PSD2 sanctions coming soon?

March 22, 2021

Also: 🪞 What does an NFT look like? 🤳 Stock influencers 💔 Goldman Sachs hard culture. 💨 Too Much, Too Soon, Too Fast. 🎉 Confetti cannon

🧑‍⚖️ PSD2 sanctions coming soon?

Throughout the PSD2 process, the Financial supervisory authority of Norway has been reluctant to publicly share information about errors and shortcomings in the banks' PSD2 implementation. Last week the authority published seven examples of matters where the banks' solutions are not in line with the regulations. One of these shortcomings is that the online banks' information connected to the payments (Like the payer's name, the receiver's name, and KID) must be included in the interfaces made available to the Third Party Providers. Also: all kinds of payments that users can initiate in their online banks should also be available to third-party providers. I guess many banks have to replan their roadmaps ahead to be compliant!

This is great news for Neonomics and Nordic API Gateway, which finally can have their big breakthrough this year. This is also great news for Horde that started the whole PSD2 discussion in Norway. Horde also just secured over 25 million NOK in funding from over 600 investors, setting a new record of crowdfunding in Norway. The crowdfunding values them to over 127 million NOK!

🪞 What does an NFT look like?

We've written a lot about Non Fungible Tokens over the last weeks, and that exactly what you own when you buy an NFT is a little vague. Anyone can look at the art at any time. Anyone can even find a direct link to the artwork in the blockchain. What you buy is more or less bragging rights for this artwork on the blockchain. As if that's not crazy enough, the NFT token you bought actually points to a URL on the internet or an IPFS hash. That URL is a JSON metadata file pointing to where the images are stored.

The JSON-file the Beeple-NFT points to

If we look at the Beeple NFT sold for $65m by Christie's, we see that the file links to an IPFS gateway run by http://makersplace.com, an NFT-minting startup. This means that if that company (or, more specifically, the URL) goes bust, the Non-Fungible Token will be broken.

History repeats itself. This is a 2-year-old article, but maybe more relevant now than when it was written: Where did the money go? Inside the Big Crypto ICOs of 2017

🤳 Stock influencers

One January afternoon, Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Elon Musk sent out an 11-character tweet: "Gamestonk!!"

His Twitter followers sprung into action.

GameStop Corp. shares surged more than 150% overnight. The next day, analysts threw up their hands. Nothing apart from Mr. Musk's tweet—which included a link to Reddit's WallStreetBets forum—could explain why the stock soared.

One of these stock influencers is Cathie Wood from ARK Invest, which last week got a lot of critique for announcing huge price targets to promote a higher stock price. Non the less, ARK Invest had some of the best performing ETFs of 2020.

Perhaps as a reaction to the new trend of stock influencers and social media step into investing, you can now also invest in a "FOMO (Fear of missing out)' fund, indicating that there really is an ETF for everything.

💔 Goldman Sachs hard culture

According to an internal survey done by a group of first-year analysts, junior investment bankers at Goldman Sachs are suffering burnout from 100-hour workweeks and demanding bosses during a SPAC-fueled boom in deals. The survey was leaked on social media last week, causing quite a controversy. The bankers have somehow, despite working over 105 hours a week and without having time to shower, found time to create an elaborate report documenting the state of first-year analysts:

"The sleep deprivation, the treatment by senior bankers, the mental and physical stress ... I've been through foster care, and this is arguably worse," one Goldman analyst said, according to the February survey of 13 employees.

"My body physically hurts all the time, and mentally I'm in a really dark place," another analyst said."

"I didn't come into this job expecting a 9 am-5pm's, but I also didn't expect consistent 9 am-5am's either"

The whole slide deck is at the same time both weird and sad. You are in a quite desperate situation if the only way you can communicate with your bosses is by leaking pitch-decks to social media.

💨 Too Much, Too Soon, Too Fast

Morgan Housel has written a great post that fits well together with some of the topics this week:

A good summary of investing history is that stocks pay a fortune in the long run but seek punitive damages when you try to be paid sooner.

Virtually all investing mistakes are rooted in people looking at long-term market returns and saying, "That's nice, but can I have it all faster?"

🎉 Confetti cannon

The vast majority agree that it is important to create good customer experiences. But Kristoffer Krohn Eide in Netlife asks a timely question: "Could it still be that the best experiences are the ones you do not notice?"

You want a "wow experience" going out to a restaurant [...] But when you use a service for electricity, banking, telephone, internet, public transport or television, the customer just wants the service to work.

No wow effect is needed when you pay a bill or take the bus to work.

Good customer experience is when the customer doesn't notice it – it just works!

🙏 Don’t keep it a secret!

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Marius Hauken, partner Stacc X