Investors following the European crypto market learned last week that Hungary’s parliament voted on 28 July 2026 to repeal its bespoke national crypto validator rules, a framework that had driven several firms out of the market and left Hungary as an outlier under EU law. The timing is striking: CoinCash, operating under the legal entity Tiwala Solutions, had received its MiCA licence from the National Bank of Hungary (MNB) on 20 July, just eight days before parliament acted. MiCA (the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation) is the bloc-wide framework that authorises crypto firms to passport their services across all EU…
Author: Publishing Wizard
Investors watching the regulated prediction-market space learned this week that Rothera trade surveillance is now powered by the Validus platform from Eventus, as the exchange reported its World Cup markets alone generated 3.5 billion traded contracts by mid-July, according to the company. Rothera is a joint venture between Robinhood and Susquehanna. It operates as a designated contract market and registered derivatives clearing organisation, both regulated by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). The exchange launched its first products in May and, per Rothera’s own description, its stated aim is to be the premier CFTC-regulated prediction market serving institutional clients,…
Global Markets Group Limited’s GMG Prime institutional launch took centre stage in a year that saw the FCA-regulated broker’s turnover rise from £107,122 to £1.64 million and its net loss fall from £717,748 to £161,206, for the year ended 31 March 2026. From Execution Broker to Prime Services A year ago, GMG operated primarily as an execution-only broker under a matched-principal restriction, meaning it was required to hedge every client transaction with an external liquidity provider rather than taking positions itself. The business earned income from spreads, commissions and overnight financing on retail and professional accounts. The Financial Conduct Authority…
CME gold futures weekend trading passed its first real test on Sunday, with nearly 15,000 contracts changing hands for roughly $60 million in notional value (the total face value of the contracts traded), according to a statement from CME Group on Monday. Crude oil did not share the moment: the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) had already blocked it. CME Gold Futures Weekend Trading: What the Numbers Show The one-ounce gold contract traded continuously through Saturday and Sunday without interruption, a first for a regulated US exchange in metals. CME’s global head of metals, Jin Hennig, had framed the rationale…
The Tokyo Stock Exchange share splits push moved into a new phase on Tuesday, when the exchange formally wrote to around 270 listed companies asking them to make their shares cheaper for ordinary investors to buy. The letter was signed by TSE President Ryusuke Yokoyama, who has led the exchange since April 2023. It came alongside the launch of a new Working Group on Further Promotion of Small-Size Investments, which will hold its first meetings from October. Why Japanese Stocks Can Be Expensive to Buy The root of the problem is a structural one. Shares on the Tokyo Stock Exchange…
Digital asset adoption at institutional level keeps stalling not at the point of trade execution, but in the tangled infrastructure that surrounds it: the governance, reconciliation, custody and compliance plumbing that every large financial firm already runs on. That is the consistent message from practitioners across trading venues, fintechs and operations teams who have tried to move digital asset pilots into production. The Operational Gap That Kills Digital Asset Adoption Adam Popat, chief executive of SettleMint, frames the challenge plainly. Investor eligibility checks, jurisdictional restrictions, transfer limits, holding periods and approval rights cannot live in legal documents or manual procedures…
Robinhood Ventures Fund II (RVII) is holding a live IPO roadshow on 3 August 2026, streamed on the Robinhood app and on YouTube, in what amounts to the company turning a private-markets pitch into a retail broadcast. The fund intends to build a portfolio of early- and growth-stage companies that have passed through Y Combinator, the Silicon Valley accelerator whose alumni include Airbnb, Stripe, and Coinbase. Exposure to those companies at early stages has historically required either a seat at an established venture firm or accredited-investor status, meaning a net worth above $1 million excluding a primary residence, or annual…
The Fanatics BGC exchange acquisition, announced on 27 July 2026, will hand the sports commerce group direct ownership of a federally regulated trading venue and clearinghouse, fundamentally changing how its prediction markets business operates. The deal covers two regulated entities: Water Street Labs, a Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)-designated contract market (DCM, meaning a federally licensed exchange for futures and related contracts), and CX Clearinghouse, a CFTC-registered derivatives clearing organisation (DCO, meaning the entity that guarantees and settles trades). Financial terms were not disclosed. What the Fanatics BGC Exchange Acquisition Actually Buys The infrastructure Fanatics is acquiring has a longer…
