As Bitcoin becomes more widely accepted in Nigeria, the country offers lessons in self-custody practices for Bitcoiners in developing nations.
Karsten Wenzlaff, Advisor
August 26th, 2025
Karsten Wenzlaff is a Crowdfunding and Fintech Expert from Germany. He is Secretary-General of Digit[...]
Category Archives: Fintech Opinions
Hester Peirce: Dissenting Statement on Proposal to Amend Regulation ATS (and limited comment period)
SEC | Hester Peirce | Jan 26, 2022
Thank you, Chair Gensler.
Events in the U.S. Treasury market (as well as the related repo market) over the past several years strongly suggest that the market for government securities suffers from inadequate levels of intermediation, liquidity, and transparency that in times of stress can dramatically decrease its ability to function properly and significantly increase risks to market participants. Commentators have suggested a number of possible reforms, and, although I am skeptical of some of these suggestions, I agree that the Commission should be considering carefully how it might use its authority to make changes that could relieve some of these pressures and help ensure that the market continues to perform its vital functions in the U.S. and global economy.
See: Active trading system list (data)
Careful consideration of fundamental issues of market structure is particularly important in the government securities market. It performs a central role in fiscal and monetary policy, as well as in our financial markets more broadly. The market is enormous, with over $22 trillion in U.S. Treasuries outstanding as of December 2021 and with over $600 billion in average daily trading volume. Any efforts to reform this market must take into account the potentially cataclysmic risks of inadvertently making things worse through sloppy or rushed rulemaking that introduces uncertainty for market participants or that deprives the public and the Commission of the opportunity to devote careful attention to thinking through the full implications of the proposed rules.
The proposal we are considering today is certainly not sloppy, but at the same time it is too wide-ranging and, given its length, too unwieldy to facilitate careful consideration. The document weighs in at a hefty 650 pages, contains over 220 separate comment requests (with many requests containing multiple questions), and addresses about a dozen significant issues, several of which affect trading venues of all types (including currently unregulated communication protocol systems). And the release goes well beyond government securities, or even fixed-income securities; key parts of the proposal affect trading venues that make any type of security available for trading.
Notwithstanding the literal and figurative bulk of this release, the Commission has determined that it is appropriate to provide the public with 30 days to read, understand, consider, consult, identify, model, assess, and discuss these rules and how they are likely to affect trading venues for every type of security that is traded in our markets. It would have been an irresponsible abdication of our role as the primary overseer of the U.S. capital markets to limit the public to a 30-day comment period on fundamental changes to the $22 trillion Treasury market; it is unconscionably reckless to do so for a proposal the effects of which will reverberate through all of the markets that we regulate, in ways that we cannot foresee.
See: Gensler is short-changing public comments
I cannot comprehend why we insist on blindfolding ourselves, rather than embracing the notice-and-comment process that has been so valuable in unearthing issues for our consideration. Our self-imposed unrealistic time constraint will prevent us from thinking seriously about the possible effects—intended and otherwise—of our rules by refusing to give the public sufficient time to provide us with informed comment.
We face no emergency in these markets that compels us to limit comments to 30 days; indeed, the Commission’s precipitous rush to plow through the comment period—almost as if it were a mere formality in our process—presents a greater immediate risk to the market than any of the issues that have led to this recommendation.
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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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CIG: Amid Web3’s Imaginative Obsolescence, Informed Skepticism Is Critical
CIG | Elizabeth M. Renieris | Jan 14, 2022
As the notion of Web 3.0 or “Web3” — the third generation of the internet premised on “decentralized” technologies — has captured the collective imagination, those skeptical about it are often chastised for offering criticism rather than alternatives. If you don’t like Web3, its promoters say, just build something better. This must-be-building ethos is rampant in the tech industry, as encapsulated in a recent essay from venture capitalist Marc Andreessen. “Instead of attacking my ideas of what to build,” he writes, “conceive your own!” The answer, it would seem, is to build yet another something.
This attitude manifests in the built-in obsolescence of tech products and services that requires us to buy the newest iteration or download the latest software update, lest our connected things stop working (thankfully, there is growing resistance to the notion of technology obsolescence through the “right to repair” movement). It also manifests in tech executives’ continual calling for new laws and regulations, even as they skirt and ignore existing ones.
