Executive Summary In this bonus episode of our expert interview series, Antonio Fatas, Professor of Economics at INSEAD, joins us to provide insights into the current situation with FTX. We've gathered a good deal of information about the collapse so far but there is still much that remains unknown. We delved into some of the known facts surrounding FTX and pondered together on what could happen in the future. It's clear from our discussion that FTX was not a regulated financial institution, and also had its own unique challenges. We'll be keeping an eye out for more developments related to FT ..read more

Welcome to This Month in German, Swiss, and Austrian (GSA) Startups, our startup news wrap-up for December 2022 by Startuprad.io with Chris from New York City and Joe from Frankfurt. We recorded this news episode on December 19th, 2022. Keep in mind, this news episode covers everything since our last news episode. As always: All news not yet included here will be published in our next news episode, which will be January 2023, the first news for 2023. Guys, another year is over! Find all links to the quoted news on our Medium blog, link below Our Highlights: Enpal makes huge fundraising in ..read more

Our Highlights: FTX may be history, BUT a German Blog reports there are several parties interested in buying the European Entity of FTX. FTX also triggered Bitpanda to order a special audit from KPMG. We have some more job cuts, this time the 2nd round. Gorillas may sell itself at 1 bn USD even though they have raised 1.3 bn USD in venture capital already. Air taxis are still hot, Volocopter raises more than 180 m US$ to get closer to certification and Lilium sells 100 Airtaxis to Saudi Arabia. The German VC market is stabilizing, according to KfW Research. Our former guest Creditshelf partner ..read more

Our highlights: Germany is preparing for a potentially rough winter, in many ways. Now Environmental Action Germany (Deutsche Umwelthilfe): Asked Germans not to put up any Christmas lights this season. Startups in GSA keep laying off staff, but also raising significant funds. We have our usually shortened list a bit longer this month, to show that it is not all gloom and doom here. You will also notice that the M&A activity is up, totaling 55 bn US$ in summer 2022 (for all of Europe), and is still going strong. Let’s talk startups: Subscribe Here Find all options to subscribe to our newsle ..read more

Executive Summary This episode is part of our Subject Matter Expert Interviews. It will be one in a series over time, keeping up with the development of the central banks and their digital currency. This episode is just the start! We talk to Kimmo, a regtech entrepreneur, who formerly worked at the central banks of Finland, Norway, the Bank of England, ECB, and the Fed in New York City. This episode is a starting point for us, from which we will dive deeper, keeping up with the developments on CBDC. At the Federal Reserve in New York I siumlated attacks on critical infrastructure on the back o ..read more

Startups in GSA did better than expected. We had a few insolvency filings, but also amazing fundraisings like Celonis 1 bn US$ combination of equity and debt funding. Insuftech Wefox raises 400 m. One can already see the signs of a downturn, M&A activity going up, as well as the news about insolvencies or job cuts/ hiring freezes. But — according to a Bikcom survey — 8 out of 10 startups are still hiring. Deal time our recent guest Qonto buys former guest Penta and there was more in a B2B neobank deal week. Even Allianz had to learn, that one can not buy fintech success and there is more n ..read more

We want digital debt to be registered, issued, transferred and eventually traded on our infrastructure. Benedikt Schuppli, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of FQX Executive Summary FQX is a Zürich, Switzerland-based fintech with great aspirations. They want to digitize company debt and this digital debt to be registered, issued, transferred, and eventually traded on their infrastructure. Promissory notes are known around the financial world. These instruments are fairly standardized. So, if you put this on a blockchain, you have an extremely powerful financing tool. Benedikt Schuppli, Co-Founder and Co-C ..read more

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