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You can't sail Today's boat on Yesterdays wind - Michael Noel

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Jan 15 2021

UK based Property Finance Platform LendInvest Claims it’s Well-Prepared to Deal with New COVID-19 Lockdown Measures

UK-based LendInvest, a property finance platform, has reportedly told its investors that it’s well-prepared to deal with new lockdown measures. This, after making upgrades to its business processes, risk mitigation efforts and various financial metrics during the lockdown enforced in March of last year.

The digital lending platform confirmed that it had to face challenges during the first lockdown, which was when construction and property viewings had to temporarily stop. But during the current lockdown period, property viewings may continue and home moves are also going as planned.

Jono Gomez, Treasurer at LendInvest, has noted that companies are beginning to adapt to changes after the initial lockdown. Gomez revealed that the lender learned more about the COVID-19 pandemic, which has helped with opening up construction sites. Valuers have also been able to carry out socially-distanced visits, and third-party services figured out how to conduct operations remotely.

Gomez added that LendInvest has spent this time carefully going over its business processes, building in more resilience and buffers, and changing up its financial risk metrics to support greater limits and also make plans for the worst possible scenarios in the foreseeable future.

Gomez further noted that the lending platform has been able to adapt and held significantly more funds or assets just in case its investors experienced their own challenges and asked for approval for alternative types of valuation methods with its funders.

Gomez noted:

“None were required, and none have been utilized, but should something of the scale of the March lockdown happen again, we are better placed to pivot more nimbly to keep supporting our customers.”

Gomez also mentioned that the lending platform would be able to keep operating throughout the Coronavirus pandemic with a full set of valued loans to progress which will help the company face the current challenges.

Gomez added:

“March was a month riddled with uncertainty, and the team’s quick reaction to the scenario and the work carried out to put both internal and external stakeholders at ease is easily the success story of 2020. Resiliency planning, scenario analysis, credit risk and liquidity management pivoting, were done with incredible rigor, diligence and speed, to give [the] executive committee and the board confidence that the business could weather the storm.”

Christian Faes, Founder of LendInvest and creator of the lobbying group Fintech Founders, recently noted that the Fintech sector is “losing out to big banks” in receiving attention from the government.”

Faes said:

“Now, more than ever, the Fintech sector is facing real challenges and the voice of founders needs to be heard loud and clear.”

Last month, LendInvest launched a new Cloud-based application for short-term lending products. The new application is designed to streamline and automate the loan origination process. The application utilizes Salesforce to enable a centralized hub for customer information, a log for all interactions with LendInvest while automating the workflow.

As reported in November 2020, LendInvest was recognized as the BTL [Buy to Let] Lender of the Year at the 2020 National Association of Commercial Finance Brokers (NACFB) awards for the second year in a row.

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Written by bizbuildermike · Categorized: Crowdfunding · Tagged: 2020, analysis, business, commercial, company, construction, coronavirus, covid-19, creator, digital, digital lending, diligence, Europe, finance, fintech, founder, founders, Future, Global, going, government, information, lending, lendinvest, lobbying, more, pandemic, Products, Real Estate, risk, said, Salesforce, story, uk, united-kingdom, Valuation, work

Jan 15 2021

High-tech Babel fish: How the Timekettle WT2 Edge Translator breaks language barriers

Normal conversations are energetic and messy. You and your friends might talk over each other, interrupting each other with new ideas and clarifying questions. Which means that if you and your friend don’t speak the same language, a traditional translator would slow down your conversation to the speed of a walkie-talkie. Helpful, but not exactly a replacement for a fluid chat.

The Timekettle WT2 Edge is the first in-ear translator that preserves the nuances and flow of a natural conversation. The WT2 Edge are bi-directional simultaneous translation earbuds that translate in real-time as you speak and listen, delivering what you said to your listener’s ear in as little as 0.5 seconds with up to 95% accuracy in 40 languages and 93 accents. 

We sat down with the Timekettle team to learn more about how they made a working Babel fish and how they hope to foster more connections worldwide by breaking down language barriers.

Who are the team members of your project? What’s their story?

