Brokers expanding into Latin America rarely have an acquisition problem, they have a LATAM broker trust strategy problem, and the two are not the same thing. Advertising budgets introduce a brand; they do not persuade a trader to hand over capital to a firm with no meaningful local presence. That distinction matters more in Latin America than almost anywhere else. Traders across the region typically spend weeks researching a broker before opening an account, comparing platforms and products, but also seeking reassurance from educators, community leaders and people they already know. Marketing creates awareness. Awareness is not credibility. Why Traders…
Author: Publishing Wizard
Institutional traders gained another route into regulated prediction markets on 18 August, when Trading Technologies International (TT) announced the Trading Technologies OG.com integration, connecting its platform to Crypto.com’s CFTC-regulated prediction markets exchange. The connection is expected to go live in the fourth quarter of 2026. What OG.com Actually Is, and Why the Regulator Matters OG.com is Crypto.com’s standalone prediction markets venue. Its contracts are cleared through Crypto.com Derivatives North America (CDNA), which holds a designation as a contract market (DCM) and registered clearing house with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the US derivatives regulator. CDNA was originally incorporated as…
Interactive Brokers Latin America clients now have a new way to fund their brokerage accounts, after the broker integrated SafetyPay, a payment platform owned by Paysafe, into its deposit infrastructure. The move connects eligible clients directly to their local bank accounts, letting them transfer funds in local currencies without routing money through international payment channels first. Why Bank Transfers Matter So Much in This Region The integration addresses a structural reality of Latin American finance. Paysafe reports that approximately 42% of Latin American consumers do not hold a credit card, which means payment options that depend on card infrastructure simply…
Your Bourse Trade Server now lets broker staff query live positions and initiate hedges or close trades through an AI assistant, extending what has until now been a data-only conversation into one that can trigger real actions. The company calls the product MCP for Trade Server. It is available to brokers already running the Your Bourse backend. No pricing or adoption figures were disclosed. What Your Bourse Trade Server’s MCP Layer Actually Does MCP stands for Model Context Protocol (an open standard that connects AI assistants to external software tools and data). Rather than building a separate set of trading…
Investors watching the EU crypto market learned this week how quickly a regulatory exit can move customer flows: OKX Europe MiCA growth figures published by OKX show EU app downloads rising 160% in the 12 days after Binance pulled its licence application from Greece on 24 June 2026, with inflows from Binance-linked accounts growing more than eightfold over the same period. Those are OKX’s own numbers, and independent on-chain data does not fully corroborate them. A separate review of aggregate exchange balances found that OKX’s and Binance’s holdings moved in the same direction across the same two-week windows, a pattern…
The Kalshi Nevada geofencing fine dispute sharpened this week as state gaming regulators asked a court to impose a $120,000-per-day penalty on the prediction market platform, alleging it continued to offer prohibited event contracts after a court-ordered compliance deadline. Kalshi says the trades that regulators cite were made by investigators who broke federal law to complete them. What the Nevada Gaming Control Board Is Alleging Prediction markets (platforms where users buy contracts on the outcome of real-world events, from elections to sports results) have been a regulatory flashpoint in the United States, and Kalshi has been at the centre of…
Alpaca Derivatives LLC’s FCM registration with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the National Futures Association (NFA) positions the brokerage infrastructure firm to offer event contracts in the US, though the subsidiary has not yet commenced regulated business operations.The announcement, published on 17 August 2026, confirms that Alpaca Derivatives LLC holds NFA member ID 0576042. What that means in plain terms: the entity now has the regulatory standing required to act as a futures commission merchant (FCM), the category of firm that accepts client orders for futures and event contracts, holds customer funds, and arranges clearing.No launch date, no…
The Octa Cyprus CEO departure of Georgios Pantzis, who has led the firm’s Cypriot entity since it was founded, brings to a close nearly nine years at the helm of one of the more closely watched CFD brokers operating under European regulatory cover. Pantzis is leaving to pursue independent business ventures. His LinkedIn profile already lists him as chief executive of WealthIntel Management, a firm offering services to family offices and wealth management clients. What the Octa Cyprus CEO Departure Means for Clients Octa Markets Cyprus Ltd holds CySEC licence number 372/18, issued on 10 December 2018. That licence, granted…
