Masayoshi Son Bets Big on Crypto By Snapping a 40% Stake in Binance Japan 🇯🇵
We're also covering Revolut CEO moving to Dubai 🇬🇧, NYSE $2B bet on Polymarket 🇺🇸, Mark Cuban's subprime car-secured cards 🇺🇸, Ethereum life insurance 🇧🇲 & Ant leapfrogging OpenAI 🇨🇳
🇯🇵 Masayoshi Son Bets Big on Crypto By Snapping a 40% Stake in Binance Japan
Masayoshi Son’s SoftBank is making its biggest crypto bet yet. PayPay, the mobile payment app owned by SoftBank’s Japanese telecom arm, just acquired a 40% stake in Binance Japan.
This gives PayPay’s 70 million users direct access to buy and sell cryptocurrencies through their existing accounts using PayPay Money. While unknown outside of Japan and South Korea, PayPay is a household name in Japan, where it lets people make QR code payments at shops and send money to each other for free, similar to Venmo or PayPal.
PayPay corporate officer Masayoshi Yanase emphasized the value of partnering with “the world’s largest digital asset exchange by trading volume” in the press release announcing the deal.
The investment follows the classic Masayoshi Son playbook. The SoftBank founder uses his dominance over Japan’s telecom market to help international tech companies expand there in exchange for taking a stake. He famously did this with Yahoo Japan, where his stake eventually became more valuable than Yahoo itself. He also did something similar with OpenAI, creating a joint venture called SB OpenAI Japan that sells OpenAI’s enterprise products exclusively to major Japanese corporations.
Source: Global Fintech Insider & Bloomberg
🇬🇧 Revolut’s Storonsky Becomes Latest Billionaire to Leave UK Over Taxes
Revolut co-founder and CEO Nik Storonsky is the latest billionaire to shift his residence away from the UK after the government axed a tax break that saved the ultra-wealthy millions.
Corporate filings cited by Forbes show Storonsky’s family office changed his residence from the UK to the United Arab Emirates in October 2024. Forbes estimates his stake in Revolut is now worth over $7.9 billion, with the London-based digital bank reportedly in talks to raise funds at a $65 billion valuation.
The move follows the British government’s decision in April to scrap special tax privileges for “non-domiciled residents,’’ a 200-year-old rule that allowed the wealthy to avoid UK taxes on overseas earnings for up to 15 years.
Since the change, several high-profile figures have departed, including Egyptian billionaire Nassef Sawiris, startup investor Christian Angermayer, and property developers Ian and Richard Livingstone.
Source: Forbes
🇺🇸 Prediction Markets Go Mainstream as NYSE Parent Invests $2B in Polymarket
One of Wall Street’s major establishments is going all-in on crypto gambling.
Intercontinental Exchange or ICE, which runs the New York Stock Exchange, is investing up to $2 billion in Polymarket, valuing the prediction market at $8 billion.
Under the deal, ICE will become a global distributor of Polymarket’s data, expanding the platform’s reach.
The deal represents a sharp jump from Polymarket’s $1 billion valuation in its August funding round and “marks a major step in bringing prediction markets into the financial mainstream,” said founder and CEO Shayne Coplan to the New York Times.
Prediction markets, which allow users to bet on outcomes ranging from politics to sports and entertainment, surged into the mainstream last year after correctly predicting the US presidential election outcome.
Source: The New York Times
🇺🇸 Billionaire Mark Cuban Backs Yendo’s $50M Round for Vehicle-Secured Credit Cards
Texas-based Yendo has raised a $50 million round, led by billionaire Mark Cuban, to expand the first-ever vehicle-secured credit card for subprime borrowers.
The company targets consumers with credit scores of 600 or below, often locked out of traditional credit and pushed toward payday loans. Yendo’s cards carry a 29.88% fixed annual interest rate, with credit limits up to $10,000, secured by the borrower’s vehicle even if not fully paid off.
Founder Jordan Miller (pictured below) told Bloomberg in an interview that “I think people are really missing out,” adding that non-prime US consumers hold over $1 trillion in untapped vehicle equity.
Most applicants receive a credit offer within a minute of submitting vehicle information and Miller said Yendo’s repossession rate remains below 2%, compared to the 2.3% national average for auto loans.