The VCG Markets Seychelles licence, granted by the Seychelles Financial Services Authority, adds a third regulated jurisdiction to the Dubai-headquartered broker’s portfolio as it pursues growth across emerging markets including Kenya, Lebanon and South-East Asia. VCG Markets already holds a Mauritius licence and a Category 5 authorisation in the United Arab Emirates. The broker launched its mobile trading app in 2024, and under recently appointed Chief Executive Brian Myers, it is positioning itself as a technology-first operation aimed at retail traders in developing regions. Myers has argued that the industry misjudges these clients, saying they are not looking for simpler…
LMAX Group is exploring a potential Nasdaq IPO that could value the London-based trading venue at up to $5 billion, according to CoinDesk, which cited three people familiar with the process. Morgan Stanley and KBW have been hired to weigh the options, which also include a sale, a SPAC merger (a listing route where a company merges with an already-public cash shell), and a European flotation.A Nasdaq listing is the preferred route, one source told CoinDesk. No price has been agreed, and LMAX declined to comment on speculation.Why the LMAX Group Nasdaq IPO Multiple Looks StretchedThe arithmetic is bracing. LMAX’s…
Investors holding BMX or funds on BitMart learned about the BitMart trading shutdown on 26 July 2026, when the exchange published an official wind-down notice stating it would cease all platform operations by 31 January 2027. The exchange is roughly nine years old. It has not filed for bankruptcy or insolvency, according to Bitcoin Foundation coverage of the closure. The company cited a review of operating conditions, market environment, and strategic direction. What the BitMart Trading Shutdown Means Step by Step The process is running in phases. At 01:30 UTC on 26 July 2026, BitMart paused new account registrations and…
The BitMEX perpetual swaps closure announced this week draws a line under one of crypto’s most consequential experiments, ending an 11-year run on 23 September 2026 while the instrument the exchange invented continues to grow far beyond it. BitMEX Perpetual Swaps Closure: What Happens to Your Account CoinDesk confirmed that HDR Global Trading Limited, the owner and operator of BitMEX, cited a strategic business review for the decision. The exchange, incorporated in the Seychelles, opened in 2014 and introduced the perpetual swap in 2016, creating the template for virtually every crypto derivatives product that followed. The winding-down timetable is precise.…
Vanuatu’s stablecoin commissioner has been named, but the appointment has drawn scrutiny because the man taking the role appears to have spent fewer than six months in his most recent compliance position before stepping into one of the Pacific’s most unusual new regulatory posts. Who Is Vanuatu’s Stablecoin Commissioner? Jackson Miake’s LinkedIn profile lists him as Commissioner of Stablecoins at Vanuatu’s Ministry of Finance and Economic Management, starting in July 2026 on a contract basis. His most recent private-sector role was Governance Risk and Compliance Specialist at Exness, the forex and CFD broker, where he worked from January to July…
CMC Markets B2B growth has become the engine of a business that barely resembles the contract-for-difference (CFD) broker it was a decade ago, with the London-listed company posting its strongest annual results since the Covid-era trading boom and raising its profit guidance well above where analysts had expected. For the year ended 31 March, CMC Markets generated £418.7 million in total revenue, up 16%, and net operating income of £392.6 million, up 15%. Statutory pre-tax profit rose 20% to £101.3 million, while underlying EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) came in at £117.8 million, against £103.4 million a…
Investors holding cryptocurrency through HTX learned on 24 July 2026 that the exchange now faces HTX EU Russia sanctions, after the European Union added it to the bloc’s 21st package of measures targeting Moscow’s financial networks. The package, adopted on 23 July 2026, is the largest single batch of EU designations in four years, covering 218 names in total: 48 individuals and 170 entities, according to the EU Council press release. A separate entity count of 168 appears in analysis by Covington and Burling; the EU Council’s own document gives 170, and that figure is used here.HTX is one of…
The Wise OCC charter denial, issued on 21 July 2026, sent shares in the cross-border payments firm down 9% on Friday morning, adding to a mounting pile of regulatory setbacks that now stretches across five countries and two continents. The decision, formally designated Corporate Decision #1381, rejected Wise’s application to charter an Austin, Texas-based entity called Wise National Trust as a national trust bank. That entity would have been a wholly owned subsidiary of Wise US Holdings, Inc., structured to conduct trust and fiduciary activities under federal oversight. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) said the application,…