See: Meta reveals it’s built one of the world’s fastest supercomputers to power the metaverse
Like its predecessors (Web 1.0, “the era of static webpages,” and 2.0, the internet of social media and user-driven content), Web3 is imagined as being apolitical, open, decentralized and inclusive, its proponents even using the same rhetoric as the cyberlibertarians of John Perry Barlow’s day. This ethos — characterized by free speech absolutism and free market ideals — has enabled all manner of online harms, including rampant mis- and disinformation, racism, discrimination, hate speech and harassment, concentrations of power, toxic business models and limited accountability. While it may be early, Web3 is quickly encountering many of the same challenges, even as it purports to be immune to them.
Increasingly apparent in the Web3 discourse is a kind of imaginative obsolescence: As one vision of the future rapidly replaces the next, the technologies and systems now in place suffer decay and disrepair. Our imaginations and resources are once again diverted from fixing or rehabilitating what exists.
For digital artists whose livelihoods are threatened by unmitigated copyright theft, “decentralized” Web3 platforms are likely to offer limited recourse. Women and minorities who already face disproportionate abuse on legacy platforms will likely bear the brunt in virtual worlds, where embodied aspects will make these experiences more traumatic and psychologically closer to those in the “real world.”
See: Inside the metaverse economy, jobs and infrastructure projects are becoming real
But we cannot “both sides” every new technological innovation or invention and fail to anticipate what the problems will be. In fact, it is precisely because we have been here before that we need a critical perspective. To ignore the historical context and allow the same patterns to emerge around Web3 would be negligent and even reckless.
There is a time to build and a time to repair. Repairing what is broken is difficult and important work that requires contextualizing technology and working within creative constraints. As technology critic Sara M. Watson writes,
“Acknowledging the realities of society and culture, constructive criticism offers readers the tools and framings for thinking about their relationship to technology and their relationship to power.”
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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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As Bitcoin adoption grows, Nigeria Offers Self-custody Lessons To The Developing World
Bitcoin magazine | Shinobi | Jan 28, 2022
As Bitcoin becomes more widely accepted in Nigeria, the country offers lessons in self-custody practices for Bitcoiners in developing nations.
Nigeria's ground-up growth in the face of systematic government opposition to the use of Bitcoin is an inspirational story and a very valuable case study in terms of Bitcoin's ability to thrive in an adversarial environment, but it also illuminates some of the unique obstacles for users in a developing country such as Nigeria.
Corruption is a massive problem in the country, as evidenced by the scandal surrounding the SARS police unit that instigated this massive public perception shift of Bitcoin in the first place. This introduces a lot of issues in terms of importing any kind of hardware device related to Bitcoin.
Anything coming into the country, which is essentially any hardware wallet that could be used to store bitcoin (because no major wallets are produced in Nigeria) must first pass through customs before getting into the hands of the user ordering it.
This is a big potential risk to the user attempting to acquire a more secure mechanism for storing their coins.
See: An Analysis of Bitcoin’s Use in Illicit Finance
It is very possible that customs agents could tamper with devices entering the country in a way that could lead to compromising people's bitcoin when the device is initialized and coins are sent to it. They could even completely replace the device with a malicious one.
Most hardware wallet manufacturers take some steps to package their devices in such a way as to make such tampering evident, but not every company's solutions to this problem is of equal quality, and some manufacturers do not engage in such practices at all. Some manufacturers have multiple layers of checks in the packaging, as well as combinations of checks on the actual device itself. Some companies simply employ basic tamper-proof stickers that cannot be resealed after opening.
Another factor related to the dynamic of self custody is simply the economics of interacting with the blockchain. Many Nigerians simply keep their coins on exchanges in custodial wallets because of the simplicity of managing things, and the economics of dealing with their own transactions on chain. This presents a big risk with the coming wave of FATF Travel Rule compliance rippling across the world right now. Countries like Estonia have already moved to increase KYC requirements in the process of implementing the FATF Travel Rule policies in legislation, and it is very possible that other countries might follow a similar example over the next year.
