Author: Dean Kim

Dean Kim is an Executive Director, Research Analyst for William O’Neil + Co.. Mr. Kim joined the firm to establish equity research coverage of the financial technology (“fintech”) sector. He has unique insight into the industry’s growth drivers, with broad experience covering the financial sector as an analyst and overhauling corporate business processes as a management consultant. Most recently, Mr. Kim served as Chief Financial Officer of Jios Aerogel Limited, a leading producer of the aerogel nanotechnology-based insulation material. As CFO, he raised more than $5 million in capital and managed liquidity, budgeting, and forecasting. Previously, he was an equity analyst for more than a decade. From 2007–2011, Mr. Kim headed equity research for BNP Paribas’ Korea office and simultaneously covered the banking sector, for which he was ranked number one by the Thomson Reuters/Joong-Ang Daily poll. He was also an equity analyst on Lehman Brothers' proprietary trading desk in Hong Kong, and on an Institutional Investor-ranked small cap team at UBS. Earlier in his career, Mr. Kim, an engineer, worked as a business process redesign specialist at Deloitte Consulting, analyzing the organization-wide processes of utilities and manufacturing companies. Mr. Kim earned a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering at Yale University, and an MBA from Columbia Business School. Outside of work, Mr. Kim enjoys coaching his kids’ soccer teams and traveling with his family.

Cryptocurrency Outlook

Posted on by Dean Kim

Key points:

  • 2022 was a challenging year for cryptocurrency. As Bitcoin collapsed, companies that used leverage or borrowed to trade met with bankruptcies, which had domino effects to major exchanges like FTX and Gemini just recently.
  • The rapid rise of interest rates was one of the major causes for the crypto downturn. But now that the interest rate cycle may be peaking, we see a potential scenario for cryptocurrency’s recovery this year. In addition, institutional participation in holding major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum continues to legitimize the asset class.
  • Technically both Bitcoin and Ethereum are in a Confirmed Uptrend since mid-January. Bitcoin has found some support around the long-term 300-WMA and Ethereum has broken above the 200-WMA.
  • For those investors that cannot invest in Bitcoin or Ethereum directly, we recommend holding Microstrategy (MSTR), Block (SQ) and Nvidia (NVDA, Focus List Rated).

O’Neil Global Cryptocurrency Weekly

Posted on by Dean Kim

Filecoin – $1.07B market cap (ranked #34 by market cap)

Filecoin is a decentralized storage system aiming to “store humanity’s most important information.” It was coined by Protocol Labs and builds on top of the InterPlanetary File System, which allows users to rent unused hard drive space. It primarily aims to store data in a decentralized manner. It leverages its decentralized nature to protect the integrity of data’s location, which paves way for easy retrieval and makes it hard to censor. Like other decentralized storage systems, Filecoin allows people to be the custodians of their own data.

O’Neil Global Cryptocurrency Weekly

Posted on by Dean Kim

The Graph, an indexing protocol for querying data for networks like Ethereum, POA, and IPFS, powers many applications in both DeFi and the broader Web3 ecosystem. Anyone can build and publish open APIs, called subgraphs, that applications can query using GraphQL to retrieve blockchain data. There is a hosted service in production that will make it easy for developers to start building on The Graph and the decentralized network will be launched later this year.

O’Neil Financial Sector Weekly

Posted on by Dean Kim

Bank Rakayat Indonesia (BRI.ID) – $47B market cap – is one of the largest banks in Indonesia and Southeast Asia that
focuses on micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSME) and is a pioneer of microfinance in Indonesia. The bank maintains
one of the best loan growth and margin figures in the industry