Timekettle was founded in 2016 by Leal Tian, who was named to the Forbes China 2018 30 Under 30 list. Over the past four years, the Timekettle team has acquired a number of rising stars: Doctor Liang Tian, who works in neural machine translation; Wei Shiei, one of the leading experts in the vector voice algorithm field; Yuman Wang, a software and hardware architect with over a decade of experience; and Alex Qin, a serial entrepreneur who has generated millions of dollars with his business successes. Timekettle has become an open and international start-up, and our staff includes specialists from Japan, the United States, France, and more.

How did it all begin?

We knew we could make a handheld translator faster than an in-ear style, but we believe the cross-language conversation is more than the translation itself. A face-to-face conversation involves exploring and enhancing a relationship from start to finish, and we knew that our design would determine whether our translator would push the conversation forward or hold it back. The in-ear translator seemed to be the best way to achieve our goals, but we lacked a technical solution to make the concept a reality. We re-rooted codes and architected the software and hardware. We spent more than one million dollars and worked on it for a year and a half, but we still failed. We thought about abandoning the in-ear concept and reverting to a handheld translator instead, but we believed in designing a product that made the conversation so natural, it was like the translator wasn’t there at all.

We were lucky: We broke through our technical bottleneck and created a wearable, in-ear translator in 2018. Timekettle WT2 series Translator earbuds are still the best experience translator in the world. We appreciate the backers who supported Timekettle’s product idea, and media outlets like Techcrunch who introduced our idea to the world. They inspire us to feel what we’re doing is worthy. We’re excited to help people break the language barrier in a new way.

How did backer feedback help you make this latest version of your earbuds?

Over the past year, more than 100,000 backers and users from 89 countries and regions have used the WT2 Plus Translator. We received thousands of emails with feedback on the product that helped us design new features. We’ve created a more intelligent voice pick-up capacity, and we also released a feature that allows people to chime in while the other person is still speaking. With other translators, speakers have to wait their turn to talk, but that isn’t how a real conversation happens. Simultaneous Mode lets people speak more naturally. It also enables people to use the Translator in places where there might be a lot of background noise, like streets, restaurants, shopping malls, and more. We’re excited to showcase these features with our new model, WT2 Edge.

Can you briefly explain what your product is? 

Timekettle WT2 Edge Translator Earbuds are the world’s first two-way translation earbuds, meaning you can speak and hear other people’s translations at the same time. The vector noise reduction and bi-directional simultaneous translation make our earbuds different from other existing translators. The WT2 Edge effectively prevents interruption from the external environment and improves translation accuracy significantly to give you a natural and fluent conversation with your friends around the world.

What are you raising funds for? What is the purpose of your campaign? 

It takes years to transform our ideas into a final product. Indiegogo is a global platform for innovative products from all over the world where we can receive feedback from backers around the world. Crowdfunding for the product allows us to continuously update the hardware and improve the software to bring our customers a refined user experience.

What inspired you to make your product? 

Our team was inspired by the Babel fish in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The Babel fish is small, yellow, and leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the universe. When the main character, Arthur Dent, puts it into his ear, it translates the universe’s languages for him and allows him to finish his exploration of the galaxy. 

We wanted to make a real-life Babel fish — something that made communication between people who speak different languages as easy as it was for Arthur Dent. We believe that communication is connection. Translation is about more than words: It’s expression, eye contact, and body language. The WT2 Edge expands on its predecessors to make connections even easier. 

Why did you choose to do crowdfunding? 

Language barriers have divided human beings for thousands of years. For most people, language translation is very expensive. Plus, it’s difficult to find a good interpreter. And learning a new language yourself is time-consuming and hard to do well.

In 2016, artificial intelligence technology was growing fast and neural machine translations were already being used in travel, social networks, business communications, and more. However, very few people were paying attention to the industry back then, and they didn’t realize that this new technology could be turned into a wearable device and bring consumers a cost-effective translation experience. We knew we wanted to launch our Translators through crowdfunding to find our early adopters.

Crowdfunding backers are engaged and supportive. They’re passionate about sharing their ideas for how to optimize products, and passionate about telling their friends and family about a product they backed. Through crowdfunding, we build the Timekttle brand together with our backers.

What have been your biggest challenges so far? 

2020 was an unstable year, and the pandemic has restricted most of our international travel. Timekettle is also a startup, and as a new company, our staff’s time is limited. While some companies were spending 2020 changing directions and putting their efforts into new businesses, our team was working hard to improve our translating system to create an accurate and stable technology that encompasses multi-lingual support. We believe in our mission because of the encouragement, love, and anticipation that we see in our backers all over the world. We made our Translators because we believe that language barriers should be overcome. 

