The Fintech Files: Freetrade eyes crypto push, Terra-luna manhunt heats up
Stock trading app Freetrade is eyeing a push into crypto as part of its plans to turn a profit over the next three years.
According to the documents, Freetrade aims to more than double the number of funded accounts to 2.4 million by 2025, via “new revenue-generating products”.
That would help it turn a forecast loss of £40.1m for 2022 into a profit of £23.5m in 2025 – but the forecast has left market watchers scratching their heads.
Cutting costs, growing customer base while increasing revenue by 54% “reeks of wishful thinking,” said a consultant familiar with the market.
The consultant added that the crowdfunding pitch deck contains little discussion of looming regulatory headwinds, including the Financial Conduct Authority’s wider crackdown on encryption and scrutiny of pay-to-order flow trading models in the US.
Headlines this week
FTX wins the auction to buy bankrupt crypto firm Voyager with a bid of $1.42 billion
US court orders Tether Holdings to prove sufficient reserves to support stablecoin
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon calls bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies ‘decentralized Ponzi schemes’
Kraken CEO Jesse Powell is stepping down
Interpol is after Do Kwon – but he says he’s ‘not on the run’
It’s been a tough year for crypto bosses. Nine months ago they were the business world’s new personality cults – now they increasingly look like an endangered species.
Just ask Do Kwon, the founder of the collapsed stablecoin terraUSD and its paired cryptocurrency luna, who had a particularly tough start to the week after Interpol asked police worldwide to find and arrest him early on September 26.
Kwon is already wanted in his native South Korea, where an arrest warrant has been out for him for several weeks. Now the international police organization has issued a red alert for the 31-year-old, who is accused of fraud over the $40 billion collapse of the crypto token and its parent company.
Whether Kwon is arrested and charged will be closely watched, even more so by those who invested in Terra. Many lost their savings after the stablecoin imploded in May.
The red notice therefore brings Kwon’s whereabouts into sharp focus. Until recently, he was thought to be in Singapore, after he moved there earlier in 2022. But the city-state said on September 17 that he is no longer there.
Earlier in September, Kwon tweeted to publicly deny that he was on the run, but refused to reveal his whereabouts.
Thomas Cattee, head of white-collar crime at Gherson Solicitors, said Kwon’s location remains the “key question” about what happens next, as a red notice does not necessarily mean he will be extradited.
It depends on the various agreements between South Korea and which country he is in – if he is found at all.
Latest news interrupting cryptocrime
The UK has introduced a new bill to make it easier for the police to fight cryptocrime and money laundering.
The Financial Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill, introduced on September 22, will give law enforcement agencies such as the National Crime Agency more powers to seize, freeze and recover crypto-assets, which are “increasingly” being used as a front for dirty money, according to the NCA director-general Graeme Biggar.
The NCA’s annual report, published on July 19, listed money laundering via crypto assets as a factor causing damage to the UK economy, while the Metropolitan Police seized a record £180 million worth of crypto linked to international money laundering in June alone, the force said. .
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Nomura’s digital asset firm Komainu has poached Nicholas Bertrand as CEO, Bloomberg reports. Bertrand, 51, had previously headed derivatives markets and commodities at Borsa Italiana.
Disney is hiring a lawyer to lead its crypto and NFTs efforts, Decrypt reports. The entertainment giant wants someone who can “provide day-to-day legal advice to Disney’s legal and business teams on NFT and cryptocurrency-related matters and issues”. If you think it’s you, apply here.
Clients of collapsed crypto lender Celsius are banding together to try to get their assets back, The Wall Street Journal reports. They use social media apps like Telegram, Reddit and YouTube to follow court hearings, and raise funds to pay their own lawyers.
The last word
Jesse Powell, founder of crypto exchange Kraken, stepped down last week, saying he wanted to spend more time thinking about the company’s products, rather than the day-to-day operations of the business.
But a tweet shortly before his departure suggests he may have had another motive – to work on his sleep schedule.
“After the neck injury and my operation, I had a hard time getting deep sleep. I went extreme on diet, timing of meals, cut caffeine and optimized the environment. Still, I needed perfection to get a good night’s sleep,” Powell tweeted. “It turned out that all I had to do was go back to lifting weights 30 minutes a day.”
Who would have thought, right, Jesse?
To contact the author of this story with feedback or news, email Alex Daniel
