This week was an interesting one for the forex and cryptocurrency industries. So let’s take a moment to see what the most exciting stories of the past week were, in our latest “best of the week” analysis.
Exclusive interview: Glenn Stevens on new GAIN Capital brand and industry consolidation
GAIN Capital is in the midst of some major changes. Recently, Finance Magnates reported that the US based FX giant is about to gradually phase out its City Index brand, while the company continues investing in the development of FOREX.com. Concurrently with that, the broker will also refocus on premium clients.
Therefore, we reached out to the company’s legendary CEO Glenn Stevens to hear about his future plans and to clarify a few remaining questions on GAIN’s recent activities.
“We’ve seen several of the largest UK brokers report material decreases in active accounts and volume since the new regulations came into force, but the top tier brokers are large enough and have enough geographic diversity in their businesses to weather this change,” said Stevens.
Are crypto futures the future of crypto?
As the long crypto winter continues, there is an ongoing search for a killer app that will stir the industry to safe waters and eventually will take it “to the moon”. One of the most popular methods of attempting to profit in the bear market is cryptocurrency futures trading.
Finance Magnates analyzed the future of the crypto futures, along with several experts, and tried to predict how they will affect the future of the industry.
“Bitcoin futures on CME or CBOE cash-settled markets allow traders to speculate on the future price of bitcoin without handling underlying assets, further allowing traders to buy and sell BTC without actually owning any…This distinction means crypto future markets are often characterised as ‘casinos’ because traders are capable of making larger gambles and bets, exaggerating potential gains or losses,” explained Aditya Das, Analyst for Brave New Coin.
GKFX replaces Rob Woolfe with Mohseen Jameel, after only six months
It is not often that a company replaces its CEO after only six months, but the current turbulent industry status makes everything possible. GKFX has parted ways with its CEO Rob Woolfe, and on boarded Mohsin Jameel.
Jameel has been leading Tradenext for eight years. Prior to that, he headed Bull Infotech, a company focused on the crypto space. The firm he co-founded helped companies link cryptocurrencies to the MT4 trading platform.
Saxo Bank confirms €424m offer to BinckBank
Saxo Bank has confirmed its €424m bid from December to BinckBank. The Danish FX giant’s shareholders are set to vote on the offer in late April.
“Our conversations and initial preparations over the past months have reaffirmed the strong cultural fit between BinckBank and Saxo Bank based on a shared vision and purpose to democratise investment and empower everyone to take control of their financial destiny,” the CEO of Saxo Bank Kim Fournais said.
10 years in, BTC adoption is still far from its goal
Crypto was never intended to be a niche’ investing class asset. Nor it was intended to serve as merely a ‘digital gold’ store of value. The extreme crypto believers have promised us that Bitcoin and other crypto coins will soon be the currency which we will use to buy milk at the grocery store, to use for remittances and even to pay for taxes.
But what is left from that dream after more than 10 years of adoption? Finance Magnates examined the current status and tried to predict the future of crypto adoption.
“The lion’s share of transactions on the blockchain today are related to trading financial instruments like cryptocurrency, various tokens, stablecoins, and other derivatives,” told Nash Foster, CEO of industrial-scale blockchain platform Pyrofex. “When you get an account at an exchange, the trading pair will almost always be between Bitcoin and the other asset. You can’t trade dollars for any of these things, typically, you can only trade Bitcoin or maybe Ether.”
The Neutrino debacle Is an important ethics lesson for Coinbase
Coinbase’s recent $13.5 million acquisition of Neutrino, a blockchain intelligence firm, has been dubbed as a failure. The cryptocurrency exchange believed that Neutrino would help prevent theft, investigate ransomware attacks and hacks, and to detect suspicious transactional activity.
However, as Coinbase quickly learned, its new partner has a very problematic history. Its founders were members of “Hacking Team”, an intelligence firm that built and sold spyware tools. Those tools allegedly assisted various government agencies around the world to commit serious human and civil rights violations and other questionable activities.
Was this a mere glitch in Coinbase’s matrix, or did the crypto giant learn a valuable lesson in ethics and modesty?
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