A review of FCA alternative asset managers has found that nearly three in ten firms operate with no formal transaction monitoring system, according to findings the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) published this week. The regulator surveyed 242 firms and received responses from 87% of the sample, making it one of the most comprehensive snapshots of financial crime controls in this sector to date. The review sits within the FCA’s 2025–30 strategy, which aims to raise standards across financial crime compliance and share practical guidance with regulated firms. For retail investors holding funds managed by alternative asset managers, the findings raise…
Investors watching the European crypto landscape learned this week that the MiCA prediction markets review consultation, opened by the European Commission on 20 May 2026, now has a hard deadline of 30 September 2026, and whatever the industry submits before that date will shape EU law on event contracts for years to come. MiCA Prediction Markets Review: What Brussels Is Actually Asking The Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA, the EU’s main crypto licensing framework) was written before prediction markets existed at scale. The Commission’s digital finance unit has now opened a formal review, and for the first time it is…
Five regulatory decisions this week have pushed crypto trading regulation in 2026 firmly past the question of whether oversight should exist and into the mechanics of how it will work. From Moscow to Hanoi, and from Washington to a small New York broker-dealer, the shape of supervised crypto markets is becoming clearer. BitMEX Closes as US Perpetual Access Opens Up BitMEX will shut down on 23 September, ending an 11-year run for one of the exchanges that made crypto perpetuals (a type of derivative contract with no expiry date) mainstream. The platform said the closure followed a strategic review and…
The BitMEX exchange closure, confirmed for 23 September after an 11-year run, arrives at the precise moment crypto perpetual futures (derivatives contracts with no fixed expiry date, designed to track a spot price indefinitely) finally have defined regulatory routes in the United States. BitMEX said the decision followed a strategic review; neither the company nor the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has linked the shutdown to recent regulatory changes. Why BitMEX and Its Peers Built the Market Offshore Early crypto venues went offshore because no practical domestic route existed for perpetuals. The CFTC reinforced that barrier through staff advisories: one…
Investors and traders following the retail brokerage space learned this week that Nathan Halaba joins Exness Team Pro, the global network of experienced traders assembled by multi-asset broker Exness to promote disciplined, long-term market participation across its user base. Halaba brings more than seven years of trading experience and a well-established presence in Sub-Saharan Africa, where he has built his education platform, Forex Supremes. His focus is practical: helping traders replace the instinct to chase quick profits with structured habits built around risk management and consistency. Who Is Nathan Halaba and What Does He Teach? Halaba’s own trading journey mirrors…
ASIC sell-side research guidance is being rewritten from scratch, with Australia’s corporate regulator proposing to replace a 42-page prescriptive document with an eight-page, principles-based guide it says will bring more analyst coverage to IPOs and capital raisings. The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) published the draft consultation on Thursday. Sell-side research is the analysis that investment banks and stockbrokers distribute to clients ahead of a transaction, including the notes that circulate before a company floats. The current rulebook, known as RG 264, has been criticised as out of step with comparable regimes overseas. What the ASIC Sell-Side Research Draft…
Interactive Brokers margin loans climbed to $108.5 billion at the end of June 2026, up 67% from a year earlier, driving second-quarter net revenue 28% higher to $1.90 billion. The headline growth looks strong; the mechanism behind it is more nuanced. Customer accounts rose 34% to 5.19 million over the same period, and customer equity grew 40% to $930.3 billion. Margin loans (balances customers borrow against their portfolios to buy more securities) grew nearly twice as fast as equity, pushing the ratio of margin loans to customer equity to 11.7%, the highest point in FM Intelligence’s ten-quarter analysis. Interactive Brokers…
Investors holding accounts at MetroTrade can now access options on futures trading through the broker’s web and mobile platform, following a deployment built on technology from Devexperts announced on 22 July 2026. MetroTrade is the first broker to go live with the new module, which Devexperts says allows brokers to offer the product category without constructing the underlying infrastructure themselves. What Options on Futures Trading Gives Retail Traders Options on futures are contracts that give the holder the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell a futures contract at a set price before expiry. They sit a step…