Source: Bloomberg
🇧🇲 Crypto Insurer Raises $22M to Launch World First’s Ethereum-Based Life Insurance
Want your life insurance payout in Ethereum?
Bermuda-based crypto life insurer Anthea just raised $22 million to make that happen, launching what it claims is the world’s first crypto-denominated life insurance product.
The Series A funding, led by Hong Kong-based Yunfeng Financial Group, will accelerate product development, expand Anthea’s footprint across Asia, and support operations as it builds out its crypto-linked in .
Anthea, led by CEO Alex Pei, has received in-principle approval from the Bermuda Monetary Authority to offer insurance denominated in digital assets.
The policy structure mirrors traditional life insurance, except that premiums, claim payments, maturity payouts, and loans will all be handled in cryptocurrency.
Source: CoinDesk
🇬🇧 UK Banking Faces “Shadow AI” Threat as Two-Thirds Use Unapproved Tools
The growing use of unsanctioned generative AI tools by employees, known as “shadow AI”, is fast emerging as a cybersecurity risk across the UK’s financial sector.
According to a new study by AI firm DeepL, cited by Finextra, around 65% of UK finance professionals admit to using unapproved AI tools when communicating with customers. Despite the potential breaches of internal policy and data protection rules, 70% said such tools had improved their response times and accessibility.
“In financial services, where every interaction is highly regulated and reputational risk is acute, staff will inevitably look for workarounds if the tools provided don’t meet their needs,” DeepL chief revenue officer David Parry-Jones told Finextra.
Currently, 37% of banking interactions are powered by AI, with multilingual support and transaction monitoring among the most common applications.
A separate study by Cybernews, also cited by Finextra, found the trend extends globally, with 59% of US workers using unapproved AI tools. “If employees use unapproved AI, there’s no way to know what kind of information is being shared,” said Cybernews security researcher Mantas Sabeckis.
Source: Finextra
🇨🇳 Ant Group Releases Open-Source AI Model Claiming Edge Over OpenAI, DeepSeek
Chinese payment giant Ant Group has entered the trillion-parameter race with Ling-1T, its new open-source AI model touted to outperform DeepSeek and OpenAI.
In a recent company announcement, it says the LLM model surpass rivals in mathematics, coding, and logical reasoning.
Ant said Ling-1T, features over one trillion parameters and demonstrated “superior complex reasoning ability” across benchmarks, achieving 70.42% accuracy on the American Invitational Mathematics Examination (AIME), matching Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro.
Ant’s chief technology officer Zhengyu He, who leads the company’s AI division, was also part of its elite “Plan A” team of researchers mentoring top graduates through an internal talent programme, in a bid to attract leading AI minds to the firm, according to a separate news report by the SCMP last May.
The launch adds fresh momentum to China’s intensifying AI race. DeepSeek recently introduced its V3.2-Exp model, halving API costs, while Alibaba unveiled Qwen-3-Max-Preview last month, another trillion-parameter model aimed at rivalling Western AI heavyweights.
Source: South China Morning Post
Upcoming Fintech Events
🇺🇸 Money20/20 USA will be held in Las Vegas on October 26–29, 2025 ($1,495–$5,995), with speakers such as Leigh Brady (President & CEO, SECU), Bill Cheney (CEO, SchoolsFirst Federal Credit Union), and Beverly Anderson (President & CEO, BECU).
🚨 GFI Exclusive Offer: Save $250 on tickets using the GFI250 promo code!
🇨🇳 Hong Kong Fintech Week will be held in Hong Kong on November 3–7, 2025 ($99–$299), with speakers such as Forest Lin (Corporate Vice President & Head of Tencent Financial Technology, Tencent), Eric Jing (Chairman, Ant Group), and Bill Winters (Group Chief Executive, Standard Chartered).
🚨 GFI Exclusive Offer: Enjoy a 10% discount on tickets using the HKFTWXSMUGLOBALFT10 promo code!
🇺🇸 Blockchain Futurist Conference will be held in Miami on November 5–6, 2025 ($349–$599), with speakers such as Tom Bilyeu (CEO & Co-Founder, Impact Theory), Shan Aggarwal (Chief Business Officer, Coinbase), and Mike Belshe (Co-Founder & CEO, BitGo).
