Omar Faridi
Omar Faridi connects the technical details of digital finance with the business reality of how new financial platforms grow, raise capital, and operate. His coverage follows the mechanics of crypto networks, digital banks, and fintech fundraising rather than headlines about price moves or buzzwords. He writes as a finance and technology reporter at Crowdfund Insider, focusing on disruptive finance across cryptocurrencies, blockchain infrastructure, payments, and consumer banking.
Digital assets and blockchain infrastructure
Faridi’s work on cryptocurrencies and blockchain starts at network level, tracking transaction activity, protocol mechanics, and platform performance instead of treating crypto as a pure markets story. In pieces such as his report on Bitcoin network activity surging due to an uptick in micro-transactions despite price weakness, he emphasizes on-chain usage and transaction patterns as key indicators of the health of a blockchain ecosystem. He consistently covers digital assets, crypto platforms, peer-to-peer financial networks, and decentralized, cryptographically secured protocols, explaining how distributed ledger technology underpins new financial services.
His articles tend to break down what a specific platform or upgrade does, how consensus mechanisms and protocol changes affect users, and how infrastructure decisions shape the viability of crypto businesses.
Digital banking and fintech funding rounds
Alongside crypto, Faridi reports extensively on digital banks and consumer-facing fintech platforms, treating fundraising and capital deployment as core parts of the story. In coverage of a European digital bank like Zopa reporting an €80 million raise to support growth ahead of a current account launch, he focuses on how new capital is earmarked for expansion, product development, and customer acquisition rather than just announcing the round. He routinely profiles funding events, balance sheet moves, and growth strategies at neobanks and online lenders, explaining how they plan to scale within competitive, regulated markets. The through-line is a close attention to financial structure and business model: how much is being raised, from whom, for what, and how it fits into a longer-term plan for sustainable consumer banking.
Venture capital and startup ecosystems
Faridi also follows venture capital’s role in shaping the next generation of fintech and technology companies.
In articles referencing a venture fund such as Accel and its views on unicorn founders fueling the next wave of startups, he draws out how specific cohorts of entrepreneurs, prior exits, and ecosystem dynamics feed back into new deal flow. His reporting connects investor theses with concrete examples of portfolio activity, acquisitions, and subsequent company-building, giving a clear picture of how capital and founder experience interact.
This strand of his work tends to highlight the structural forces behind startup formation - who is backing which kinds of businesses, in which segments of finance and technology, and what that signals about the direction of disruptive finance.
Cross-border payments and financial services innovation
Across these beats, Faridi maintains a steady interest in the plumbing of modern financial services: cross-border payments, insurance technology, and other financial infrastructure innovations. He writes about payment platforms and remittance providers with an eye to the underlying rails, settlement processes, and regulatory constraints, explaining how they attempt to move money more efficiently across jurisdictions.
His work touches on fundraising and financial services for a range of organizations, including those tied to non-profits and broader financial and banking services, reflecting the breadth of Crowdfund Insider’s disruptive finance remit.
Away from the masthead, he runs a venture focused on teaching and writing about cryptocurrencies and blockchain, and has prepared in-depth technical pieces on major crypto platforms and consensus systems, which informs the level of detail he brings to his news reporting. Overall, his body of work is distinguished by its combination of technical literacy and business-focused analysis across crypto, payments, and fintech.
4 more finance journalists.
Abigail Summerville
Abigail Summerville brings a leveraged finance background to her work covering consumer and retail mergers and acquisitions for Reuters. She reports on deal-making and capital markets across food, beverages, spirits, personal care, skincare, bath products and pet food. Her stories focus on transaction terms, ownership stakes, valuation, debt structures and funding sources. She often breaks news on potential sales and strategic reviews before formal announcements. Notable coverage includes Sazerac’s acquisition of Au Vodka, Blackstone’s exploration of a ZO Skin Health sale, CVC’s efforts to sell the parent of Dr Teal’s, and Colgate-Palmolive’s planned divestitures. She also covers consumer IPOs, including Jersey Mike’s and Black Rock Coffee, and co-writes Wall Street market reports. She joined Reuters in 2022 after three years covering leveraged finance and primary debt markets.
Adekunle Agbetiloye
Adekunle Agbetiloye is a senior reporter who connects capital flows, hard numbers and energy transition to the wider African economy. He works at Business Insider Africa, covering how money, technology and energy reshape economic growth, jobs and living conditions. His beat spans the African economy, technology, energy transition, climate change, startups and critical minerals, with a focus on concrete deals and data-led stories. He reports on African startup funding cycles, sovereign wealth funds, billionaire investors, multilateral and private investment programs, energy and power markets, Bitcoin mining, and economic policy choices. His work follows how governments finance spending, manage debt and respond to social pressure, and how sector snapshots and health and development metrics reveal links between macro indicators, corporate strategy and everyday costs.
Aimee Picchi
Aimee Picchi connects Social Security, retirement programs and economic policy directly to the financial security of ordinary Americans, showing how macro decisions hit household budgets. She is associate managing editor for CBS MoneyWatch at CBS News, covering business and personal finance with clear, accessible explanations of complex money issues. Her core beat is Social Security and retirement, interest rates and inflation, and how policy, markets and company strategies affect workers, retirees, savers and investors. She reports on benefit adequacy, looming Social Security cuts, COLA changes, Federal Reserve rate decisions, fuel costs, trade tensions and labor’s share of income, always framing coverage around pocketbook impacts. Her background includes retirement reporting fellowships, prior staff reporting on technology, media and business, an Institutional Investor book on affluent investors, and freelance work for national outlets. She also writes science fiction and fantasy and is a Nebula Award finalist.
Alex Harring
Alex Harring turns fast-moving market, economic and corporate developments into clear pre-market briefings that show what will matter when U.S. trading opens. He is a markets and economics reporter for CNBC’s digital platforms and writes Morning Squawk, a flagship daily newsletter that gives readers five key things to know before the stock market opens. His beat spans financial markets, investing, consumer trends and the U.S. economy, with coverage of central bank decisions, inflation, corporate strategy, sector moves and geopolitical shocks. He focuses on how policy, data and earnings shape equities, interest rates, currencies and investor positioning, linking price action with underlying drivers in real time and in reported features. Harring’s background reporting on corporate news, business and the economy across print, digital, broadcast and streaming informs his habit of connecting markets, companies and geopolitics in one frame.