Institutional trading firms can now reach Kalshi’s prediction markets and crypto perpetual futures through the Kalshi Talos trading integration announced on 22 July 2026, without building a separate connection to the exchange. For hedge funds and market-making desks already on Talos, that means order routing, risk management and execution workflows they use for digital assets can now reach Kalshi from the same interface. No dedicated technical project required. What the Kalshi Talos Trading Integration Actually Adds The mechanics go beyond simple order routing. According to the Talos announcement, the integration extends Talos’s algorithmic trading suite, covering Iceberg, Pegged, Sniper, TWAP…
Finance Magnates has expanded the FM Awards 2026 CEO category with two new titles recognising individual executives rather than the companies they lead: Brokerage (B2C) CEO of the Year and Fintech (B2B) CEO of the Year. The addition marks a shift in how the awards programme approaches leadership recognition. Until now, FM Awards categories have largely focused on company performance. These new titles place a named executive, and their personal track record over the past six to twelve months, at the centre of the assessment. What the FM Awards 2026 CEO Categories Cover The B2C title is aimed at CEOs…
The FundedNext Labs experiment asks paying traders to do something unusual: hand over $99.99 to trial a challenge whose rules the firm has not yet decided to keep. FundedNext, the UAE-based prop firm, launched Labs as a separate testing track where experimental account structures run on a small, paying pool of real participants before any decision is made to roll them out more widely. FundedNext Labs Experiment: What FNL01 Actually Changes The first release, FNL01, is a one-step simulated challenge on a $50,000 account. Its headline feature is the removal of the daily loss limit, replaced by a $2,000 end-of-day…
Retail CFD broker volumes dipped to $30.4 trillion in average monthly trading in the second quarter of 2026, down 9.3% from $33.5 trillion in the first quarter, but only 1.4% below the same period a year earlier, according to Finance Magnates Intelligence. The quarterly pullback looks less like a structural retreat and more like a normalisation after an unusually strong start to the year. For context, Q2 2025 was the first time the global retail FX and CFD industry had broken the $30 trillion monthly volume threshold. Holding close to that level a year on suggests the expansion of the…
Russia’s crypto licensing law cleared its final parliamentary hurdles on 21 July 2026, when the State Duma passed the country’s first comprehensive framework for digital asset markets, giving exchanges, custodians and other service providers until 1 July 2027 to obtain licences or shut down. For UK investors tracking global crypto regulation, this matters because Russia is one of the world’s largest crypto markets by volume, and the shape of its rules will influence how international platforms and asset managers approach the region. What Russia’s Crypto Licensing Law Means for Exchanges and Retail Buyers The legislation, formally titled ‘On Digital Currency…
Bitget TradFi perpetuals generated close to $70 billion in trading volume during the second quarter of 2026, placing the exchange behind only Binance in a product segment that expanded roughly fivefold between January and June, according to TokenInsight’s Q2 2026 crypto exchange report. For ISA and SIPP investors watching the evolution of crypto platforms, the numbers point to something worth understanding: major crypto exchanges are no longer competing purely on bitcoin and altcoin trading. They are moving into the territory of stocks, commodities, and ETF exposure, and the volumes are growing fast. TradFi Perpetuals: From Experiment to Mainstream A TradFi…
Finance Magnates Academy certifications are designed to fill the gap that sits between a university degree and the practical knowledge employers in financial services actually expect on day one, according to Jeff Patterson, Head of Education at the platform, speaking with Finance Magnates Head of Marketing Dora Christofi. The Academy launched earlier this year as a dedicated learning platform covering brokerage operations, electronic trading, compliance, payments, and fintech innovation. Patterson’s argument is straightforward: there is no single university course that fully prepares a graduate for the breadth of roles across a modern financial services firm. ‘People don’t want to just…
Mintos commission-free ETF trading launched this week, giving the Latvian fintech’s 500,000 European users access to more than 1,000 exchange-traded funds with no transaction fees, no custody charge, and a minimum investment of just €1. The move marks a meaningful expansion for a platform that started life as a peer-to-peer lending marketplace in 2015, later adding bonds, real estate and a cash management account before pivoting toward becoming a multi-asset investment platform. What Mintos Commission-Free ETF Trading Actually Costs The fee structure is simpler than most rivals. Mintos charges nothing to buy, sell or hold an ETF. The only cost…
