Craig Wright, the computer scientist ruled to have lied 'extensively and repeatedly' about being the inventor of Bitcoin, has been given a one-year prison sentence by a UK judge after being found in contempt of court. The sentence is suspended for two years, meaning that Wright will only face prison if he reoffends during that period. At a hearing Thursday in the UK High Court, Justice James Edward Mellor ruled that Wright'in bringing a $1.15 trillion lawsuit in October against Bitcoin developers and payments firm Square'had violated an earlier court order. The order required that Wright refrain from claiming publicly to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin, and taking legal action on that basis, among other things. The contempt of court issue was raised by the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA), a nonprofit consortium of crypto firms, which in February took Wright to trial in the hope of securing a formal declaration that he is not Satoshi. The aim was to prevent Wright from carrying forward multiple separate lawsuits against Bitcoin developers and other parties, through which he was trying to assert intellectual property rights over Bitcoin'and to ward off any future lawfare....

Good morning & happy Thursday! Today's issue is exciting as we're going to look at Klarna which says it stopped hiring thanks to AI (what's the real story here & what can we learn from Klarna + bonus list of top AI companies & their pitch decks), and Deutsche Bank which is launching Layer 2 blockchain initiative (what it tells us, why it matters & what's next + bonus reads into the latest crypto industry trends & numbers). Let's just jump straight into the good stuff '' The news '' In a series of recent statements that have garnered significant attention in the financial technology sector, Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski has outlined an ambitious vision for AI-driven transformation at the Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) giant....

Mercado Libre and Nubank Battle is Reshaping Latin American Banking '' [holistic recap of what's happening, why it matters & what's next + bonus deep dives into the latest financials of NU & MercadoLibre and why you should be super bullish on both of them] Investment API provider Upvest secures '100M Series C and doubles valuation amid European expansion '' [what does this tell us & what can we expect next + bonus access to Upvest's pitch deck & 1,500+ pages of resources to help you build and scale your startups] Gen Digital buys MoneyLion for $1 billion '' [what this means & what it tells us about the future of FinTech + bonus deep dive into MoneyLion & their latest financials and some priceless M&A templates that can save you billions] 50+ Pitch Decks FinTechs Used to Secure Over $2 Billion in VC Funding '' [unlock an exclusive trove of investor-approved decks from top FinTech innovators & learn strategies that turned early pitches into industry-changing startups] As for today, here are the 3 incredible FinTech stories that were transforming the world of financial technology as we know it. This was yet another incredible week in the Finance 2.0 space so make sure to check all the above stories....

For years, crypto skeptics have asked, What is this for' And for years, boosters have struggled to offer up a satisfactory answer. They argue that the blockchain'the technology upon which cryptocurrencies and other such applications are built'is itself a genius technological invention, an elegant mechanism for documenting ownership online and fostering digital community. Or they say that it is a foundation on which to build and fund a third, hyperfinancialized iteration of the internet where you don't need human intermediaries to buy a cartoon image of an ape for $3.4 million. Then there are the currencies themselves: bitcoin and ether and the endless series of memecoins and start-up tokens. These are largely volatile, speculative assets that some people trade, shitpost about, use to store value, and, sometimes, get incredibly rich or go bankrupt from. They are also infamously used to launder money, fund start-ups, and concoct elaborate financial fraud. Crypto has its use cases. But the knock has long been that the technology is overly complicated and offers nothing that the modern financial system can't already do'that crypto is a technological solution in search of a problem (at least for people who don't want to use it to commit crimes)....