zinspilot

peer-to-peer lending to banks

US investors with too much time can day trade equities and try and do short squeezes, acting as their own hedge funds. For German (tax) residents there’s Zinspilot and the thrill of being your own money market fund, phoning around to try and find 30 bps of yield on short-term depo.

Peter Thiel, rich contrarian philosopher of German background and alleged vampire/enemy of democracy is an early investor in parent ‘Deposit Solutions’.

Zinspilot means that a) deposit insurance limits become moot as it’s fairly easy to place €99,999 in each of several funding-hungry so-called ‘banks’ and b) no one cares whether you have some nice buildings in a big city somewhere, the same way on Tinder no one is homeless.

Also when all the money goes missing people can be like “Zinspilot, would never have happened in my day”, except if their day is 2008.

But think in a Thielian way what the opposite of complaining about app-based finance is.

“Moving money between bank accounts should be hard and full of paperwork. That way deposit insurance will be cheaper since most people will leave half a million in one place. And paying more interest won’t allow you to borrow more money than people who are paying less interest, unless anyone in Swabia has heard of you.”

The proof that sufficient market efficiency has been obtained is when crooks don’t even need to buy up names like ‘Westfalien Hypo’ or ‘Wupertal Spargeld’ to invest in one another’s IOUs, but just call themselves ‘Thursday Midco 3’ and obtain banking licenses straight from the regulator.