🚨 GFI Exclusive Offer: Enjoy a 10% discount on tickets using the GLOBAL25 promo code!
🇺🇸 NextGen Payments & RegTech Forum – USA will be held in Austin on November 13–14 ($785–$1,249), with la ist of speakers to be announced closer to the dates.
🚨 GFI Exclusive Offer: Enjoy a 10% discount on tickets using the qube10 promo code!
🇺🇸 Banking Transformation Summit will be held in Charlotte on November 17–18, 2025 ($2,280), with speakers such as Darius Wise (President & CEO, Red Rocks Credit Union), Priya Singh (Lead Data Scientist, Mastercard), and Rene Schuurman (Director – CashPro Product Manager, Bank of America).
🚨 GFI Exclusive Offer: Enjoy a 20% discount on tickets using the GFI20 promo code!
🇲🇾 Digital Finance Asia Summit – Malaysia will be held in Kuala Lumpur on November 18, 2025 (Price TBC), with speakers such as Sam Majid (CEO, National AI Office Malaysia), Nic Ngoo (CTO, Ryt Bank), and Farhan Ahmad (Group CEO, Payments Network Malaysia – PayNet).
🚨 GFI Exclusive Offer: Enjoy a 20% discount on tickets using the #GlobalFinDFA promo code!
🇩🇪 Banking 4.0 and Banking Innovation Conference will be held in Berlin on November 20–21, 2025 (€1,299–€4,999), with speakers such as Kamini Belday (Head of Global Payments & Transformation Executive, IBM), Sonja Marjanovic Vucic (Chief Data Officer, NLB Banka a.d. Banja Luka), and Nicole Onuta (AI Business Transformation Strategist, ING).
🚨 Save €100 on tickets using the promo code RQM8TEFV!
🇺🇸 RegTech Summit NYC will be held in New York City on November 20, 2025 ($995.50), with speakers such as Kenneth Lamar (Principal Partner, Lamar Associates LLC), Kristi Kunworee Baishya (AVP – Data and AI Product Management, Nomura Holding America), and Sepehr Irandoost (Head of Global Surveillance Calibration and Effectiveness, Bank of America).
🚨 GFI Exclusive Offer: Enjoy a 15% discount on tickets using the GFI15 promo code!
🇬🇧 Fintech Connect will be held in London on December 2–3, 2025 (£299), with speakers such as Aleksi Grym (Head of Fintech, Bank of Finland), Apoorv Kashyap (Head of AI, Santander UK), and Ben Brophy (Head of Institutional Growth, Europe, Solana).
🚨 GFI Exclusive Offer: Enjoy a 20% discount on tickets using the AAA-PTN20 promo code!
🇨🇳 Insurtech Insights Asia will be held in Hong Kong on December 3–4, 2025 ($299–$1,999), with speakers such as Huynh Thanh Phong (Group CEO, FWD), Edward Moncreiffe (CEO, Insurance, HSBC Life), and Masashi Namatame (Group Chief Digital Officer, Tokio Marine).
🚨 GFI Exclusive Offer: Enjoy a 25% discount on tickets using the GFI25 promo code!
Who Am I?
Hi, my name is Julien Brault.
From 2017 to 2024, I was the CEO of Hardbacon, a fintech I co-founded, which reached 400,000 unique visitors at its peak.
A Google update ultimately sealed the company’s fate, and I started this newsletter to keep myself busy in the aftermath.
Why share this?
Because my goal is to use my experience as an economic journalist, fintech entrepreneur and product manager to present the most essential fintech news from around the world through the eyes of an insider.
If you like what I do, feel free to share this newsletter and follow me on LinkedIn, X, Reddit, YouTube & TikTok.
If you would like me to accompany you on your fintech entrepreneurship journey and provide you with ongoing feedback, feel free to hire me as coach on MentorCruise.
If all you need is to pick my brain on specific topic in the field of fintech marketing, product or strategy, feel free to book a one hour consulting call with me instead.
P.S : Once you refer a new subscriber to the newsletter using your unique share link, you'll receive a personalized social media shout-out from me to promote your work or professional profile. Just write to me at jrbrault@icloud.com once your referral is confirmed on our leaderboard and include your social media account(s) URL(s) and who you are.