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The University of Georgia (UGA) published a summary of a paper that investigated the associations between social media usage and crypto investment behavior. It found that The study found that about half of social media users surveyed have invested in digital currencies. And the more social media platforms a user was active on, the more likely they were to invest.. Meanwhile, only 10% of non-social media users had invested in crypto. YouTube, Reddit, Twitter and Clubhouse users were the most likely to invest in crypto. Instagram users weren't as keen on crypto. The researchers found men and those with a higher risk tolerance were more likely to invest in crypto, but people with a higher education level and older people were less likely to invest in crypto.

JP Koning writes about USD Coin transparency, focusing on the nature of its "approved investments." "What are these investments? How many does it own? Circle, USDC's issuer, has never disclosed much information on them. Because Circle is regulated by 44 state licensing boards, and each board has its own permissible investment rules (some very lenient), it's very difficult to reverse-engineer what USDC's "approved investments" might be comprised of. Responding to an inquiry, Circle said that they own 'cash, cash equivalents and short-duration investment-grade assets.' This gives us a bit more of an idea about the nature of Circle's approved investments. But why not get even more transparent? It would be a big win for stablecoin consumers if Circle provided descriptions of its approved investments in subsequent attestation reports, and broke down what proportion of customers' funds are allocated to each bucket."

Donut aims to make crypto investing more accessible for the average consumer and help them educate about investing, crypto and the underlying technologies. The app allows users to invest in baskets of digital assets through a "gamified user interface" and is optimized for recurring micro-investing transactions.

A Ponzi scheme is a type of investment fraud with five features; (1) people invest into it because they expect good profits, (2) that expectation is sustained by such profits being paid to those who choose to cash out, but (3) there is no external source of revenue for those payoffs which come entirely from (4) new investment money, while (5) the operators take away a large portion of this money. Investing in bitcoin (or any crypto) checks all these items. The investors are all those who have bought or will buy bitcoins; they invest by buying bitcoins, and cash out by selling them. The operators are the miners, who take money out of the scheme when they sell their mined coins to the investors.

Investments into insurtech funding rounds rebounded to reach $1.56 billion in the second quarter of 2020, a more than 71% increase on the first-quarter of the year, according to Willis Re. Global investments into insurtech start-ups fell at the start of the year, as the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemics in capital markets put some investors attention elsewhere. However, the second-quarter rebound was driven in part by later-stage investments, including four large investment rounds of US $100 million or greater. https://www.willistowerswatson.com/en-GB/insights/2020/07/quarterly-insurtech-briefing-q2-2020

The latest European Investment bank (EIB) Investment Survey found that although 45% of firms intend to invest less than initially planned in the current financial year due to the coronavirus, they expected to increase in the use of digital technologies (50%). The survey results also show that while 37% of EU firms had not adopted any digital technology, this figure is only 27% in the United States. The areas where the US has a particularly notable edge are the use of IOT applications and drones. In addition, large firms are significantly more likely to have implemented digital technology compared to small and medium-sized enterprises (75% vs. 52%).

The introduction of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) allows the central bank to engage in large-scale intermediation by competing with private financial intermediaries for deposits. Yet, since a central bank is not an investment expert, it cannot invest in long-term projects itself, but relies on investment banks to do so. We derive an equivalence result that shows that absent a banking panic, the set of allocations achieved with private financial intermediation will also be achieved with a CBDC. During a panic, however, we show that the rigidity of the central bank's contract with the investment banks has the capacity to deter runs. Thus, the central bank is more stable than the commercial banking sector. Depositors internalize this feature ex-ante, and the central bank arises as a deposit monopolist, attracting all deposits away from the commercial banking sector. This monopoly might endangered maturity transformation.

Global fintech investment in 2019 fell just shy of 2018 results, with $137.5 billion invested across 2,693 deals. Despite the slight drop, fintech investment remained more than double every year prior to 2018 - highlighting the enormous strength of the global fintech market.  Two deals drove a very significant proportion of this investment: the $42.5 billion acquisition of Worldpay by Fidelity National Information Services (FIS) and the $22 billion acquisition of First Data by Fiserv.

