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My thoughts on Web 2.0 Finance 2.x and Management.


WHAT IF THE UK DISTRIBUTED A DIGITAL WALLET TO EACH OF IT’S CITIZENS…

Posted on Published November 2, 2018November 2, 2018 by Yoni Assia

It’s 2008 the sub-prime mortgage market has collapsed and banks aren’t lending.
The government needs to get some juice back into the economy and get people
spending. It doesn’t want the citizen to lose out simply because of mistakes
made at the higher echelons of society.

« London Wants to be the Fintech Capital of the World


LONDON WANTS TO BE THE FINTECH CAPITAL OF THE WORLD

Posted on Published October 20, 2014September 21, 2014 by Yoni Assia

In my previous blog I wrote about Tel Aviv’s regulatory challenges in dealing
with industry changes. I am delighted to see that the financial regulator in the
UK, the FCA has set up an initiative, Project Innovate to help innovative
finance companies. Members of Parliament, such as Mark Hoban have challenged
fellow politicians, business leaders and regulators to be aware of the
challenges of financial disruption. Creative means are necessary in order to
help grow digital finance, which is taking place rapidly in London’s backyard. A
great portion of the startups in London’s emerging Tech City are finance
orientated. eToro is part of the new Finance Innovation (video below check it
out!) programme that intends to make London a leader in financial services (we
saw this summer the country still sucks at football :)).

30 years ago London established mechanisms and an infrastructure that allowed it
to become the world’s banking centre. Our office in the UK is located in Canary
Wharf, now London’s financial hub, previously a wasteland. The Finance 2.0 of
today is designed to have a positive effect on consumers. It will remove the
fees that our burden our lives (like having to pay 8% to change money at the
airport!) and will create a frictionless environment in order to deal with our
finances. Finance will be in the hands of the individual rather than the middle
man. In the long run this individual empowerment can only be a good thing. If it
is the regulator’s responsible to protect the consumer, the regulator should
embrace these positive changes rather than stifle them.

It is great to see engagement and understanding taking place between the FCA and
Fin-Tech startups and established businesses. It is great they have also
acknowledged that innovative companies see current regulations as outdated and
complex. This acknowledgement will hopefully pave the way for regulatory changes
that can allow innovation to flourish.

We hope that this dialogue expands into a blossoming working relationship that
will turn London into the world’s fin-tech capital, strengthening the UK’s
economy for many years to come.

 

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« The Startup nation’s digital finance revolution What if the UK distributed a
digital wallet to each of it’s citizens… »


THE STARTUP NATION’S DIGITAL FINANCE REVOLUTION

Posted on Published October 19, 2014September 15, 2014 by Yoni Assia

I had the awesome opportunity of speaking at the Geektime Conference this month,
on a panel talking about whether Israel could become a hub of global fintech.
The internet company I founded, eToro has it’s RnD centre here in Tel Aviv as
well as a corporate office in London. These are two markets where digital
finance is starting to flourish and can become a serious player in their
respected nations economies.

The Tel Aviv tech boom over the past 25 years has been represented by 3 waves of
innovation. The 1st, the large software companies such as Magic Software :),
Amdocs and Comverse emerged in the 80s. The 2nd wave in the late 90s was
represented by the dot.com boom, with hundreds of startup companies emerging and
50 Israeli companies floating on the Nasdaq. Today’s 3rd wave of innovation here
in Israel is significantly represented by internet and digital finance in the
form of payments, investments, fraud detection and crypto currency startups.
Finance is a trillion dollar industry and there is no reason Tel Aviv cannot
have a piece of this pie, the same way that London become the world’s banking
centre. Financial innovation will be a major disruptor in years to come. As
recognised by Google’s Chairman Eric Smidt who met a number of these companies
when he visted Tel Aviv earlier in the summer.

Geektime put together some cool stats (translated below) that shows the growth
of internet startups in Israel over the past year



In order for this growth to be sustained and accelerated governments need to
adapt their own regulation and oversights in sync with innovation. For instance
I truely believe that Bitcoin will move from a rogue technology  to a major
financial organ in global economics. Lawmakers need to embrace this. By
embracing these trends that will become apart of our future, and having Tel Aviv
become a central hub of Bitcoin trading the wider national economy can grow.
With it’s innovative culture as highlighted above, Israel is perfectly placde to
be a global leader by embracing the essence of Finance 2.0. That’s if it sorts
out certain regulatory and industrial obstacles. My blog post from last year on
Regulation 2.0 is even more relevant today as it was back then.

« Snapchat worth 10 Billion USD … I thought it was crazy at 3. London Wants to
be the Fintech Capital of the World »


SNAPCHAT WORTH 10 BILLION USD … I THOUGHT IT WAS CRAZY AT 3.

