Happy Tuesday, Fellow Fintechers! Today we have more great content for those of you in the “fintech know”, including a recap of a study recently conducted by FPA and SEI in the post “How Financial Planners Could End Up Like Mall Retailers.” Included in the study’s findings were the need for advisors to audit and assess their technology needs. Of course, we already knew that! Another piece takes a look at a new study from Edward Jones detailing how women advisors can grow their practices by utilizing technology for business development and marketing.

We also delve into the world of automated bond trading and learn that in August, Alliance Bernstein utilized a “robot” to execute corporate bond trades with other bots at Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and RBC. I’m sure there’s a water cooler joke in there somewhere, but the fact remains that more and more trading desks are integrating AI- and machine learning-based bots. 

In addition, we’ve learned that Barry Silbert’s digital currency investment firm Grayscale Investments—now with roughly $2 billion in AUM—has been approved to launch a fourth digital currency fund on the OTC markets. Silbert is also the force behind both the digital currency news site Coindesk and Invest:NYC, an event for retail and institutional crypto investors.

This week we also feature an interview with Catherine Clay of Cboe Global Markets, where she delves into the advantages and nuances of fintechs collaborating with larger corporations. We also view the underbelly of bitcoin in the piece “U.S., South Korea Bust Giant Child Porn Site By Following Bitcoin Trail.” More crime and money laundering is committed utilizing traditional currencies, but even so we have to acknowledge that digital currencies can be, and often are, used for nefarious purposes. Kudos to the joint effort of U.S. and South Korean authorities for shutting down this ring.

Read up, folks!