Even though bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are well down from their December highs there is still many people sitting on huge gains. If they want some liquidity on these crypto assets their only option up until this point has been to sell. Now, a new breed of lending platform is emerging to help them gain liquidity while continuing to hold their crypto assets.

With all the activity in fintech over the past decade one thing we haven’t seen a lot of yet is the emergence of digital banks, at least in this country. Given the daunting regulatory challenges it is not something that many entrepreneurs focus on.

When I first started in this business I had never even heard of the term CDFI so I had no idea what they did. Over the years I have come to appreciate the important work they do in providing capital to businesses that are often overlooked by traditional or even online lenders.

It has been almost eight months since Ron Suber announced he was stepping down as President of Prosper. In that time he has kept very busy, still tirelessly traveling the world and spreading the word on how fintech can help society.

Creating a new credit card company is not something many, or really any, fintech executives have chosen to do until recently. While creating an online lending platform is challenging, creating a consumer facing credit card company from scratch is even more difficult.

Anyone who has applied for a home mortgage (unless it is from one of the new fintech lenders) knows how painful the process still is today. It is somewhat crazy in our instant, on demand world that it can take 60 days to close on a mortgage today.

The space between the sub prime market and the prime market is one that is still relatively open. Sure, there are a few companies that are focused on this mid or near prime space but it is less competitive than the prime market. While Enova is primarily a sub prime lender they have a division focused on the near prime market called NetCredit.

There are a small number of institutional investors that have been investing in marketplace lending for more than five years. They have seen the ups and downs of the industry, some have closed down while others have thrived.

When people think of debt collection they think of aggressive and often relentless phone calls and mailed notices. They don’t think of sophisticated machine learning techniques using millions of data points to figure out the best collection approach. Our next guest on the Lend Academy Podcast is out to change that.

There are thousands of small community banks around this country who strive to serve the needs of their local community. But I don’t there are any quite like Darien Rowayton Bank (DRB), soon to be Laurel Road Bank. They are a three branch community bank based in Connecticut that has become one of the leaders in student loan refinancing.