Posted on Published September 7, 2014September 1, 2014 by Yoni Assia

Remember last year, when everyone was going nuts over Snapchat’s rejection of
Facebook’s 3bn offer to buy the company? a few thoughts I had about this when
reading this week’s news :

1) Private is the new social, this week Snapchat’s valuation has
reached  $10bn.  It has tripled Facebook’s valuation within one year alone, and
despite pessimists saying that the Whatsapp aqusition will kill the young
company, no one can argue that it has became one of the social giants of our
time. 10B USD worth of sexting . OK, its more its people communicating with
crappy photos realizing there is no reason to save them also.

2) Evan Spiegel (23 yr old CEO of Snapchat) thinks sexting is GOOD and that it
can stay private, While Mark Zuck thinks “The Age of Privacy is Over” . Seems
you can be social and private at the same time, act social and leave not even a
single trace of evidence behind. Who will prevail? probably both. We have TV’s
and Radio , and we also still have print – different mediums for different
content.

3) Mobile Only…..

4) I am old (33) and married (+3), I have no use of sending lots of things that
need to be deleted. But if, like hundreds of celebrities, you are sexting and
sending nude images of yourself, they better self distruct them…

While last year everybody was rushing in to explain why Snapchat is crazy to
turn down the offer, today no one is calling out the $10bn valuation as being
absurd, in fact Dick Costello tweeted this, “Snapchat at $10b not absurd. Crazy
growth, clear monetization path, & one of the best social product thinkers out
there…” and I think we can all agree that Dick knows what he is talking about
when it comes to the social revolution.

I know I’ve said it a million times before, but reality keeps reminding me that
we’re on the right path- these companies are still just early adaptors of this
phenomena called social networks, and this field will keep growing in the years
to come.



« Moonshots in Faraway Places: Why Eric Schmidt called me an idiot The Startup
nation’s digital finance revolution »


MOONSHOTS IN FARAWAY PLACES: WHY ERIC SCHMIDT CALLED ME AN IDIOT

Posted on Published June 25, 2014June 24, 2014 by Yoni Assia

Eric Schmidt believes it and so do we.

Technology will soon enable people to have all the information they need in the
palm of their hands regardless of wealth status. He has set up a fund Innovation
Endeavours  intended to invest in the Israeli and US entrepreneurial ecosystem
and I was honored to be invited to have dinner with him when he recently visited
Tel Aviv. A diverse range of entreprenurs were present representing the best of
the Israeli tech ecosystem. Coming from different industries and backgrounds
these entrepreneurs helped shed light on the many facets of Israeli innovation
and creativity, these included to name a few: Mickey Boodaei CEO of Trusteer
(acquired by IBM), Ido Bachelet Phd and Assistant Professor in Life Sciences at
Bar Ilan University, Sagie Davidovich CEO Spark Beyond (artificial
intelligence), Ofer Haviv, President and CEO Evogene, Maxine Fassberg CEO Intel
Israel.

It was a privelege to hear Eric’s views on innovations and the future of tech.
Being the chairman of Google he rules the world and has a unique vantage point
to speak from. Eric told us about his travels and his visits to China, Berlin,
London and even Iraq, that he travles a lot seeing Google at work everywhere
around the world. He questionsed a lot the people around the table about what
makes Israel the “startup nation” (I suppose he got his answer by the chutzpah
on show :)). He mentioned several times that Israel is second only to Silicon
Valley by the intesity and diversity of entrepreneurship.  Unsurprisingly as the
table was full of Israelis each person was not afraid to give their own personal
opinion and insights. Being Israeli entrepreneurs they explained to him that he
is wrong, that there are many problems and reasons that Israeli startups can’t
succeed, why the goverment is wrong (in their policies on tech) and education
system is rotten (there is a large braindrain with many Israeli top academics
now based abroad). I guess Eric’s experience with different  cultures led him to
understand that the Next Google can come from Israel. I was the only optimistic
around the table, saying if Bitcoin can become a huge economy growing out of
nowhere with no home, then obviously huge things can come out of the smallest
places like our country.

On that note I asked Eric whether Google will support and adopt Bitcoin. It
will, so will there be a Googlecoin and if so Googlecoin bank? Google will not
go into financial services so no Google bank anytime soon and no threat to eToro
in becoming the world’s largest mass market digital finance institution

When I asked if Android will remain free and open? He said of course, anyone who
says it isn’t is an idiot…well there you go conspiracy theorists

In case Eric Schmidt was unaware which country he was in one entrepreneur closed
the dinner by explaining to him that Google’s future was uncertain since they
are not using his technology and are suffering from NIH syndrom (not invented
here). Eric was humble and suggested to benchmark Google technology vs his
company’s tech.

