wastes ad spend, and harms SEO. Even brief outages can prevent customers from completing purchases, drain marketing budgets, and generate crawl errors that lower search rankings. Implementing real‑time downtime monitoring provides instant alerts, enabling rapid...
Farcaster Founders Join Stablecoin Startup Tempo After Neynar Acquires Social Protocol
Farcaster co‑founders Dan Romero and Varun Srinivasan have left the crypto‑social platform to join stablecoin startup Tempo after Neynar acquired Farcaster. Their exit follows the transfer of Farcaster’s infrastructure to Neynar, prompting the founders and key engineers to step away....
Revolut Secures First Banking License Outside Europe as Full Operations Launch in Mexico
Revolut has launched full banking operations in Mexico, becoming the first digital‑only bank to secure a banking licence outside Europe. The new entity, Revolut Bank S.A. Institución de Banca Múltiple, entered the market with over $100 million of capital, delivering a...
Germany Plans to Eliminate Checks Entirely by 2027
The episode examines Germany’s plan to shut down all paper check processing by the end of 2027, highlighting the dramatic drop from 75 million checks in 2007 to just 2 million in 2024, now representing only 0.01% of cashless payments. It attributes...
How Real-Time Vehicle Data Improves Safety, Compliance, and Asset Longevity
Real‑time fleet telematics is transforming logistics by delivering continuous GPS, vehicle health, and driver behavior data. The technology cuts accidents by up to 72%, slashes speeding events 50%, and reduces compliance violations over 50%. Predictive maintenance driven by mileage and...
The Rise of Secure Digital Payments in a Cashless Economy
Secure digital payment solutions are gaining traction as businesses and consumers prioritize fraud protection and operational efficiency. Innovations such as dynamic credentials, limited‑use authorizations, and virtual cards address data‑breach risks while simplifying expense oversight. These tools enable real‑time transaction monitoring,...
Baran Ozkan — Building the Operating System for Financial Crime Compliance
Baran Ozkan, CEO of Flagright, argues that financial‑crime compliance must evolve from rule‑heavy checklists to an AI‑native operating system that delivers real‑time risk decisions. By giving compliance teams controllable, transparent workflows, Flagright reduced false‑positive alerts from 99.1% to 15.3% and...
UAE’s Omnispay Closes $2m Round to Expand AI-Native SME Payments and Credit Platform
UAE fintech Omnispay closed a $2 million pre‑Series A round led by Infinity Value Capital to accelerate its AI‑native SME finance platform. The company, which cut settlement times to 24 hours, has doubled its customer base, quadrupled processing volume and lifted revenue 5.5‑fold...
Uber Kiosks Let Travelers Ride Without a Smartphone
🚨 WOAH: Uber just launched kiosks at LaGuardia Airport. The disruption of taxis is nearly compete. No app. No phone. Walk up, pick a destination, tap to pay, get a paper receipt with your ride details. Powered by Adyen terminals. --- This is the bit...
What AI Builders Can Learn From Fraud Models that Run in 300 Milliseconds
Mastercard’s Decision Intelligence Pro (DI Pro) uses a sub‑300 ms recurrent neural network to assign risk scores to each payment transaction in real time. The platform treats fraud detection as an "inverse recommender" problem, comparing current merchant behavior to historical patterns. By...
Search to Checkout: How Alphabet Is Building Agentic Commerce
Alphabet announced a $175‑$185 billion AI‑focused capital plan for 2026, positioning artificial intelligence as the backbone of its commerce, cloud and enterprise offerings. The company highlighted intense compute constraints as it scales Gemini, which now handles over 10 billion tokens per minute...
North’s Merchant Management API: CRM‑Level Control for Modern Payments Partners
North introduced a Merchant Management API that gives Wholesale ISOs, Full Service Providers, and Payment Facilitators CRM‑level control over merchant portfolios. The write‑capable interface lets partners view, update, and synchronize merchant data—including pricing, risk limits, compliance, and terminal settings—in real...
SPAC Ecosystem Is Undergoing Significant Transformation : Analysis
The SPAC market, which exploded in 2021 with over 600 offerings raising $162 billion, has entered a maturation phase as of 2025‑2026. New SEC regulations introduced in 2024 have forced sponsors to adopt tighter disclosure, performance‑linked incentives and longer deal timelines,...
