Is Fintech doomed?

From Coinbase to Better, Fintech has been no stranger to mass layoffs this past year. Critics question how the industry went from leading VC fundraising in 2021 with $131.5 billion across 4,969 deals to leading tech layoffs. Despite a year of downturns, would it be shortsighted to say that Fintech’s future is obsolete?

Back in January, Fintech company Wealthfront announced that it would be acquired by Swiss bank UBS for $1.4 billion. That plan has since fallen apart amid “regulatory concerns.” Bank-fintech acquisitions often fall victim to regulatory issues, with many bank regulators wanting to keep the two entities separate.

Although Wealthfront’s failed acquisition doesn’t exactly put Fintech in a positive light, the fact that the acquisition even happened could be a positive indicator of the value Fintech companies present to banks and larger institutions. The industry is set to grow to $300 billion by the end of this year. Last week, we touched on YC S22, and how Fintech was the second most popular category. Here on Product Hunt, Fintech start-ups continue to launch and gain momentum too.

Plasma Wallet launched today and there’s a lot of buzz in the comments. The mobile app lets you manage, trade, and store crypto assets and NFTs. Plasma gives users the ability to view different wallets and balances all in one place.

Beanvest launched last month and helps you track more than 250,000 assets including stocks, ETFs, mutual funds, and crypto. It functions as an alternative to manual spreadsheet tracking and helps you measure your portfolio performance.

• Prospective polyglots: Luma Language uses AI and viral content to help users learn the first 1,000 words of a language.

• Browser extension Suggesty uses AI to generate human-like answers to your Google searches. Ask a question and receive an answer from Suggesty at the top of the search page.

• Need to organize your inbox? Emailgurus helps you classify emails coming from outside of your contact list by watching your inbox in realtime and filtering out unknown senders.

• Tella for Slack lets you share Tella links with your team and watch them directly in Slack.

Maker Sebastian Stamm was bored of his typical daily walk routes, so he created EarthQuest.

The web app randomly generates coordinates to walk to. After each coordinate is reached, users “level up” and receive a new set of increasingly difficult coordinates. It also provides turn by turn navigation and uses heatmap statistics to show users where they’ve been in the past.