The Lead

MassMutual spent $5M (chump change) to acquire a minority interest in NYDIG AND buy $100M of bitcoin from NYDIG's portfolio

The age-old advice for real estate investing must evolve. It is true that in real estate the imperative is “location, location, location.” But now we must add to that mantra “liquidity, liquidity, liquidity.” It is time to modernize the real estate industry -- it’s time for tokenization.

It's hard to believe that 2021 is almost upon us - jarring actually - and I am certain that we ALL are hoping for a return to some level of normalcy next year. With that said, he American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) recently joined forces with the National CPA Financial Literacy Foundation to create a list of "21 for '21" financial resolutions, which we found quite clever.

The SEC has had the Strategic Hub for Innovation and Financial Technology, or FinHub, around for a few years but it was just announced that FinHub will now become a stand alone office

We have a real "who done it" on our hands. Somebody took around $7 billion out of Vanguard's S&P 500 ETF.......symbol VOO.......in just one day last week. That amounted to roughly 4% of the fund's assets and looks like it was done in one large record setting trade. That's a really big deal.

Now - there are digital banks for teenagers (Step comes to mind and we just reported on them recently). There are platforms that enable you to gift your teen with fractional shares of stocks, like Stockpile and GiveAShare. All well and good - we love seeing platforms come out that help our young'ns become financially savvy and begin building portfolios.

Competition for new banking customers between large established traditional banks and the new 'challenger' (a/k/a digital banks) banks has taken a new twist. Challenger banks like Starling, Revolut, Chime and others have "attacked" the traditional banking industry with little or no fees, innovative services and products, easy to use apps and no branches

The CEO of international financial advisory deVere Group, Nigel Green, has recently issued a statement noting that anecdotally, the firm is experiencing unusually high numbers of clients requesting assistance with its citizen and residency service.

For us poor unfortunate souls who have to watch this current political debacle unfold, you'll know that there are two US Senate seats up for grabs that could, conceivably, sway the entire political structure of the US, all happening down here in the Peach State, where yours truly currently resides.

One of the many fintechs we've encountered are matching wealthechs - pairing up potential customers with financial advisors, and one of the more interesting in this genre is Purse Strings, founded in 2015 by Dr. Barb Provost out of the Chicago area and positioned to women.