Karsten Wenzlaff, Advisor
August 26th, 2025
Karsten Wenzlaff is a Crowdfunding and Fintech Expert from Germany. He is Secretary-General of Digit[...]
Category Archives: Voices
Revolut executive resigns amid growing tensions with the FCA over banking license
City AM | Charlie Conchie | Jul 10, 2022
One of Revolut’s UK regulatory chiefs has stepped down from her role amid growing tensions between the fintech firm and the Financial Conduct Authority over its sluggish progress on towards a banking licence.
- Deirdre Halligan, head of global affairs, wealth and trading, oversaw the firm’s expansion, authorisations and regulatory affairs, including its relationship with UK regulators.
- Her departure, reported in the Telegraph, comes as tensions between Revolut and the regulator grow over the speed of movement on its licence applications, including a full banking licence and fully registered status to provide crypto services.
- Halligan’s departure from Revolut marks the latest in a series of resignations at the firm, with Harry Gill, Revolut’s global head of regulatory compliance, resigning in May, the Telegraph first reported, and the chief of operational risk and head of UK compliance also leaving in recent months.
See: 9 digital assets powering the DeFi revolution?
Boss Nikolay Storonsky went public with his criticism of the regulator in an interview with City A.M. last month, saying that the firm’s progress towards a banking licence had been “slower than expectations” and had lagged behind international competitors.
I definitely see the process is slower compared to other regulators. I’ll give you an example – so we applied for 48 licences across the globe and we received 44, and three of the licences that we haven’t received are actually in the UK.
Storonsky added that staffing pressures at the FCA may explain the hold up, and recommended that certain key performance indicators be put in place at the regulator, as well as “stricter timelines”, more people or “more efficient people”.
See: FCA review finds evidence of growing competition in retail banking
In a statement to City A.M., an FCA spokesperson said that while it did not comment on individual cases, it reviews “banking applications to ensure they meet the standards we expect”. The spokesperson added the regular had “successfully recruited across the organisation” to meet its “expanding remit”, including bringing in over 200 new colleagues in the first three months of this year.
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The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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Report: Targeted Update on Implementation of FATF’s Standards on Virtual Assets and VASPs
FATF | Jun 30, 2022
Paris, 30 June 2022 – FATF has produced a targeted update on implementation of its Standards on virtual assets (VAs) and virtual asset service providers (VASPs), with a focus on FATF’s Travel Rule. This report comes three years after FATF extended its anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (AML/CFT) measures to VAs and VASPs to prevent criminal and terrorist misuse of the sector.
See: Coinbase Implements KYC Travel Rule in the Netherlands
The report builds on the FATF’s previous two reviews on implementation by providing a short update on the latest country compliance with FATF’s Recommendation 15 and its Interpretative Note (R.15/INR.15). The report places a specific focus on FATF’s Travel Rule to respond to FATF’s June 2021 findings that countries and private sector face particular challenges in this area. Further, the report includes relevant emerging risks and market developments, including on Decentralized Finance (DeFi), Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs) and unhosted wallets.
The report finds a continued need for many countries to strengthen understanding of ML/TF risks of the VA and VASP sector, and to rapidly implement FATF’s R.15/INR.15 to mitigate such risks. In particular, FATF’s Travel Rule requires VASPs and other financial institutions to share relevant originator and beneficiary information alongside virtual asset transactions, therefore helping to prevent criminal and terrorist misuse. The report finds that jurisdictions have made only limited progress over the last year in implementing this requirement. Of the 98 jurisdictions that responded to FATF’s March 2022 survey, only 29 jurisdictions have passed relevant Travel Rule laws, and a small subset of these jurisdictions have started enforcement. This demonstrates an urgent need for jurisdictions to accelerate implementation and enforcement to mitigate criminal and terrorist misuse of virtual assets.
See: Updated FATF Virtual Asset and VASP Guidance includes DeFi for crypto service providers
FATF’s report highlights that there are now technological solutions available to facilitate Travel Rule compliance in practice, but private sector need to continue to increase interoperability between solutions and across jurisdictions, and to work towards full compliance.
On market developments and emerging ML/TF threats, the report highlights the continued need for the FATF to monitor the growth of, and illicit financing risks associated with, DeFi and NFTs markets and unhosted wallets.
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Download the 28 page PDF report --> here
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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Understanding The New V2P and P2V Metaverse Commerce Models
Forbes | | Jul 5, 2022
Physical and Virtual
Look at any Target or Walmart store on a Saturday and watch as customers perfectly dominate the essence of physical-to-physical commerce. In fact, just the experience of being in a physical location leads most customers to make purchases far beyond their shopping lists. That’s the reason why brands spend millions of dollars on physical retail locations because they feel confident they can elevate and capitalize on the on-site shopping experience and the “serendipity” that happens in the store. Whether it’s waiting in a queue to enter the Louis Vuitton Maison Vendôme store in Paris or going down an in-store slide during a Showfields shopping adventure in New York, the world of physical retail has become more experiential and glitzy. It is one of the drivers of BIG retail.