See: Payments without banks goes mainstream with Twitter on Bitcoin Lightning Network
Places like Nigeria are demonstrating that Bitcoin can indeed thrive in an environment where government's are being openly hostile to its existence. Outside of the box thinking along the lines of community banks and multisig collaborative custody can provide tools to people in such an environment which allow them to make more optimal tradeoffs between the security and utility of their interactions with Bitcoin. If people embrace them, Bitcoin has a very bright future ahead in places like Nigeria, and so will the people who use it.
Continue to the full article --> 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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What Are Some of the Best Canadian Real Estate Crowdfunding Platforms?
First National Realty Partners | Roni Davis | Jan 31, 2022
If you are looking for ways to invest in real estate, using a crowdfunding investment platform might be your best option. Luckily, there are a few Canadian crowdfunding investment platforms that act as a bridge between real-estate opportunities and eager investors. Before exploring different crowdfunding platforms available to Canadians, let's define some terms!
What is Crowdfunding?
Crowdfunding as an investment strategy has been around for a long time. An individual investor has a limited amount of capital to invest with. This puts expensive commercial real estate investments out of reach for all but the wealthiest of individual investors. However, a bunch of individual investors can pool their capital to invest together in a property. This is the crowdfunding investment strategy – it allows smaller investors to get a piece of larger investments.
What is a Real Estate Crowdfunding Platform?
Real estate crowdfunding platforms serve as the marketplace between investors and investment opportunities. Essentially, these platforms help investors find attractive opportunities to invest in.
What do Real Estate Crowdfunding Platforms do?
These platforms perform many of the critical tasks that are necessary to invest successfully in commercial real estate. Individual investors often do not have the time and resources to perform the essential research, engage in the grueling recruitment of other investors, and manage the legal contracts, paperwork, and other laborious details usually involved in commercial real estate investing.
Successful commercial real estate investing requires the dedicated labor of full-time, professional investors. Crowdsourcing platforms will charge investors a fee that pays teams of professional investment strategists and account managers to handle all of the hard work that commercial real estate investing requires.
These crowdfunding platforms make investing in commercial real estate much easier for the average investor because they handle the hard work.
What Are Some Canadian Real Estate Crowdfunding Platforms?
Canada generally has stricter regulatory laws than its neighbor down south. Because these regulatory laws are more stringent and can vary between province and territory, the landscape can be confusing to navigate for the average investor.
Many popular crowdfunding platforms do not operate in Canada because of these restrictions. This lack of foreign competition has led to some high-quality home-grown Real Estate Investment Platforms.
Let’s explore some of these options:
NexusCrowd
This crowdfunding investment platform is considered the most viable Canadian alternative to popular platforms like Fundrise and CrowdStreet. NexusCrowd partners with highly-vetted and successful institutional investment firms to offer their users high-quality investment opportunities.
NexusCrowd also has a significant role in professionally managing their investment opportunities. They only partner with institutional investors who meet their high standards and perform their own due diligence before an opportunity is posted on their platform.
See: $100M Crowdfunding Deal: Republic acquires the UK’s Seedrs for European expansion
The minimum investment is relatively expensive, coming in at $10,000. This puts NexusCrowd out of reach of smaller investors and acts as a paywall, ensuring investors are committed to their investments. Also, investors must be accredited, which means the average person cannot invest with NexusCrowd.
NexusCrowd only curates opportunities that have already reached 50% funding, making investing with NexusCrowd lower risk. Customers can also choose specific properties to invest in, giving them a tangible, physical quality to their investments.
However, if the $10,000 minimum puts NexusCrowd out of reach, there are other more affordable crowdfunding platforms to explore.
addy Invest
If you are more of a casual investor, then addy might be the platform for you. Investors do not need accreditation, which opens up investment opportunities for many Canadians. In fact, addy markets itself as an investment platform for everyday people who might otherwise not be able to afford to get into real estate investing.
Like NexusCrowd, users invest in specific properties, giving their investments a certain tangibility. The minimum investment amount is an astoundingly low $1. However, addy caps investments per property at $1,000 for unaccredited investors.