Investors watching gold prices climb and the dollar weaken have a 54-year-old policy decision as their reference point: the Nixon Shock dollar gold suspension of August 1971, when President Nixon severed the link between the greenback and bullion that had underpinned the global financial order since World War Two. The date was 15 August 1971. In a televised address, Nixon announced that the United States would suspend the convertibility of the dollar into gold, ending the Bretton Woods monetary system and launching the era of floating exchange rates, according to Federal Reserve History. It was described as a temporary measure.…
KEFI Gold Copper performance on the London Stock Exchange has been hard to ignore over the past year: holders of KEFI Gold and Copper (KEFI) saw a return of 83.51% in the twelve months to 28 August 2026, against 17.44% for the FTSE 100 over the same period. For ISA and SIPP holders with exposure to small-cap miners, understanding what sits behind that gap matters as much as the headline number.Alongside KEFI in many small-cap portfolios sits Amaroq Minerals (AMRQ), a Greenland-focused mine developer. The two companies together illustrate both the upside and the execution risk that comes with junior…
Investors tracking gold mining ETF returns had another productive week as the gold price closed at $4,376, up from $4,341 the previous week, having touched an intraday high of around $4,440 before pulling back. The mining sector moved with it, and the three ETFs most UK investors use to gain exposure (GDX, GDXJ and GOEX) have been delivering returns that put the underlying metal itself in the shade. What the Mining ETFs Have Delivered The VanEck Gold Miners ETF (GDX) posted a one-year return of 67.43% as of 26 August 2026, with a year-to-date gain of 19.41%. Its 52-week price…
Investors holding shares in London BTC Company (BTC.L) have now seen two promotional video appearances in three days from paid promoter Zak Mir alongside the company’s chief executive, Hewie Rattray, and the London BTC Company promotion is drawing scrutiny given what the numbers underneath it actually say. The second video, published on a Friday, ran for 2 minutes and 22 seconds. Neither appearance, according to the original commentary, contained material new information for shareholders. What London BTC Company Actually Looks Like on a Spreadsheet The company, formerly known as Vinanz Limited before changing its name in July 2025, is incorporated…
Investors holding GB Group (GBG) shares woke to fresh disappointment as a GBG Americas Identity trading update revealed that customer attrition in its US business has forced the company to cut its full-year revenue growth outlook. The group now expects revenue to grow by 1–3% in FY27, down from previous guidance of mid-single-digit growth, after it ‘seen higher than expected volume attrition on a few material customers.’ At 170p, the shares were already trading well off historical highs. The question holders face is whether this setback is a temporary stumble or something more structural. What the GBG Americas Identity Trading…
Investors in CML Microsystems (LON: CML) received a welcome surprise from the company’s CML Microsystems trading update on 11 August 2026, when the semiconductors group said a return to operational profitability now looks likely to be achieved earlier in the current financial year than previously expected. The statement, released at 07:00 on 11 August 2026, was timed to coincide with the company’s Annual General Meeting (AGM), held at 9.30 a.m. at The Lion Inn in Boreham, Chelmsford, according to the London Stock Exchange notice of AGM. What the CML Microsystems Trading Update Actually Said The company told shareholders it entered…
Investors watching eToro’s post-IPO strategy learned this week that the eToro TradeZero acquisition will cost up to $231 million in cash and shares, as the social-trading platform makes its most ambitious move yet into US equities. The deal landed alongside a quarter in which crypto revenues fell sharply across every major platform that reports them. eToro TradeZero Acquisition: What the Deal Is Worth and How It Is Structured eToro agreed to buy US brokerage TradeZero for consideration that includes cash and up to 2.5 million newly issued Class A shares. TradeZero generated approximately $80 million in revenue in the 12…
CySEC has flagged ten unlicensed investment websites in a notice dated 14 August 2026, warning consumers that none of the sites belong to entities authorised to provide investment services in Cyprus. Two of the names closely resemble those of firms that actually hold licences from the Cypriot watchdog, raising the risk that investors could confuse them for regulated brokers. Ten Unlicensed Investment Websites Named in the Warning The Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) named the following sites: m4-platform.com, m4-markets-latam.vercel.app, waltonmarketltd.com, investiumlimited.com, evercrest.capital, gofx.com, tazerpro.com, quantacfd.com, cypriantrustbank.com, and omnixmarkets.com. The regulator said none of the sites are connected to entities…
