The markets may move within milliseconds, but this week reminded me that human nature, and its capacity for self-delusion, travels at exactly the same pace it always has.
From TikTok-trained Gen Z handing their savings to ring-light charlatans, to institutional venues quietly institutionalising what crypto pioneers spent years trying to legitimise, and insure-tech founders dismantling a $6 trillion industry one actuarial table at a time, it was five days of fintech’s familiar absurdities and inevitable evolutions.
Here’s the view from behind the terminals, on daily travels, and the conversations that happen when the screens finally go dark.
Monday: The Finfluencer Paradox
Australia’s ASIC landed a survey that should keep regulators up at night: 56% of Gen Z (18–28-year-olds) “somewhat or completely” trust financial information scraped from social media.
This comes mere weeks after Southwark Crown Court in London dropped fines and cost orders on seven UK ‘finfluencers’ for promoting unauthorised FX trading schemes that would make a 1990s boiler room employee with a reversed baseball cap and shiny track suit blush. Meanwhile, Instagram and TikTok continue to pump unregulated CFDs to millions of eyeballs right the way across the world.
We’ve swapped the home-visit financial advisor who thought a bridge was concrete and metal spanning Sydney Harbour and DEX was imported farm machinery, for a world where anyone with Canva and a beach backdrop can “10X your portfolio.”
We’ve come a long way, yes, but this democratisation of “advice” has also democratised disaster. Enforcement can’t keep pace with bandwidth, and the kids scroll on, wallets open.
There is a gap in the market: Maybe there’s a way to engage this influencer-hungry audience with proper information. Perhaps there is a gap in the market for proper regulated advisors to become influencers and have their wise words propagated via such platforms, moving people away from the unregulated chancers?
Tuesday: Robinhood’s Shopping Spree
Robinhood, having already rattled legacy brokerages with its own trading platform launched last year, goes full consolidator mode. Positions in Stripe and ElevenLabs aren’t just diversification, they’re a neon sign to narrow-product desks: adapt or become acquisition fodder. Brokerages without broad product ranges and flexible infrastructure are sitting ducks for fire-sale prices.
The survivors control their own back-end stack, as well as dynamically add valuable components such as AI tools without a ground-up rewrite. Just being an OTC broker with a single CFD basket won’t cut it anymore. You need to connect any service, any product, any customer type. Legacy platforms become someone else’s plugin, or their next lunch.
Wednesday: Perps Go Mainstream
The institutionalisation of perpetual futures isn’t a crypto story anymore. It’s the quiet confirmation that 24/7 digital assets have crossed into proper infrastructure. Three years ago, Interactive Brokers added exchange-listed options. Today, perps migrate from Hyperliquid-driven hype to venue-grade execution.
This isn’t just tradfi firms adding more tradfi products, it is a genuine move toward the urbane crypto audience. Kraken offers an institutional-grade perps platform since 2021 with 100+ pairs and up to 50x leverage for hedge funds, while Bybit provides institutional custody and perps APIs serving prop shops and family offices.
BTSE operates as a tier-1 venue with cross-margin perps and heavy APAC institutional flow, Binance Futures still dominates volume but loses regulated clients to venue-grade alternatives.
On the old-school exchange side, that is also now bang up to date. CME Group delivers micro BTC/ETH perps for US institutions (regulated, low leverage), and traditional FX/CFD brokers like Saxo Bank are piloting perps for high-net-worth clients while IG Group is holding internal discussions amid client demand.
I first heard “perpetuals” from Dubai start-ups with no capital, no clients, hawking “trustless ZK perps” to bemused VCs. Those dreams evaporated, but the product stuck and is now mainstream enough for FX/CFD stalwarts to build real verticals. The crypto cool kids aren’t a threat anymore; they’re the target market.
For brokers, the relevant question now isn’t whether perpetuals are legitimate. That’s settled. It’s whether their infrastructure can support the move when clients start asking for it.
Thursday: Singapore & Cyprus Calling
Two conferences on the horizon are worth flagging. Singapore in May (Finance Magnates Summit) and Limassol in June (iFXEXPO International) represent genuinely different conversations happening within the same industry.
Singapore’s institutional weight makes it the right room for discussions about infrastructure, execution quality, and where serious capital is moving.
Limassol, by contrast, is where retail brokerage gets honest with itself about legacy systems, scalability, and what the next generation of clients actually expects. This Thursday I concluded my plans for reporting from both events with front-line commentary from the panels, one-to-one perspectives from leaders of the industry, and on-the-ground insight from the Integral stand. Detailed anecdotes from the two conferences I can promise you. Watch this space.
Friday: Tech Rewrites Insurance – We should not be complacent.
A conversation this week with a Silicon Valley insure-tech founder shed some light on how a small team of five unpacked the $6 trillion insurance behemoth that’s systematically unloved with 68% consumer distrust and zero daily engagement. Meanwhile, lifestyle crises explode: 80% of chronic disease now lifestyle-driven, costs mounting.
His app tracks habits for real-time risk pricing, turning dusty actuarial tables into nudges that actually stick, and the company now has offices in Silicon Valley, London, mainland Europe and the APAC region.
Every financial product has now gone tech; fintech can’t sleep on startups pulling nine-figure rounds via intuitive UX. The electronic trading industry was one of the first examples of financial technology. We have to match the polish of these startups in other sectors and stay at the front.
Doing things right is the new vogue. Trust-first interfaces over opaque, one-size-fits-all affiliate marketing-driven legacy systems. As I packed my tefillin away for the sixth time this week, it was clear that. The conclusion is uncomfortable but straightforward: anyone using the same type of solution as back at the dawn of the retail FX influx in the early 2000s is not only obsolete, but neolithic in relative terms.