Want to support Timekettle? Check out their campaign page to back their campaign today!

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Written by bizbuildermike · Categorized: Crowdfunding · Tagged: 2020, algorithm, artificial-intelligence, Behind The Scenes, business, Businesses, chat, Chime, china, company, conversations, Crowdfunding, Design, entrepreneur, Environment, Family, four years, Global, hardware, html, human, ideas, intelligence, international, japan, Media, Model, more, other, pandemic, product, Products, said, Shopping, social, Software, startup, story, style, Success Stories, supported, TechCrunch, Technology, The Conversation, travel, United States, us, world

Jan 15 2021

Africa to bring 100 million users to DeFi in three years from now, says founder of Cardano

Charles Hoskinson predicts that the Decentralized Finance sector will acquire 100 million users within the next three years by tapping into the developing world’s market potential.

“Who’s actually going to do peer-to-peer loans? Who’s actually going to do peer-to-peer insurance? Who’s actually gonna do peer-to-peer payments? I got news for you, not a guy living in New York”, pointed out Hoskinson in an exclusive interview with Cointelegraph. 

Cardano, the decentralized cryptocurrency network founded by Hoskinson, intends to take the lead in the DeFi space by developing partnerships in the African continent.

According to Hoskinson, DeFi products lack a significant customer base and the field has no chance at gaining traction in the West because of a cumbersome regulatory environment.

On the contrary, developing countries offer a much more flexible regulatory framework which facilitates crypto innovation.

“There’s no JPMorgan Chase. There’s no big massive legacy financial system that dominates and controls”, he pointed out.

Ultimately, according to Hoskinson, DeFi can “create liquidity for the poorest people in the world and allow them to build wealth and protect the wealth that they’ve acquired”.

“We built Cardano for this purpose”, he concluded.

To find out more about our conversation with Charles Hoskinson, check out the full interview on our Youtube channel and remember to subscribe!

Africa to bring 100 million users to DeFi in three years from now, says founder of Cardano

Source

Written by bizbuildermike · Categorized: cryptocurrency · Tagged: Adoption, africa, cardano, crypto, cryptocurrency, decentralized, decentralized finance, defi, Developing Countries, Environment, finance, Financial Systems, founder, going, innovation, insurance, interview, jpmorgan, market, more, news, payments, Products, Space, Traction, Wealth, world, youtube

Jan 15 2021

Bitcoin vs. Altcoins: A Lopsided Battle

Investors often ask me why I focus so much on bitcoin instead of altcoins.

I get why people ask this question. Bitcoin is already huge. And many investors assume they’ve already missed the boat, so they want to find the next bitcoin. 

Here’s the thing. Most people still don’t realize just how far ahead bitcoin is in this race. Bitcoin was built to serve as an alternative financial system. It is already fulfilling this purpose.

People around the world buy bitcoin as a hedge against inflation and reckless monetary policy. In Venezuela, where hyperinflation runs rampant, bitcoin has become a major part of the economy. Many citizens choose to store their savings in bitcoin rather than the bolivar. And they only convert bitcoin to bolivars when they need to buy something. 

The map below, which is part of an excellent piece of research by Coindesk, shows volume on peer-to-peer bitcoin trading platform LocalBitcoins compared to GDP (the larger the bubble, the more peer-to-peer trading volume, adjusted for size of the overall economy).

Venezuela bitcoin

As you can see, Venezuela leads the world in peer-to-peer bitcoin trading volume (adjusted for GDP). It’s no coincidence that the country also has the highest inflation rate.

And if you haven’t read the 2019 New York Times article “Bitcoin Has Saved My Family” yet, I recommend it. Here’s an excerpt:

I keep all of my money in Bitcoin. Keeping it in bolívars would be financial suicide: The last time I checked, the rate of daily inflation was around 3.5 percent.

So bitcoin’s usefulness is not hypothetical. It’s very real.

Now let’s briefly talk about liquidity. Bitcoin is by far the most liquid cryptocurrency around the world. In almost every country, you can convert bitcoin into local currency through either official exchanges or peer-to-peer platforms. Its impressive trading volume is what makes institutional buying possible (more on that here).