The ShareProphets Great British Takeover Stakes competition has launched, inviting readers to name the UK-listed companies they believe will receive a bid, with the winner earning a week’s stay at founder Tom Winnifrith’s Greek retreat, covering only pool and cleaning costs. Great British Takeover Stakes: How It Works Each entrant submits their top five UK-listed companies they expect to be taken over. The competition is tracking those picks that received four or more selections as a group called ‘The Takeover 12’, with their performance being measured against the FTSE 100 and a second benchmark index. The prize is deliberately low-key:…
The Lucian Miers bear call on a clutch of AIM-listed names is the sharpest signal coming out of ShareProphets commentary this week, arriving alongside a Burnley FC sponsorship row that has left some retail investors asking uncomfortable questions about a prop trading firm called Finotive Funding. What the Lucian Miers Bear Call Actually Covers Commentator Tom Winnifrith flagged the Lucian Miers bear call in his latest Bearcast, describing it as targeting some big names in finance alongside AIM stocks including SkinBioTherapeutics (SBTX) and GB Group (GBG). Miers is a well-known short-seller in UK small-cap circles. The snippet does not detail…
The Eco Buildings Group loan note conversion announced this week will add 3,652,366 new ordinary shares to the company’s float, with admission to AIM (the London Stock Exchange’s growth market for smaller companies) expected on or around 17 August 2026. The shares divide into two groups. 2,500,000 are being issued following a conversion notice on £100,000 of loan notes (debt instruments issued directly by the company to lenders, convertible into shares at a pre-agreed ratio) originated on 4 September 2025. The remaining 1,152,366 shares are being issued in settlement of certain outstanding liabilities. What the Eco Buildings Group Loan Note…
Investors holding shares in Union Jack Oil are watching a rare public dispute unfold around the Union Jack Oil takeover bid from Reabold Resources, with two formal letters of complaint now submitted to the UK Takeover Panel alleging the regulator is failing in its core duty to protect minority shareholders. What the Takeover Panel Is Supposed to Do The Takeover Panel was established in 1968 as an independent body with a clear remit: to issue and administer the City Code on Takeovers and Mergers and to supervise and regulate bids to which that Code applies. Its own stated mission is…
Investors watching Coinbase’s expanding crypto empire learned this week that the Deribit VARA Broker-Dealer Licence, granted by Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA), will route most spot orders placed on Deribit directly to Coinbase Exchange for execution. The move marks the first tangible product integration since Coinbase completed its $2.9 billion acquisition of Deribit in August 2025. What the Deribit VARA Broker-Dealer Licence Actually Does Deribit already held a VARA licence for Exchange Services, granted in January 2025, which permitted spot trading under certain restrictions. The new Broker-Dealer Licence, detailed on the Coinbase official blog, sits alongside that existing permission…
The 80 Mile placing raise of £1.9 million is set to complete on or around 30 July 2026, when new shares are admitted to trading on AIM, giving investors a fresh reason to weigh what the company’s finances actually look like before deciding whether the price is right. The fundraise lands against a backdrop of heavy losses. Over the most recent trailing twelve months, 80 Mile plc reported a net loss available to common shareholders of -£33.13 million, with the company holding roughly £1.83 million in cash at the most recent quarter-end. Its market capitalisation stands at approximately GBp 32.203…
Investors holding AMRQ shares learned this morning that Amaroq’s interim results confirm the Greenland gold miner is progressing as planned, with the Nalunaq mine advancing and a string of corporate moves completed in the period to June 30. What the Amaroq Interim Results Actually Show The headline from Amaroq’s update is straightforward: no nasty surprises, no slippage on key milestones. For a junior miner at this stage of development, that is exactly what holders need to hear. The numbers behind the results come from the company’s unaudited interim consolidated financial statements. For the nine months ended September 30, 2024, Amaroq…
Investors holding shares in LST on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) got their first look at Light Science Technologies interims for the six months ended 31 May 2025 on 13 August 2025, with the shares sitting at 1.45p, more than 9% below the 2.3p level at which the company last attracted wider attention in May. The headline numbers are not a disaster, but they are not a catalyst either. Group revenue came in at £5.1m, fractionally below the £5.2m recorded in the same period a year earlier. The more interesting story sits inside the divisional breakdown. What the Light Science…
