👵 Prepare for a new pension

Last week the new pension solution in Norway, Own Pension Account (EPK), launched. 1.5 million Norwegians have now the opportunity to decide where their deposit based pension will be placed. We're talking about savings with a total value of NOK 350 billion moving around. The new player on the field, Kron, has had a flying start the last week. You can see all the different alternatives and prices at finansportalen.no.

When we're speaking about investments: Eivind Berg has written a blog post about the funds that did not cope with Covid-19, and what we can learn from this. Well worth a read before you invest your pension!

🏦 Fintechs vs. banks

We've previously mentioned Horde and their battle against the banks not following PSD2. They have unionized with nine other companies to pressure the banks creating Fintech Norway. One of their plans is to create a benchmark-website showing how PSD2-compliant Norwegian banks are.

Speaking of Horde: they just launched a solution for private loans, which makes it possible to set up a loan agreement where the parties agree on the amount, interest, and repayment period directly in their app. An exciting idea that fixes a problem banks so far hasn't (and won't?) solve.

🎰 Wallstreet still bets

Last week, we wrote a lot about r/Wallstreetbets. This week we saw Visual Capitalist trying to explain everything of what has happened so far into one illustration:

Last week we saw Robinhood facing a backlash, both because of their (missing) communication, as well as some bad UX-decisions. Built for Mars has written an excellent walkthrough on how Robinhood handled a crisis, and how they could have avoided the problems they faced.

Someone that handled the situation better was Public.com, a Robinhood competitor, that changed their business-model from "Payment for Order Flow (PFOF)" to tipping because of the current market situation. It's a smart move, the right timing, and shows a reactive nature. As usual Matt Levine writes best about what PFOF is and why it can be a problem.

🪙 ARK on Bitcoin

ARK Invest has released their Big Ideas for 2021 report. It is an interesting report touching everything from cancer to orbital aerospace to Bitcoin. On the topic of Bitcoin, they write: «If all S&P 500 companies were to allocate 1% of their cash to Bitcoin, ARK estimates that its price would increase by approximately $40 000». They note that Stripe has already done this, but a fascinating sidenote is that Tesla has already placed $ 1.5 Billion in Bitcoins.

🤔 Crowdfunding on Etherum?

The writer and software engineer John Palmer two weeks ago tried out using crypto to crowdfund his next essay. It's a thought-provoking idea:

His experiment was fully crowdfunded - 5 times more than his original goal of 2 ETH. Unlike other patronage models, this form of crowdfunding is not pure altruism since patrons receive a stake in the work's success. «If this experiment is a success, it will mark an early promising sign for a new way to fund not just writing, but all kinds of creative work.» Head over to the John Palmers site to read more about the experiment.

👨‍💻 Design in Norway

Every year Okse releases their report on Design in Norway. This year they have gotten 350 answers from designers from Norway answering everything from education recommended books, technologies used, and salaries. Design i Norge 2020

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Marius Hauken, partner Stacc X