So with the internet of things and emerging technologies will the next big thing
be from a faraway place unknown to most, outside of the traditional superpowers?
Eric Schmidt believes so. Watch this space…

 

 

 

« The Virtual Social Network Snapchat worth 10 Billion USD … I thought it was
crazy at 3. »


THE VIRTUAL SOCIAL NETWORK

Posted on Published June 6, 2014June 6, 2014 by Yoni Assia

Experience the impossible. Interact with those that are not around you,
experience their experiences. Facebook intends to take sharing to a new level
with its 2B USD acquisition of the virtual reality headset company, Oculus.

Facebook intends to be at the forefront of a new medium of interaction; virtual
reality. Its acquisition is symbolic. Facebook embodies openness and sharing
among individuals rather than exclusivity and secrecy. Its purchase of Oculus
will put a technology that will greatly disrupt the way we live in the hands of
social networks rather than individuals, benefitting communities rather than
just ourselves. The social network revolution has allowed technology products to
reach optiminal distrubution in a fast, efficient manner. Facebook’s acquisition
will hopefully accelerate the ability for Oculus products to reach distribution
and benefit the mass market in a quicker manner than other innovations (electric
cars for example that have taken many years to reach mass market consumers).

I remember sitting at university and telling my parents how I used a podcast to
watch my lectures. They were bemused. I could record, rewind, learn and watch
when I liked. But it seems we are about to go 180. I am going to go back to the
classroom to learn, but not physically, via a pair of googles. Rather than
watching the sport on TV, I am going to virtually be there. Rather than using
virtual reality to escape into a world of our own, Facebook’s culture and vision
(here is Mark Zuckerberg’s FB post about it) will allow us to interact virtually
while sharing these experiences with one another.

Critics will say this will create a more lazy society, but to me this will
transform the actions that we currently perform via the TV,PC, tablet and
mobile. It will disrupt and transform the activities that are already embedded
in our daily lives such as watching a music video, a live sports event or
lecture on YouTube.

Facebook is the first mover in dominating a market that will play a major role
in our lives. Their ability to dominate our digital ecosystem is becoming ever
more apparent. With the acquisitions of Instagram, Whatsapp and Move along with
other product enhancements; our mobile experience, without us intentionally
knowing is becoming more and more integrated through a Facebook platform. It
will be interesting to watch the stock performance of FB over the next 18 months
as we see mobile users interact with their Facebook mobile products in a similar
manner to how Microsoft dominated our PC ecosystem in the 90s.

 

 

« The evolution of the social web Moonshots in Faraway Places: Why Eric Schmidt
called me an idiot »


THE EVOLUTION OF THE SOCIAL WEB

Posted on Published May 11, 2014May 8, 2014 by Yoni Assia

The evolution of the social web over the past 24 months has been fascinating.

We are kind of witnessing a social revolution within the social revolution.
Social web 2.0.

It looks like the world went perhaps too open too quickly and we have seen a
revolt. Many young teenagers shifted their social network activity from Facebook
to the more private sphere of Instagram and from there they moved to Snapchat,
where your picture gets deleted in a flash, no one can see it, save it, archive
it and share it around town.

We have witnessed a backlash against many aspects of the social network
revolution that most of Generation Y were unhappy with. Facebook allowed people
to share, to open up and connect with the world, but it restricted individuals
from sharing privately in a fun social manner. Also Snowden exposing the NSA’s
snooping of FB profiles undermined Facebook’s attempts to maintain user privacy
as well as the implementation of new sharing rules without explicit user
consent.

We have almost gone full circle. Secrets were bad in Silicon Valley, now they
love them, with the Secret app taking Silicon Valley by storm in the past year.
People are enjoying speaking in a social forum where there words cannot be
traced back to them. Anonymous sharing is the new buzz happening on the social
web. Trust is still the underlying ingredients in all these networks. Once this
breaks down, then there will be no community and no exchange of these ideas.

People were once willing to listen to people who they were close to online and
Facebook allowed the exchange of ideas through networks such as universities and
schools. Now there is an exchange of ideas happening through anonymous  peer to
peer networks and many people are yearning for privacy. Will this connect us
further or make us grow further apart?

 

« 2014: Still living in the 20th century? The Virtual Social Network »


2014: STILL LIVING IN THE 20TH CENTURY?

Posted on Published April 14, 2014April 14, 2014 by Yoni Assia

Let’s cast our minds back to Peter Thiel’s Start-up Course that we teach here at
eToro. Recent tragic events reminded me of this particular class.

