By Amelia Isaacs on Thursday 29 December 2022
Check out this year's top five most-read articles, featuring some familiar faces (hello Revolut) as well as a new kid on the block...
In Part 1 of this article, we looked back at AltFi’s most-read stories of the year, from No.10 to No.6, and in this article we will finally reveal the No.1 most-read article of 2022.
If you missed it, you can find Part 1 of AltFi’s 10 most-read stories of 2022 here.
Without further ado, here are the most popular stories on AltFi from 2022, from No.5 to No.1.
A new name on the AltFi scene, The Sweat Economy – and its app Sweatcoin – landed with a bang this year and swooped up three out of five of our top-read stories in 2022.
Sweat Economy, the team behind the move-to-earn app with more than 100 million users, raised $13m in a funding round back in August that included a private token sale.
Investors included Electric Capital, Spartan Capital and OKX Blockdream Ventures and the raise was set to accelerate the app’s move into Web3 as it worked toward its aim of onboarding another billion users.
Read more: The Sweat Economy raises $13m to onboard the next billion walk to earn crypto earners
British retail giant John Lewis relaunched its Partnership Card with consumer credit business NewDay after 18 years of partnering with HSBC.
“We believe the combination of our fully FCA-regulated product set, proprietary technology and two decades of underwriting experience mean we are ideally placed to help John Lewis deliver meaningful business growth through the use of responsible, accessible consumer credit,” NewDay CEO John Hourican said.
John Lewis also announced plans to invest more than £50m into expanding its offering of financial products and services to its clients at the same time.
It said it was looking to increase its finance team by a third to expand its consumer finance offerings, following on from last year’s partnership with digital wealth manager Nutmeg to embed investment products.
Read more: John Lewis bins HSBC for NewDay to relaunch consumer credit card
Early this year, Vlad Yatsenko, Revolut’s co-founder and chief technology officer took a major stance in speaking out against Vladamir Putin after he invaded Ukraine.
Ukrainian Yatsenko took to Twitter to call Russia’s leader a “brazen liar”, declaring in Russian that Ukraine “is and will be free”.
Revolut has continued to hold firm in its stance against the war on Ukraine since February.
This year it has waived transfer fees for Ukrainian banks, raised more than €10m for the Red Cross Ukraine appeal with the help of its customers and co-founder Nikolay Storonsky renounced his Russian citizenship in October.
Read more: Revolut co-founder hits out at Putin following Ukraine invasion
Sweatcoin’s long-awaited SWEAT tokens launched in September, with $1m of the crypto sold on DAO Maker before its big Token Generation Event (TGE) even took place.
Previously, users had only been able to generate sweatcoins that could be used like air miles and spent on the app, but now users can turn their steps into SWEAT, the app’s own crypto token minted with movement.
When the crypto drop launched, 1,000 steps equalled one SWEAT token, and any sweatcoins that had been generated before the TGE were matched.
In keeping with the app’s mission to get more people moving though, it now takes 2,288 steps to generate one token, and they will get increasingly harder to create over time.
Read more: Everything you need to know about Sweatcoin’s crypto launch
Taking the top spot for most-read story of the year, Sweatcoin’s back again!
Sweatcoin was originally eyeing a summer launch for its SWEAT crypto, which eventually went live in September, but in the last eight months its number of users has almost doubled to more than 120 million.
More than 32 billion sweatcoins have been created, and the app’s mission to “inspire a healthier planet by incentivising people to move more” is clearly well underway.
Read more: Sweatcoin eyes launch of SWEAT tokens that turn movement into money
21 March 2023
Daniel Lanyon