See: CB Insights: Metaverse stack and companies making it a reality
But when we start to think about a brand’s physical footprint in virtual economies, we seem to falter. Does this footprint have a “toe hold” in the virtual world? I say a resounding yes! As I continue to advise and work with brands in this new space, it is evident from my perspective that new commerce models are evolving, but they have not been done at scale. Even while the Metaverse is in a nascent state, these models will have a significant impact on customers' choices and purchasing decisions. My advice to you is to buckle up, because we’re about to head into the future of commerce!
The dawn of the internet introduced new marketplaces for exchanges starting with social media apps and eCommerce. In the dawn of the metaverse and the coming era of web3, commerce will evolve and with this evolution, new models will emerge.
Is the market ready for the Metaverse?
A recent survey conducted by Zipline (one of the world’s largest delivery drone companies) suggests that 85% of Gen-Z respondents, 75% of millennials and 69% of Gen-Xers responded that they would be interested in hybrid shopping experiences, which include using mixed reality in retail stores and for online shopping.
Zipline cofounder and CEO Melissa Wong:
The key is to engage consumers with entertaining and accessible digital content that lowers the barriers to entry and meets Metaverse users where they already exist. This might be in a popular game or in a physical store where people mingle in the flesh.
Making it a reality
Current shopping models are Physical-to-Physical, Digital-to-Physical, and Virtual-to-Virtual. But what about going the next step and making the sale from Virtual-to-Physical and Physical-to-Virtual? When your customers are in the Metaverse, it’s virtual first. However, what happens when they want to purchase something physical in-game or in-world? Or when they are at a physical location, whether a store or a music festival and something they acquire at the location can unlock something else for them in the virtual world?
See: Metaverse Continuum: Digital experiences and interconnected future
In the Metaverse, there is an emerging business model focused on providing new products to digital twins of the customer, which would be the person’s unique avatar. This is called Direct-to-Avatar (D2A), a term that Ryan Gill, CEO of Crucible, and I first explored back in July 2020 in a highly cited article. D2A bypasses traditional marketing by focusing on in-game personas to sell virtual goods, physical items, or real-world experiences. D2A may sound counterintuitive, but it is becoming a fast-growing market segment with an increased sense of connection to purchase digital goods that may or may not come with real-world counterparts. D2A can be leveraged by brands to sell V2V, P2V, and V2P.
With D2A becoming a new model for D2C, this in itself signals a new frontier for B2B and B2C paradigms which will be impacted not only by gaming but also by AR and voice.
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The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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Unconstitutional financial surveillance? Advocacy group Coin Center is suing the US government
The Verge | | Jun 21, 2022
Image: Alex Castro, The Verge
Last week, Coin Center filed a legal challenge in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky, naming as defendants Janet Yellen as a representative of the Treasury Department, IRS commissioner Charles Rettig, and US attorney general Merrick Garland on behalf of the government as a whole.
A blog post from the advocacy group says that the legal complaint aims to overturn “unconstitutional financial surveillance.” If Coin Center’s challenge is successful, it could have implications far beyond cryptocurrency due to how the reporting law was passed in the first place.
See: NCFA Response to FINTRAC’s ‘Knee Jerk’ Regulations Requiring Donation Crowdfunding Platforms to Register and Comply with AML/ATF Legislation
The authors, Coin Center executive director Jerry Brito and research director Peter Van Valkenburgh, write:
Our suit leads with two major claims: (1) forcing ordinary people to collect highly intrusive information about other ordinary people, and report it to the government without a warrant, is unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment; and (2) demanding that politically active organizations create and report lists of their donors’ names and identifying information to the government is unconstitutional under the First Amendment.
When the new requirement was made law through the infrastructure bill, it wasn’t written as a new statute: rather, it was an amendment to an existing part of the US tax code — Section 6050I — that has been on the books for almost 40 years.
The 6050I rule states that any person who receives more than $10,000 in cash as part of a business transaction must provide details of the sender to the IRS through a particular form. This cash reporting requirement, which became law in 1984, came on the heels of the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970: one of the first major laws to address money laundering in the United States. Together, the new reporting laws passed in the ’70s and ’80s helped law enforcement agencies to detect and deter money laundering by creating requirements to file documentation that made it easier to track cash transfers and imposing penalties if such documents weren’t filed.
See: Privacy laws might prove to be a blessing in disguise for crypto
The law has been in effect ever since, without any significant change until now. In the infrastructure bill, a critical change of eight words was made to 6050I, expanding the definition of cash to include “any digital asset” and thereby extending the tax code’s reporting requirements to cryptocurrency. And because of this construction, a successful challenge on behalf of cryptocurrency users could mean overturning the statute completely.
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The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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Where Did Convoy Support Come From?
The Tyee | Christopher Cheung | Mar 15, 2022
Where did support for the Canada’s convoy protests come from?
Thanks to a data leak, we have a rough idea.
- The so-called “Freedom Convoy” began in B.C.’s Lower Mainland and traversed the country before converging in Ottawa on Jan. 29.
- The protests attracted people with a broad mix of views, including anti-vaccine, anti-lockdown and anti-government sentiments.