Addy offers an attractive deal for the average person looking to get started in real estate investing. It is a great foot-in-the-door option for new retail investors to explore the world of real estate investing.
Fundscraper
Fundscraper is a unique alternative to crowdfunding platforms like NexusCrowd and addy. The previous platforms allow investors to choose the specific properties they want to invest in, giving them more freedom but exposing them to higher risk in the process because investment portfolios are not diversified.
Fundscraper offers specific properties for users to invest in but also offers more diversified REITs and real estate ETFs. REITs and ETFs invest in real estate developers, management companies, and other investment companies. These companies are publicly traded and can be invested in like stocks.
See: 3 Trends in 2022 Predicted to Shape Investment Crowdfunding
The minimum investment for Fundscraper is $5,000, making it an attractive compromise between NexusCrowd and addy.
What Real Estate Crowdfunding Investment Platform is Right For You?
When deciding on a real estate investment platform, you need to consider your aversion to risk, how hands-on you’d like to be with your investments, and how much you can invest. You should never invest more than you are willing to lose, as there is always a level of risk associated with investing.
About the Author
Roni Davis is a real estate investor, blogger, and legal assistant who writes for First National Realty Partners.
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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Is Web 3 the best of Web1 + Web2?
The Economist | Jan 24, 2022
LIKE SEEMINGLY everyone these days, Moxie Marlinspike has created a non-fungible token (NFT). These digital chits use clever cryptography to prove, without the need for a central authenticator, that a buyer owns a unique piece of digital property. Digital artists, celebrities and even the occasional newspaper have issued and sold them to collectors, often for hefty sums (the immaterial version of The Economist’s cover image fetched over $400,000).
Although it looked cryptographically sound like any other NFT, however, Mr Marlinspike’s token could shift shape depending on who accessed it. If you bought it and viewed it on a computer, it transformed into a poop emoji. After a few days the NFT was taken down by OpenSea, a marketplace for digital artefacts. This played into Mr Marlinspike’s hands. For his aim was not to raise cash but to raise awareness. His token showed that NFTs are not as non-fungible as advertised.
See: Moxie’s impressions of web3 (from making some distributed apps)
The Marlinspike caper was the latest turn in perhaps the biggest controversy to erupt in tech world for several years. On one side sit techno-Utopians, firms offering assorted web3 services and their VC backers. They claim that web3 is the next big thing in cyberspace, that it is truly decentralised—and that it promises juicy returns to boot. Last week Andreessen Horowitz (a16z for short) reported to be raising a $4.5bn web3-related fund, to add to three existing ones worth a total of $3bn.
Pitted against them are the sceptics. They range from Mr Marlinspike, highly respected even among the techno-Utopians for creating the secure-messaging app Signal, to Jack Dorsey, who founded two platforms of the sort that web3 promises to supersede (Twitter in social media and Square in payments). They argue that a truly decentralised internet is a pipe dream—
“You don’t own ‘web3’. VCs and their [limited partners] do,” Mr Dorsey warned last month.
The centre cannot hold
The web3 movement is a reaction to perhaps the greatest centralisation of all: that of the internet. As Chris Dixon, who oversees web3 investments at a16z, explains it, the original, decentralised web lasted from 1990 to about 2005. This web1, call it, was populated by flat web pages and governed by open technical rules put together by standards bodies. The next iteration, web2, brought the rise of tech giants such as Alphabet and Meta, which managed to amass huge centralised databases of user information.
Web3, in Mr Dixon’s telling, “combines the decentralised, community-governed ethos of web1 with the advanced, modern functionality of web2”.
This is possible thanks to blockchains, which turn the centralised databases to which big tech owes it power into a common good that can be used by anybody without permission.
See: If true, the valuation of this popular NFT marketplace would be the very top of the crypto market
What all these companies have in common, explains Mr Dixon, is that it is hard for them to lock in customers. Unlike Google and Meta they do not control their users’ data. OpenSea, in which a16z also has a stake, and Alchemy are just pipes to the blockchain. If their customers are unhappy, they can move to a competing service.
