BankThink

Receiving Wide Coverage ...Move over bitcoin: Speculators drove up the price of a single unit of Zcash – a new virtual currency that was built to be all but untraceable – to over $1,000 on Monday, a few days after it was introduced. The online currency, developed by scientists at Johns Hopkins and MIT, uses advanced cryptography that enables Zcash "to be sent around the world essentially without a trace, unlike Bitcoin." Price volatility aside, Bloomberg offers a smart take on why anonymity is important for a currency's fungibility.

The new standard protects competition for businesses and issuers of all sizes, and should not be repealed.

Marva Smalls has gotten comfortable with being uncomfortable throughout her career, and she advises others to do the same, particularly aspiring leaders.

One of the hottest bank technologies is already repeating mistakes of decades past and showing just how far banks have to go to catch up with the times. Here is one easy way to make this emerging tech more appealing to today's customers.

Wall Street JournalSoFi to sell insurance: Marketplace lender SoFi, which got its start in 2011 refinancing student loans and has since expanded into mortgages and other financial products, is now gearing up to sell life insurance. The San Francisco-based company obtained a license in its home state in September to sell insurance on behalf of Protective Life Insurance, a Japanese-owned company that had $767 billion of insurance in force at the end of last year. SoFi has since obtained licenses in several other states, according to the Journal.

Business-led mobile payment apps can build deeper relationships with consumers, and right now that beats the third party mobile wallets.

The last time bankers won a major lawsuit against NCUA, CUs responded by creating one of the most powerful lobbying forces on Capitol Hill.

What matters is what the customer gets, not how they get it. Investing in digital distribution yields little unless banks are delivering the products and services that customers crave.

Breaking News This Morning ...UBS profits fall: Unlike other large international banks, which have mostly been reporting better-than-expected earnings for the third quarter, UBS reported its net profit dropped more than 60%. Net profit fell to 827 million Swiss francs from 2.1 billion francs in the same quarter last year. Analysts were expecting 945 million francs. Last year's figure was inflated by a large one-time tax benefit. The Swiss bank said it continued to experience "client risk aversion" as well as the effects of low and negative interest rates that reduce revenue.

Prepaid cards and new mobile innovation in prepaid can bring speed and improve user experience for many different payment types and other financial services.