Polymarket Kalshi World Cup odds landed within a fraction of a percentage point of each other before Sunday’s final, despite the two platforms running entirely separate order books, user bases and liquidity pools. Spain won the match 1-0 against Argentina in New Jersey on 19 July, but the story that will travel further in financial and betting circles is how independently-arrived-at prices converged so closely on the same outcome. Polymarket priced Spain at roughly 59% ahead of kickoff, with Argentina near 40%. Kalshi’s market, built on a different pool of traders and capital, landed at 59.6% for Spain and 40.4%…
Investors holding European securities learned on 20 July 2026 that the EU T+1 settlement deadline has moved from concept to calendar, with the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) publishing a formal statement setting the first hard compliance date at 7 December 2026. Settlement cycle shortening matters to retail investors because the cycle determines how quickly a trade legally completes. Under the current T+2 regime, a share you buy today is not legally yours, and cash is not technically paid, until two business days later. T+1 compresses that to one day, reducing the window in which either side of a…
ESMA cross-border retail investing expanded sharply between 2022 and 2024, with the number of retail clients using cross-border investment services across the EU and EEA climbing from 7.6 million to around 10.5 million, a rise of 39%, even as the number of firms providing those services fell from 380 to 370. The figures come from a follow-up report published by the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) on 20 July 2026, updating on both market data and supervisory progress since the regulator’s original 2022 peer review. ESMA cautions that the two-year comparison should be treated as a proxy. Its data…
MENA brokerage market entry trips up more European and UK firms than it should, not because the region is hard to reach, but because it is consistently misread as a single market. It is not. The region spans roughly 20 countries, each with its own language, payment culture, regulatory framework, and investor psychology. A campaign that works in the UAE will not automatically travel to Egypt, and a Saudi audience will not respond to the same creative that converts in Morocco. What MENA Brokerage Market Entry Actually Costs The first planning metric to fix is CPA (cost per funded trader,…
EC Markets trading volume reached $2.11 trillion per month on average in Q2 2026, placing the multi-asset broker at the top of FM Intelligence’s quarterly ranking and making it the first time two firms have cleared that mark in the same quarter. FX News Group confirmed the figures alongside FM Intelligence’s report. Sydney-based TMGM posted the second figure above the line, reporting an average monthly volume of $2.03 trillion over the quarter. Together, according to FM Intelligence, the two firms achieved something the tracked dataset had never seen before. How Fast the Top of the Table Has Shifted The pace…
London Stock Exchange filings confirm that Plus500 revenue in H1 2026 reached $462.9 million, its highest in three years and up 12% year on year, but a widening gap between top-line growth and profit left some holders of the stock with a question worth examining. Plus500 Revenue H1 2026: Reading the Margin Gap Customer Income, the metric Plus500 uses for revenue directly generated from clients, rose 24% year on year to $460.8 million, a five-year high, according to the Investegate company announcement. Yet EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation, a standard measure of operating profitability) grew just 1%…
Investors following Moneta Markets Capital revenue performance learned this week that the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)-authorised UK subsidiary more than doubled its turnover in the financial year ended 31 March 2026, swinging from a loss to profit in the process. Accounts filed with Companies House show turnover reached £780,000, up 118% from £358,425 in the prior year. Moneta Markets Capital Revenue Doubles in the Year to March 2026 The profit turnaround was equally sharp. The company posted a net profit of £77,386, reversing a £100,708 loss the year before. Operating profit came in at £71,533, against an operating loss of…
Investors watching Jump Trading’s prediction markets push learned this week that the high-frequency trading firm has doubled its dedicated team in the space this year, while simultaneously broadening the kind of people it is willing to hire to run it. Simon Johansen, Jump’s head of prediction markets, told Bloomberg the firm is recruiting outside its usual elite quantitative pipeline, targeting traders operating from university dormitories and former accountants with a background in sports betting. The reason is structural, not fashionable. Why Prediction Markets Demand a Different Skill Set Prediction markets are event contracts (financial instruments that pay out based on…