The idea is that this makes web3 companies try harder to satisfy customers and keep innovating.
Continue to the full article --> 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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Alt-M Analysis: Where the U.S. Feds CBDC Proposal Goes Wrong
Alt-M | | Jan 22, 2022
The Fed's long-awaited report on central bank digital currencies is finally out. Although the report makes it clear that the Fed has no immediate plans to issue a digital currency, it does point to the approach the Fed would be inclined to take were it to do so.
That approach would have the Fed supply a retail digital currency to the general public indirectly, using private-sector financial intermediaries, including but not limited to commercial banks, as its agents. Those private intermediaries would then be responsible for managing customers' central bank digital currency (CBDC) holdings and payments.
Intermediated versus "Synthetic" Central Bank Digital Currency
Superficially, the Fed's preferred approach seems identical to the "synthetic" central bank digital currency (sCBDC) approach first recommended by Tobias Adrian back in 2019. In that approach, both bank and nonbank private-sector payment service providers can have accounts with their central banks and hold those central banks' digital liabilities.
See: Rep. Emmer introduced legislation to prohibit the Federal Reserve from issuing a CBDC for use by individuals
Retail digital currency ("eMoney") is supplied exclusively by these private-sector payment service providers, but is fully backed by central bank reserves that are ring-fenced from those providers' other creditors. The result, Adrian says, is one in which the public may be said to hold and transact in central bank money "by proxy."
Adrian refers to his sCBDC plan as "a public-private partnership." It remains the case, nonetheless, that the central bank itself only supplies "wholesale" digital currency. Another article summarizing the sCBDC plan makes this especially clear. In a sCBDC arrangement, it says,
the central bank is not offering accounts to the general public but instead to private EMIs, who then use the sCBDC as a 100% backup for their e-money. This is an important difference between CBDC and sCBDC. … Similar to current e-money, [sCBDC] constitutes a claim against one specific e-money institute.
Continue to the full article --> here
Download the 40 page PDF 'Money and Payments: The U.S Dollar in the age of Digital Transformation' --> here
Cato Institute | Nicholas Anthony | Jan 21, 2022
After nearly a year, the Federal Reserve has finally released its discussion paper on central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). For a 40‐page document, the findings were actually rather thin. It seems the Fed is still undecided, but it is leaning towards launching a CBDC that would protect privacy without permitting anonymous use, be intermediated (or hosted) by private banks, and be easily transferable. In other words, it would be much like what already exists.
The U.S. payments system––one that does resemble that of a developing nation––is long overdue for an upgrade, but that is not to say that upgrades are not underway.
See: China’s CBDC Now Has 261 Million Users with $14 Billion in completed Transactions
Financial inclusion is a worthy goal as well, but one that similarly falls flat. The discussion paper devotes just two paragraphs to the “possible benefit of financial inclusion,” and it ultimately concludes with a request for research that would confirm the possibility. However, research already shows that the number of unbanked individuals has been declining every year. So, again, it’s possible that this is one problem that will be fixed before a CBDC is launched. Second, 75% of the unbanked say that they are simply uninterested in having a bank account. And third, two of the key reasons for being unbanked are concerns about privacy and trust. Considering the public’s trust in the government is at historic lows, it’s unlikely a CBDC will be winning any hearts. Thus, it is again unclear how much of a benefit a CBDC will be here.
Maybe it shouldn’t be such a surprise that the discussion paper was finally released considering CBDC legislation is also underway. However, it’s still unclear what the Fed has been doing since May 2021. What started as a “summer publication” soon became “expected in the fall” and then “in the coming weeks.” Now that it is finally here, it seems that the Fed and Congress have a long road ahead if they wish to justify such a program to the public. The first place they should start is in identifying how a CBDC can be anything more than a solution in search of a problem.
Continue to the full article --> 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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GBBC Blockchain Central Davos Virtual Event Jan 18-19: On Demand Recordings
GBBC | Jan 19, 2022
Day 1: Jan 18
See: Can Blockchain Solutions Unlock Capital to Fix Our Planet?
Day 2: Jan 19
Download the 2 day virtual agenda --> 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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