B2C2’s Asia family office push has taken a concrete step forward with the appointment of Jason Lai as Senior Advisor, based in Singapore. Lai joins from Schroders Wealth Management Asia, where he served most recently as Chairman, and his brief is to deepen the firm’s relationships with funds, asset managers and family offices across the Asia-Pacific region. B2C2 is a digital asset liquidity provider (a firm that quotes buy and sell prices in crypto markets, letting institutional clients trade without hunting for a counterparty). It does not serve retail clients and operates strictly on a business-to-business basis. From Thirdrock to…
Pepperstone’s CTO appointment takes effect on 1 October 2026, with Nigel Fernandes stepping into the newly elevated role as the Melbourne-based broker moves to build more of its own technology rather than rely on third-party platforms. Fernandes joins from Cryptonews-reviewed Pepperstone from Xero, where he held the title of SVP and Executive General Manager of Engineering. At Xero he ran a global engineering organisation spanning cloud platforms, customer identity and data. Before that, he worked in senior technology roles at Publicis Sapient, Coles Group, SEEK and Envato, accumulating more than 20 years of experience across financial services, retail, media and…
Investors holding AO World (AO.) have two things to weigh alongside a record set of annual results: AO World director share sales disclosed since those figures were announced, and a £20 million shareholder return package that goes further than the headline buyback number suggests. Record Numbers, Then a Broader Return Package The company’s results for the year ended 31 March 2026 showed revenue rising 11.4% to £1,266.6 million, up from £1,137.5 million the prior year, according to the FY26 final results RNS. Adjusted profit before tax (the operating profit figure stripped of one-off items) hit a record £50.5 million, up…
The Union Jack Oil takeover bid by Reabold Resources is facing deepening resistance, with Letters of Intent pledging to reject the all-share offer now representing in excess of 23% of Union Jack’s share capital, up from the 18.13% that was last publicly disclosed.The detail that matters: Reabold is said to have been aware of the higher figure since the preceding Friday without publishing a regulatory announcement. That raises an obvious question about disclosure obligations under the UK Takeover Code.Union Jack Oil Takeover: What the Letters of Intent MeanA Letter of Intent (LOI) in a takeover context is a written pledge…
Investors following easyMarkets learned this week that the broker’s Q2 trading review points to a pronounced defensive turn among retail traders, with gold topping activity and overall volumes falling back from both Q1 2026 and Q2 2025 as clients chose discipline over aggression. What the easyMarkets Q2 Trading Review Found Gold held its position as the most traded instrument on the platform across the second quarter of 2026. Crude oil ranked second, and US stock indices completed the top three, but the story of the quarter was less about which markets were active and more about how cautiously traders approached…
Investors following fintech and small-business software will want to note that HoneyBook has made its debut on the CNBC World’s Top Fintech Companies ranking for 2026, placed within the Enterprise Fintech category. The list, produced in partnership with Statista, is now in its fourth edition and has previously included heavyweights such as Mastercard, Stripe and Visa alongside faster-growing scaleups.HoneyBook positions itself as an AI-native client relationship platform (a combined CRM and payments tool built around artificial intelligence from the ground up) for independent business owners and freelancers. The company says its platform is used by over 100,000 service-based businesses across…
Coinbase has received regulatory approval in Abu Dhabi to offer tokenized securities (stocks and other financial instruments represented as digital tokens on a blockchain) to eligible international investors, with Apple common stock serving as the first product under the new framework. The joint ADGM and Coinbase press release was dated 13 August 2026, two days after Coinbase’s own announcement. The Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA) of Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) granted Coinbase a Financial Services Permission to arrange investment deals and provide custody services for tokenized securities. Coinbase has named ADGM its international tokenization hub, with Dubai remaining its…
FATF DeFi compliance rules published on 21 July 2026 make one thing clear to UK banks, brokers and fintech platforms: easier technical access to decentralised finance does not transfer the legal responsibilities that come with it. The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) report, which updates the body’s 2021 guidance on virtual assets, confirms that regulated institutions bear anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing (AML/CFT) obligations when they use or integrate DeFi protocols, regardless of how those protocols are structured or marketed. What the FATF Report Actually Says The report sorts DeFi arrangements into three categories: those with an identifiable controller, those…
