Robinhood, Chime and the Emergence of a New American Finance
Welcome to our much anticipated first episode of 2021, and what a start to the year it has been. Last week was a trainwreck as Gamestop, which was initially bid up by Redditers in an attempt to punish Wall Street, crashed back to earth when the very free brokerage platforms that purport to democratize investing for the 99% shut off trading in the most active stocks, benefitting hedge funds at the expense of retail investors. As wild as the events of the week were, they are merely a symptom of something much deeper: latent hatred for Wall Street and the traditional financial system that repeatedly and seemly unfairly rewards a small number of people at the top. Precisely because of this feeling that the system is broken and doesn’t serve the people, fintech is flying. Robinhood, Chime, Cash App, Coinbase, Affirm and Klarna have built insane user bases, because they are catering to huge swaths of Americans left behind by the incumbent industry. These companies are the future of retail finance in America for sure. What will their impact be? I’m joined by Lex Sokolin to discuss these topics. Check out all of Lex’s work at fintechblueprint.com For all of our past episodes, and to sign up for our newsletter, please visit www.bankingthefuture.com. Thank you very much for joining us today. Please welcome, Lex Sokolin.