- At first, convoy organizers used the crowdfunding website GoFundMe to collect donations. But after police reports of violence by protesters in Ottawa, the website decided to stop hosting the cause.
- Organizers then migrated fundraising efforts to GiveSendGo, which describes itself as “The No. 1 Free Christian Fundraising Site.”
See: NCFA Response to FINTRAC’s ‘Knee Jerk’ Regulations Requiring Donation Crowdfunding Platforms to Register and Comply with AML/ATF Legislation
Leaked Data
GiveSendGo accepted donations from Feb. 1 to 10 before hackers illegally targeted the site and leaked donor data online. The hackers did not steal any donations.
- The leaked data contains donors’ full names, email addresses, postal codes, donation amounts, methods of payment and personal comments. It does not contain credit card information.
- Based on the postal codes, we are able to map where convoy donations came from and how much they gave. This analysis gives us a sense of where support for the convoy clustered in Canada and beyond.
Was there foreign interference?
- Almost $10 million was raised during the GiveSendGo campaign.
- While 51,666 Americans donated compared to 36,202 Canadians, Canadians donated more money.
See: Freedom Convoy Continues, Fundraiser Raises $542K in Bitcoin
Which province or territory gave the most?
- Populous Ontario garnered the most donations, with about 14,000 donors giving $1.6 million.
- In second place is B.C. Over 7,200 British Columbians gave about $909,000.
- Next is Alberta, where over 6,600 residents gave about $866,000.
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The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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Will the Supreme Court’s EPA Decision Move Crypto Regulations off their Tracks?
This week’s Supreme Court ruling limiting the Environmental Protection Agency's authority may have a surprising beneficiary: cryptocurrency investors who want to avoid federal regulation. In ruling against the EPA, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for a 6-3 majority that when a government agency seeks to regulate an area of major significance, it needs to point to “clear congressional authorization.”
Read: Important Nuances in the Lummis‐Gillibrand Crypto Bill: Not Securities?
Bitcoin and similar digital currencies are so new, there’s no specific federal law governing them. In that absence, two regulatory agencies, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, have taken significant steps toward oversight of crypto.
Blockchain Association, Jake Chervinsky:
[He said that based on the decision, he] believes the Supreme Court would strike down proposed SEC rules for the crypto market.
Perianne Boring, founder and CEO of the Chamber of Digital Commerce:
Today’s decision in West Virginia v. EPA at the very least should give regulators pause in attempting to set policies that exceed their congressionally mandated roles.
See: Gensler’s Updated Regulatory Agenda Critized by SEC Commissioners Peirce and Roisman (Exempt Securities)
Sheila Warren, CEO of the Crypto Council for Innovation:
I don’t think federal agency rulemaking is off the table in the digital assets space, but I do think this ruling is an indicator that SCOTUS will be a barrier to agencies that are trying to establish broadscale federal policies, especially in areas that states have expressed interest in.
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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CSA releases 2022-2025 Business Plan focused on investor protection
CSA | Release | Jun 27, 2022
Montreal – The Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) today released the2022-2025 CSA Business Plan, which outlines the priorities of its members over the next three years. The plan coincides with the appointment of Stan Magidson, Chair and CEO of the Alberta Securities Commission (ASC), as the new Chair of the CSA for a three-year term, effective July 1, 2022.
See: Why is FinTech so hard to regulate? 5 Challenges for Regulators
This new plan re-affirms the CSA’s commitment to responsive and harmonized regulation across Canada and alignment with international standards, where appropriate. In particular, the 2022-2025 Business Plan sets out six strategic goals focused on maintaining investor confidence in, and ensuring efficient operation of, the Canadian capital markets. The strategic goals are:
- Implement improvements to strengthen the capital markets regulatory system.
- Optimize investors’ ability to contribute to policymaking and expand investor education outreach.
- Improve investor protection by enhancing investors’ ability to obtain redress and by strengthening the advisor-client relationship.
- Address emerging market issues and trends.
- Deliver smart and responsive regulation that protects investors while reducing regulatory burden.
- Promote integrity and financial stability through effective market oversight.
See: Fraud Prevention Month: CSA encourages Canadians to ask questions before investing in crypto assets
Stan Magidson, Chair/CEO of ASC, New Chair, CSA
As I step into the role of CSA Chair, I look forward to working with my colleagues across Canada to deliver the initiatives in our 2022-2025 Business Plan and to building on the established strength and stability of the CSA. We will continue to collaborate to deliver on our goals and our mandate to protect investors, promote fair, transparent and efficient markets, reduce burden where possible, and reduce systemic risk.
In addition to these goals, the CSA will also continue its efforts to modernize the self-regulatory framework, establish the CSA Investor Advisory Panel, and consider investor calls for enhanced market participation related to sustainable finance matters.
The new business plan includes projects focused on modernizing electronic filings and data management, as well as raising awareness and increasing protection around emerging issues and threats such as crypto assets, investment gamification and do-it-yourself (DIY) investing. The plan also considers the impact of climate change-related risks and sustainable investing, and the impact of different age demographics, such as the increase in millennial investors and an aging population.
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The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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