The BingX CFD trading launch, announced on 10 August 2026, marks the cryptocurrency exchange’s first move into traditional financial markets, letting eligible users trade contracts for difference (CFDs, meaning positions settled on price movements rather than ownership of the underlying asset) across precious metals, stock indices, foreign exchange and commodities. What the BingX CFD Trading Launch Actually Covers BingX says users can access the new CFD products through their existing accounts, without opening a separate brokerage relationship. The platform supports both long and short positions and offers leverage, which allows traders to control positions larger than their initial deposit using…
In the CFD and forex B2B world, a BDM LinkedIn profile has become one of the first things an Introducing Broker (IB) checks before agreeing to send a single client to a new brokerage. Not the company page. The individual. And yet most brokers still treat their Business Development Managers’ online presence as an afterthought, quietly absorbing the cost when partnerships fail to materialise. The scale of what is at stake makes this worth taking seriously. Finance Magnates reported that retail FX/CFD volume broke through $30 trillion a month, with the global funded-account base reaching 12.4 million by the end…
The A7A5 ruble stablecoin has processed close to $140 billion in turnover since its launch in early 2025, according to Pyotr Fradkov, chief executive of Russia’s Promsvyazbank (PSB). That headline figure, however, sits alongside a blockchain record that raises questions about how much of that volume reflects genuine commerce. A Stablecoin Built on Sanctioned Foundations A7A5 was created by Moscow-based A7 LLC, a company 51%-owned by Ilan Shor and 49%-owned by Promsvyazbank, according to written evidence submitted to a UK parliamentary committee. Shor, a Moldovan citizen convicted in Moldova and sanctioned by the UK under the Global Anti-Corruption Sanctions Regulation…
Investors and fintech developers watching the prediction-market sector learned on 7 August 2026 that Gate.io event contracts infrastructure is now available as a white-label toolkit, accompanied by a $3 million grant programme for third parties who build on top of it, according to a GlobeNewswire release issued by Gate Technology Incorporated from Panama City. The product, called Event Contracts Builder and developed under the Gate DexBuilder division, is aimed at brokers, fintech companies and Web3 developers who want to offer prediction markets under their own brand without building the underlying trading, settlement and liquidity systems themselves. What the Gate.io Event…
Investors following prediction markets learned this week that the Kalshi Nasdaq surveillance deal places the exchange on the identical market-monitoring platform its own regulator already runs, tightening the chain between a flagged trade and a formal regulatory file. Kalshi, the regulated US event-contracts exchange, signed a multi-year agreement to deploy Nasdaq Market Surveillance across its platform. The system will run alongside the Solidus Labs framework already in place since February, covering both Kalshi’s existing prediction markets and the perpetual-style derivatives it is adding. Neither company disclosed the contract value or a phase-in timetable. What the Kalshi Nasdaq Surveillance Deal Actually…
The Guotai Junan International privatisation offer, announced on Friday, puts a HK$28.6 billion (roughly $3.6 billion) price tag on one of Hong Kong’s most closely watched brokerages, at a 44.2% premium to the last traded price before the stock was suspended. Parent company Guotai Haitong Securities is offering HK$3.00 per share in cash. Together with parties acting in concert, it already controls about 66% of the shares. The remaining minority would be cancelled under a scheme of arrangement (a court-supervised process used to delist companies) and the stock would leave the Hong Kong exchange. The offer price is 46.5% above…
Investors following retail brokerage stocks and platforms learned this week that Revolut’s Lithuania cross-border growth has turned a small Baltic hub into the second-largest source of cross-border retail investment clients in the European Union, while Plus500 added CME-listed single stock futures to its US offering and Coinbase rolled out equities trading for UK users. How Revolut Lithuania Cross-Border Growth Became an EU Story Lithuania’s cross-border retail investment client base grew from roughly 500 in 2022 to more than 2.5 million by the end of 2024, according to data from the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA). ESMA attributed the expansion…
Prediction market platforms received a formal regulatory reminder on 5 August 2026, as the CFTC bookmaker odds warning put the entire event contracts industry on notice: price your products like derivatives, not like a sportsbook. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC) Division of Market Oversight and Market Participants Division issued the joint letter to all exchanges offering event contracts, alongside introducing brokers, futures commission merchants (FCMs, firms that execute trades on behalf of clients) and designated contract markets (DCMs, exchanges authorised by the CFTC to list futures and event contracts). All recipients must confirm receipt by 31 August. What the…