Tesla invested $1.5 billion in Bitcoin and signaled its intent to begin accepting the cryptocurrency as a form of payment, sending prices to a new record after the vote of confidence from the electric-car market leader. "In January 2021, we updated our investment policy to provide us with more flexibility to further diversify and maximize returns on our cash that is not required to maintain adequate operating liquidity. As part of the policy, which was duly approved by the Audit Committee of our Board of Directors, we may invest a portion of such cash in certain alternative reserve assets including digital assets, gold bullion, gold exchange-traded funds and other assets as specified in the future. Thereafter, we invested an aggregate $1.50 billion in bitcoin under this policy and may acquire and hold digital assets from time to time or long-term. Moreover, we expect to begin accepting bitcoin as a form of payment for our products in the near future, subject to applicable laws and initially on a limited basis, which we may or may not liquidate upon receipt." https://sec.report/Document/0001564590-21-004599/

Guggenheim Funds Trust filed an amendment with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to allow its $5 billion Macro Opportunities Fund gain exposure to bitcoin by investing up to 10% of the fund's net asset value in the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC). The Macro Opportunities Fund is part of Guggenheim Investments, the global asset management and investment advisory division of Guggenheim Partners, and has more than $233 billion in total assets across fixed income, equity and alternative strategies.

Coinbase announced that it has committed to invest $500 million of its cash and cash equivalents into a diverse portfolio of crypto-assets, and going forward, it will also allocate 10% of quarterly net income into this same portfolio. Investment allocation will be driven by Coinbase's aggregate custodial crypto-asset balances which means that its customers will drive its investment strategy.

After a year of fine-tuning, which included user trials at 27 branches in Brooklyn, JPM is releasing on Wednesday a digital investing service called You Invest Portfolios. For an annual fee of 0.35% of assets, or 35 basis points, JPM will put users into an investment portfolio made up of the bank's ETFs

The South Korean government FinTech Innovation Fund will directly invest KRW85.5 billion in fintech firms to speed up the investment process to help fintech firms having troubles finding investment amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Valkyrie Digital Assets has filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)for a new exchange-traded fund (ETF) that would invest in companies that hold bitcoin on their balance sheets. The Valkyrie Innovative Balance Sheet ETF will invest in companies that directly or indirectly invest in, transact in, or otherwise have exposure to bitcoin or operate in the bitcoin ecosystem.

Grayscale Investments filed a Registration Statement on Form 10 with the U.S. SEC on behalf of Grayscale Bitcoin Trust. If the SEC deems the Form 10 filing effective, the Trust's shares would be registered under the Exchange Act of 1934, potentially making it the first crypto-asset investment vehicle to become a reporting company. The shares are already publicly traded on an over-the-counter market, but reporting company status would improve transparency and liquidity for shareholders, which could potentially attract investors who are currently restricted from participating in any investment vehicles that aren't SEC-regulated reporting companies.

The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) is reportedly reviewing equity investments held by Ant Group in dozens of companies, intensifying a crackdown on billionaire Jack Ma's financial technology empire. Regulators are considering whether to instruct Ant to divest some of its investments, mainly in technology and fintech start-ups, if they violate any rules such as creating unfair competition in the market.

To be a validator node and founding member, organizations will need to meet technical requirements and specific evaluation criteria. If the conditions are met, upon approval, the Enterprise will have to make an initial minimum investment of $10 million worth of Libra Investment Tokens issued by the Association. Nonprofits will not be required to make the initial investment. However, they will have to cover the costs to run its node. It is estimated that the price for running the validator node will run approximately $280,000.

Grayscale Investments Releases Q2 2019 Digital Asset Investment Report Digital currency asset manager Grayscale's assets under management nearly tripled from $926 million to $2.7 billion in Q2 2019 on inflows of $85 million, the rest being asset price appreciation. Institutional investors comprised the 84% of Q2 inflows (75% over 12 months).

"In this guidance, we provide a framework for analyzing whether a digital asset has the characteristics of one particular type of security - an "investment contract."[4]  Both the Commission and the federal courts frequently use the "investment contract" analysis to determine whether unique or novel instruments or arrangements, such as digital assets, are securities subject to the federal securities laws."

Centre is late in releasing its USDC reserves attestations, the last one posted on their website dating back to March when the stablecoin had a market cap of $11 billion. This fact and the sudden growth the crypto-asset experienced in the last few months (there are now almost $21 billion outstanding) is raising alarms about the delay of these documents (the March 31 report was published on May 24). There has not been a public disclosure of why the tardiness is happening, and the reports remain vague about how the reserves are invested: "held...at federally insured US depository institutions and in approved investments" with zero clarity as to what "approved investments" are.