Howard Lindzon is a GP at Social Leverage and the Co-Founder of StockTwits. He's known for his early-stage FinTech bets, including a seed investment in Robinhood. Below are his 2018 predictions for FinTech. Fun Fact: Howard invented the $Cashtag on social networks.

I am blown away by the fintech explosion in 2017. I have been investing in financial startups (and creating a few) the last 11 years dreaming of a year like 2017. I have been trying to soak it all in and ponder what could happen in the coming years.

I don’t think we have seen anything yet.

I get the luxury of looking at the Stocktwits data that CEO Ian Rosen shares with me and while yes Bitcoin and Crypto is in a bananas growth and chatter phase, I am content knowing millennials are not chatting about oil, P/E ratios, gold and utilities.

Robinhood announced free options trading. CEO Baiju Bhatt announced that 200,000 people have requested it in the first 7 hours.

Coinbase hit the number 1 spot in the App Store the other day.

eToro is now in over 150 countries. I talk to Yoni Assia all the time and hear the growth numbers in crypto (deposits and volumes) and just shake my head.

The mental athlete is cool. Compounding and network effects are cool. Investing is cool. Learning the language of the markets is cool. These apps are cool:

🚘Rally Road is a platform where you can purchase equity in blue-chip classic cars (Ferrari, Porsche, etc.). This is an interesting alternative asset class that is now accessible to the masses.

🍿Real Vision is like a Netflix for financial investing and trading stocks.

💲Blockfolio is a useful bitcoin and altcoin portfolio management tool.

📈TradingView one of the best charting tools on the web for crypto and stocks you can find.

If you're looking for a good Sci-Fi novel over the break, Foundry Group's Brad Feld has some suggestions:

⛄️ Snow Crash
🌌 Seveneves
🤖 I, Robot
💎 Diamond Age

For more, check out Brad's Sci-Fi book recommendations. 📚