It is now well over a month since flight MH170 disappeared from radar and has
still not been found. Ignoring the conspiracy theories circling the web,
assuming this plane is at the bottom of the ocean sea bed, how has nothing been
recovered including the black box flight recorder?

Only last year we were told that there are no secrets, that governments can
snoop on us, any time, anywhere. The truth was supposedly exposed. Here Ed
Snowden, talks on TED about, ‘how we can take back the internet’.

The Malaysian plane tragically reminds us that there are a vast swathes of the
earth unexplored, that the internet cannot track us down everywhere and that
perhaps we often focus our innovation efforts in the wrong direction.

As mentioned we have remarkably been travelling at the same speed for 30 years.
Aerospace has often been neglected in the wake of economic downturns.
Governments are looking for a plane with naval and air support that was
developed more than 30 years ago. It’s a shame that such tragic events remind us
that we have not advanced technologically as much as we often like to claim.

It is a stark reminder that there are huge obstacles in the way of innovation.
When Concorde came to market many thought this is how fast the masses would soon
be travelling from continent to continent. This of course has not happened.
Electric cars were the future 10 years ago, but I am still driving a regular
petrol fuelled vehicle.

I am very excited about what the future holds: Google Glass and driverless cars
coming to the market, but we should react with cautious optimism. Cynicism
develops if we promise too much and raise expectation levels.

 

« Great 2013! Now onto 2014… The evolution of the social web »


GREAT 2013! NOW ONTO 2014…

Posted on Published February 2, 2014February 2, 2014 by Yoni Assia

 I wanted to take the time to reflect on what has been a  truely revolutionary
year 2013.

I don’t think anyone, including myself, had dared to imagine what a year of
change it would be for all of us.

At eToro we launched some exciting features; the eToro OpenBook for mobile
devices (both IOS and Android users can now enjoy investing on the go!), a large
stock offering that really made a difference in the way people approach
investing, and of course worked harder than ever to continue improving our
existing products such as the CopyTrader and the WebTrader.

We welcomed tens of thousands of new users to our platform in 2013. I’m excited
to say that we’re seeing more and more people taking interest in their
investments. I believe it’s safe to say now, when looking in retrospective that
2013 was the year where our vision became a reality, and the future of finance
became the here and now.

The innovation taking place to disrupt the old, traditional order, that serves
only a few has only just begun. 2013 was the year when the world opened its eyes
to the emergence of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin is almost an ever
present topic on Bloomberg and has risen from the geek underground to an
acceptable form of currency. This emergence will bring about a more open and
transparent world economy. It’s great to be a part of something that will truely
change the world.

I am thrilled to face the challenges and opportunities 2014 will bring , I will
continue to strive to innovate and socialise the experience of the financial
world. This is what social is all about. It is the absolute expression of
transparency. Keep on sharing your’  hopes, dreams and innovations.

 

 

« eToro meets David Cameron, the British Prime Minister via Future Fifty 2014:
Still living in the 20th century? »


ETORO MEETS DAVID CAMERON, THE BRITISH PRIME MINISTER VIA FUTURE FIFTY

Posted on Published December 11, 2013December 9, 2013 by Yoni Assia

We recently were accepted into the Future Fifty programme- a UK governmental
programme designed to accelerate a select group of high-growth stage tech. The
formal event took place together with the Tech City 3rd anniversary.

We were welcomed in ceremonial fashion by being invited to open the world’s
financial markets at the London Stock Exchange along with other entrepreneurs
from the other chosen companies such as Zoppa, Shazam, Hailo, Swiftkey to
mention a few of some of the great founders I met.  Joanna Shields of Tech City
and Xavier Rolet CEO of the London Stock Exchange hosted the event. The day got
even better after Hailo cabs took us to the Tech City offices, where I had the
opportunity to personally meet and shake hands with the British Prime Minister,
David Cameron. He definitely liked the eToro t-shirt I was wearing, I should
have brought him one

 



London is a great place for us to have an office as one of the world’s financial
centres. With our office being at Level 39 where tech meets finance.

Being part of the Future50 allows us to be perfectly placed to accelerate our
growth, to scale our user base in the UK; giving more people the chance to be
part of a democratised world of finance.

10x

« Start-up Course: Back to the Future- Changing the world today and tomorrow
Great 2013! Now onto 2014… »


POSTS NAVIGATION

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OTHER POSTS

 * What if the UK distributed a digital wallet to each of it’s citizens…
   November 2, 2018
 * London Wants to be the Fintech Capital of the World September 21, 2014
 * The Startup nation’s digital finance revolution September 15, 2014
 * Snapchat worth 10 Billion USD … I thought it was crazy at 3. September 1,
   2014
 * Moonshots in Faraway Places: Why Eric Schmidt called me an idiot June 24,
   2014

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