consumer protection
What Must Be in Your Consumer Rights Policy?
Many of the startups ask me: What are the key areas that must be addressed by the Consumer Protection or the Consumer Rights Policy. In my view, the following areas should be addressed: Rights defined in the banking or payments regulations, such as transaction execution time, transparency of costs and Read more…
consumer protection
Best Practices in Marketing Communications
Today I wanted to warn you about some common mistakes I see in marketing communications and public statements. 1) Making market predictions or offering personal investment advice Many startups and especially startup founders are “tempted” to make market predictions and offer personal investment advice to their audiences. Please, be aware Read more…
consumer protection
What is Market Manipulation?
Today I’m going to offer you a brief overview of how to define market manipulation and some common examples of what constitutes market manipulation. Market manipulation is an action (e.g. entering into a transaction, placing or cancelling an order, disseminating information, voicing a public opinion, etc.) that gives or may give Read more…
Governance
FATCA and FinTech Startups
Today I wanted to address a few most common questions about FATCA and the most common elections that usually apply to FinTech startups. As you probably know by now – there is no way I could fit in the mountain of FATCA rules into a short article, the idea is that Read more…
News and Trends
Selling in Modern Art and Modern FinTech
I was at #ArtBasel Hong Kong exhibition in March 2019. If you don’t know about Art Basel – it’s one of the most prestigious art fairs, mainly focused on contemporary art. One of my main curiosity points this time around was my interest in startups and small businesses – I Read more…
My favorite companies
2018: The Year of Building Communities
Based on my observations, 2018 was a year when smart FinTech startups deliberately focused on building online communities. From what I have seen, very few startups were able to improve their profitability or add substantial new revenue streams. Very often, existing sources or revenues actually shrunk 🙁 However, here is what Read more…
AML
Regulated or Non-Regulated? That is the Question
It is not uncommon to see regulatory requests for cryptocurrency-focused businesses to split activities into 2 parts: regulated and non-regulated. For example, the licensed (e.g. regulated) entity may be dedicated to operations with fiat funds and fiat deposits, and non-regulated entity would be facilitating transactions with cryptocurrencies or managing Read more…
corporate governance
#1 Startup Question From 2018
“How to get more partnerships and get them faster” has been a common theme during 2018. Many startups joined acceleration programs not because they needed exposure to get funding, but because they needed exposure to secure partnerships. Even regulatory approvals seemed easier in a way, comparing to getting sign offs Read more…