SEC Chairman Paul Atkins to Testify at House Financial Services, Senate Banking Committees This Week
SEC Chairman Paul Atkins will testify before the House Financial Services Committee on Feb 11 and the Senate Banking Committee on Feb 12. These are his first appearances before both panels. The hearings come as the SEC advances a sweeping overhaul of...
Groww Adds More Clients than Entire Industry in January
Groww added roughly 353,000 active demat accounts in January 2026, surpassing the entire industry’s net gain of 302,000 accounts. This surge lifted its market share to 27.66%, a 60‑basis‑point rise from December. The broker now serves 12.48 million clients, cementing its...
FinTechs Reshape Middle East Money Movement as Capital Returns
The Middle East is emerging as a fintech hotbed, driven by high smartphone usage, youthful demographics, and state‑backed payment infrastructure. After a global funding slowdown, capital surged back in 2025, with MENA fintech investment climbing 77% to $7.5 billion, 58% of...
Capital One Pays CEO Fairbank $40M for 2025
Capital One's board approved a $40 million compensation package for CEO Richard Fairbank for 2025, a 19 % increase from his 2024 pay. The package consists of $2.5 million in restricted stock units and a $37.5 million year‑end incentive award, including $24.8 million in performance...
BoE's £20k Stablecoin Cap Threatens UK Innovation
It seems the Bank of England is unwilling to budge on the £20k stablecoin holding limit for individual users, which significantly restricts many use cases. Apparently, BoE staff understand this, but it may be that the restriction is coming from the...
Congressman Massie Reintroduces Fed‑Abolition Bill Inspired by Bitcoin
NEW: 🚨 Congressman Thomas Massie says The Bitcoin Standard inspired him to reintroduce a bill to end the Federal Reserve, which quickly gained broad support. Source: BeInCrypto https://t.co/DHDFle4nEn
What Does Market Cap Really Mean in Crypto — and Why Australians Care
Market capitalization, calculated as price multiplied by circulating supply, is the primary gauge of a cryptocurrency’s overall size. In Australia’s fast‑moving crypto scene, the metric helps investors differentiate between established large‑cap assets and speculative smaller projects. Platforms like Ridgewell Tradebit...
Stripe's Tender Offer Valuation Jumps to $140B
This was an auspiciously-timed quote. @stripe is in talks for a tender offer valuing the company at $140B. That's up from $107B in the fall. https://t.co/3EHL07KS8p
Decentralized NASDAQ Requires Derivatives; Hyperliquid Confounds Solana
"If you want to be the decentralized NASDAQ, you have to solve for derivatives. Hyperliquid was a conundrum to the Solana ecosystem." https://t.co/gNuh8qeOz6
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Crypto Tokenization Levels Wealth Playing Field, Not Outcomes
Crypto and tokenization will be a great equalizer, giving billions a level playing field to pursue wealth creation. Equality of opportunity is worth pursuing. Equality of outcomes leads to very dark places.
Family Office Profits by Harvesting Bitcoin Volatility with Options
"I know a family office whose whole purpose is to generate income from a massive stack of BTC. Harvesting volatility is a very common strategy. It's one of the very reasons options exist." Listen to the rest of the story: https://t.co/Ev2K80G8P6
Bank Is Just a Third‑tier Kids Fintech Partner
The bad news: the “bank” is a third-tier kids fintech app that partners with Evolve Bank & Trust
Mystery: How Did Exchange Acquire 620,000 Bitcoins?
The story is funny, yes, but it left me wondering - where did the exchange get the 620,000 bitcoins from in order to incorrectly send them out? https://t.co/P23ERkGl2R
FinTech Funding Soars: Over $1 B Raised in February
February FinTech funding off to flying start with over $1bn raised https://t.co/2EDie8Yh7q $1.02bn raised across 29 rounds. Past two-weeks Fintech funding topped $2.3bn.
IDEAL's A2A Shift Powers Pan‑European Payment Sovereignty
iDEAL to phase into Wero starting in 2026 Strategic implications: Account-to-account payments (A2A) eliminating card network intermediaries. iDEAL processes 1.5B transactions annually with 100% Dutch consumer reach—now gets pan-European scale. Payment sovereignty meets network effects https://t.co/Qmf2G62B8k