And when it comes to security, the bitcoin network also stands apart. No other coin has nearly as much computing power securing it. Some estimate that the Bitcoin network currently uses around .21% of the world’s electricity. Yes, that’s a lot. But securing a decentralized financial system is no small task. 

Bitcoin is also far more decentralized than 99% of altcoin projects. There are hundreds of thousands of mining machines and nodes operating around the world. There’s no central authority controlling the supply. I believe this will become increasingly important as the market digests the SEC’s recent actions against Ripple (XRP).

Altcoins: (Mostly) Unrealized Potential, For Now

Altcoins, meanwhile, are still speculative investments without much real world utility. There’s nothing wrong with that — but we should recognize it. None comes close to bitcoin in terms of fulfilling their stated purpose.

Ethereum — the second largest crypto — does have a fair amount of real world utility. The Ethereum network has serious potential to provide decentralized finance (DeFi) applications in the future. But today, it’s still mostly used to facilitate the creation of and investment in other coins/tokens.

Eventually, whether it’s in five years or 30, it’s likely that some new coin will come and give bitcoin a real run for its money. But I don’t expect it to happen any time soon. I see bitcoin continuing to build on its lead in liquidity, utility, security and infrastructure for years to come.

To be clear, I’m not saying altcoins aren’t worth researching and investing in. There’s certainly money to be made in altcoins in this environment. And some altcoins will inevitably outperform BTC for periods. But there’s a heck of a lot more risk with alts. When bitcoin “crashes,” altcoins often go down 2x as much, or more.

Bitcoin should form the core of any crypto portfolio. It’s the most likely, by far, to see continued upward momentum. It’s the only crypto I see as a true inflation hedge. If you want to add in some high quality altcoins, great. Just be careful, do your research and limit your position sizing.

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Written by wpengine · Categorized: business, cryptocurrency · Tagged: altcoin, altcoins, article, bbc, bitcoin, btc, bubble, Computing, crypto, crypto portfolio, cryptocurrency, Currency, decentralized, decentralized finance, defi, Early Investing, economy, electricity, Environment, ethereum, Ethereum network, Exchanges, finance, Future, GDP, Go, html, inflation, Infrastructure, Investing, investment, Investments, market, mining, Monetary Policy, money, more, New York, other, platforms, portfolio, research, ripple, risk, security, Suicide, trading, Venezuela, world, xrp

Jan 14 2021

Toronto-Dominion Bank Announces Acquisition of Wells Fargo’s Canadian Direct Equipment Finance Business

Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD Bank) announced on Thursday it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Wells Fargo’s Canadian Direct Equipment Finance business. TD reported that the acquisition of Wells Fargo’s Canadian Direct Equipment Finance business is expected to add scale and capabilities to its existing Canadian Equipment Financing business and expand its presence in core markets.

“Wells Fargo’s Canadian Direct Equipment Finance’s direct origination model is expected to allow TD to better serve a more diverse set of business customers in need of competitive equipment loans, leases, and customized financing services.”

TD Bank further revealed that Wells Fargo’s Canadian Direct Equipment Finance business has a 25-year operating history, which includes the acquisition by Wells Fargo of GE Capital’s Canadian Equipment Finance business in 2016. The business, which has approximately C$1.5 billion in assets and over 120 employees, provides loans and leases covering a full range of commercial equipment for businesses across Canada.

While speaking about the acquisition, David Pinsonneault, Executive Vice President, Commercial and Industrial, Canadian Business Banking, TD Bank Group, stated acquiring the Canadian Direct Equipment Finance business, it will expand TD’s competitive position in the Canadian’ equipment finance industry as well as build on TD’s customer service.

TD’s purchase of Wells Fargo Canadian Direct Equipment Finance business is expected to close in the first half of 2021, subject to receipt of regulatory and Competition Act approvals and clearance, and satisfaction of other customary closing conditions. Terms of the acquisition agreement have not been disclosed at this time.

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Written by bizbuildermike · Categorized: Crowdfunding · Tagged: 2021, acquisition, Banking, business, Businesses, Canada, commercial, Customer Service, equipment finance, finance, fintech, markets, Model, more, other, president, td bank, toronto-dominion bank, wells fargo

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