Newsletter Archives

• Depositors lose access to cash in bankruptcy of fintech Synapse

  Posted on June 3, 2024 at 02:44 CDT by B. Livingston • Comment in the Forums

  PUBLIC DEFENDER

  

  By Brian Livingston

  Hundreds of thousands of consumers have lost access to their checking accounts, debit cards, and credit cards due to a shutdown by Synapse, a financial-technology startup that offered “banking as a service.”

  Synapse acted as a middleman between true banks — including Evolve Bank & Trust, Lineage Bank, American Bank, and AMG Trust — and smaller entities.

  The four banks are not in any financial danger. But they say they’ve been forced to suspend depositors’ access to their funds because on May 11, 2024, Synapse turned off its online “dashboard.” Without the live data, banks can’t verify customers’ balances, as required by law.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.23.0, 2024-06-03).

  Public Defender Banking, Fintech, Newsletters, Synapse

• Should you try USDTea technology or leaf it alone?

  Posted on June 6, 2022 at 02:43 CDT by B. Livingston • Comment in the Forums

  PUBLIC DEFENDER

  

  By Brian Livingston

  A new cryptocurrency that trades on the Ethereum blockchain — USDTea — promises to maintain a stable value equivalent to $1.00 essentially forever. But is it a scam, a joke, or a new kind of technology that you could actually put to use in your own life?

  At first glance, it would be easy to assume that any new crypto coin is a con game. After all, 81% of initial coin offerings were found to be outright scams — that is, the promoters disappeared with all the money that eager investors poured in, according to a 2018 study by Satis Group LLC.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.23.0, 2022-06-06).

  Public Defender Cryptocurrency, Fintech, Newsletters, Public Defender, safety

• How to tell whether a fintech app such as Chime is a scam

  Posted on July 19, 2021 at 02:44 CDT by B. Livingston • Comment in the Forums

  PUBLIC DEFENDER

  

  By Brian Livingston

  We’ve recently seen an explosion of activity in the field of fintech — financial technology — which is causing ripples in the old-school world of banking and Wall Street.

  The most-downloaded fintech app in the first six months of 2021, according to data firm Apptopia, belonged to Chime Financial, Inc., a seven-year-old, San Francisco–based unicorn that’s a darling of Silicon Valley venture capitalists.

  Read the full story in the AskWoody Plus Newsletter 18.27.0 (2021-07-19).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Public Defender AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Banking, Fintech, Security