Will Hardy has been named the new Eightcap UK Executive Director, with his appointment to lead Eightcap Group Ltd confirmed on the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) register. Hardy brings more than 35 years of financial markets experience to the role, anchored by more than a decade as Head of Retail Sales at IG Group.For UK retail traders, seeing a senior individual named to the Eightcap UK Executive Director position on the FCA register confirms that Eightcap Group Ltd has gone through the regulator’s assessment process for controlled functions under the Senior Managers and Certification Regime (SMCR). It is a standard…
Author: Publishing Wizard
FP Markets secured the Most Trusted Broker award at the UF AWARDS GLOBAL 2026, an event that TradingView describes as ‘the industry’s most credible awards,’ held on 17 June 2026 at the City of Dreams Mediterranean resort in Limassol, Cyprus. The ceremony ran alongside iFX EXPO International 2026, drawing brokers, technology firms and fintech professionals from across the industry. FP Markets takes the award having already accumulated more than 80 industry distinctions over its trading history. What the FP Markets Most Trusted Broker Win Actually Means For retail traders evaluating where to keep their money and execute orders, regulatory oversight…
Investors watching the Citadel Securities Crypto.com investment announced on 16 July 2026 are seeing something new: one of the world’s largest market makers taking a direct equity stake in a retail-facing crypto exchange for the first time, at a $20 billion valuation. According to the Crypto.com press release, the $400 million deal is the Singapore-based exchange’s first institutional funding round in its ten-year history. For retail investors with exposure to crypto markets, either directly or through funds, the deal matters because it signals a shift in how traditional financial infrastructure firms view digital asset exchanges: not as speculative sideshows but…
E*TRADE spot crypto trading went live for nearly nine million retail clients on 16 July 2026, when Morgan Stanley completed a full rollout of Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana dealing inside its existing brokerage platform, according to the bank’s official press release. The launch follows an initial pilot that began in May 2026 and marks Morgan Stanley’s most direct move yet into territory long dominated by crypto-native exchanges. What E*TRADE Spot Crypto Trading Actually Looks Like Clients access the service through the E*TRADE website or mobile app, with dealing available around the clock, seven days a week. Both market orders (buy…
A Taurex UK leadership change has seen Zahid Mahmood depart his role as Chief Risk Officer, according to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) Register, where Taurex Limited is listed as an authorised firm. Mahmood served in the position for nearly four years, having joined when the company still operated under its former name, Zenfinex.The departure follows closely on Matthew Wright’s return as Global CEO. Wright had stepped down four years earlier, spent the subsequent year as a Non-Executive Director, and then resumed the chief executive position with immediate effect after the Board approached him directly.What the Taurex UK Leadership Change…
The Xryma Euronext Paris listing cleared a key regulatory hurdle on 14 July 2026, when the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) approved the company’s prospectus for admission to the exchange’s regulated market. Trading under the ticker XRY is expected to begin at market open on 24 July 2026, pending final sign-off from Euronext Paris itself. A Direct Listing: No New Shares, No New Money The Xryma Euronext Paris listing takes the form of a direct listing (a route to market that admits existing shares to trading without issuing new ones or raising fresh capital). Xryma is not selling new…
The PRNewswire announcement came out of Miami on 14 July 2026: the Bizcap US launch is now live, putting a non-bank revolving credit product in front of American small businesses that have struggled to get fast decisions from traditional lenders. Bizcap was founded in 2019 and has since provided $5 billion in funding to more than 100,000 businesses across Australia, the UK, New Zealand, Singapore, Europe and Canada. The United States is its latest market. What the Bizcap US Launch Offers American Businesses The headline product is the Line of Capital (LOC) range, a revolving facility (meaning businesses can draw…
The Virtu Financial BitGo Prime partnership, announced at 8:00am EDT on 15 July 2026, brings one of Wall Street’s largest electronic market makers into BitGo’s institutional digital asset network, and does something that traditional crypto exchanges have rarely managed: it separates custody from execution entirely.Virtu Financial (Nasdaq: VIRT) and BitGo (NYSE: BTGO) confirmed the arrangement in a joint press release. Under it, BitGo handles qualified custody and settlement; Virtu provides liquidity and pricing.What the Virtu Financial BitGo Prime Deal Changes for Institutional ClientsOn most centralised crypto exchanges, custody and execution are bundled together. An institution that wants to trade must…
The Binance multi-asset super app strategy took concrete shape this week as the exchange launched US equities trading for eligible users outside the United States and disclosed the full structure of its upcoming tokenised stock product, bStocks. Co-founder and co-CEO Yi He framed the ambition plainly. ‘We have set out to reach the next 3 billion users,’ she said. ‘To do that, we need to make it simpler for users to access opportunities across asset classes, diversify their portfolios, and move more easily between traditional investing and on-chain finance. That is what a multi-asset financial super app should help people…
The Alpha Futures NinjaTrader split has put a structural risk into plain view that most retail prop firms would prefer to leave unexamined: the platform you execute on is not a vendor. It is the foundation your entire client relationship sits on, and the moment it goes, so does the product built on top of it. Alpha Futures is a UK-based retail futures prop firm. It had been running its Premium Plan on NinjaTrader’s API backend. When Alpha launched its own proprietary platform to reduce reliance on a third party, NinjaTrader terminated the arrangement, citing concern that its backend would…
CMC Markets 24/5 trading now covers more than 5,000 US shares and exchange-traded funds (ETFs), up from around 250 instruments, the FTSE 250 broker announced on 15 July 2026. The expansion also adds extended-hours dealing for users of CMC Invest, its stockbroking platform, stretching the available US trading day from 6.5 hours to as much as 16 hours. There is a condition attached. The longer window applies only where overnight pricing is available, and CMC has not disclosed how many of the 5,000-plus instruments clear that bar. Investors using CMC Invest should check individual stocks and ETFs before assuming round-the-clock…
Investors tracking crypto regulation learned on 13 July 2026 that 78 US banking groups have written to Senate leaders urging tighter rules on CLARITY Act stablecoin rewards, arguing that the bill’s current wording allows payment stablecoins to behave too much like bank deposit accounts. The letter, addressed to Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Minority Leader Charles Schumer and also shared with the Senate Banking Committee, was led by the American Bankers Association. The coalition focused its proposals on Section 404 of the bill, which sets the rules for how stablecoin issuers may reward users. The Yield Loophole Banks Want…
Investors using Interactive Brokers (IBKR) gained access to Interactive Brokers stablecoin funding on 15 January 2026, when the broker announced 24/7 account funding via stablecoin, and the build-out has continued since: IBKR has now added external wallet transfers and nine new digital assets in a single platform update. The practical change for clients is straightforward. Dollar withdrawals can now be routed automatically through conversion into USDC, PYUSD or RLUSD, meaning capital can move outside normal banking hours, including at weekends, when traditional wire transfers are unavailable. What Interactive Brokers Stablecoin Funding Actually Changes for Account Holders For most retail investors,…
The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) has issued Circular 26EC35, and the Hong Kong SFC OTP ban it contains is now on a firm legal footing: from 9 July 2026, licensed internet brokers and virtual asset platforms must replace one-time password (OTP) logins with phishing-resistant alternatives, with a hard compliance deadline of 8 July 2027. For UK investors who trade or hold assets on platforms with Hong Kong operations, or who simply want to understand where global authentication rules are heading, the detail matters. What the Hong Kong SFC OTP Ban Actually Covers An OTP is the six-digit…
SpaceX futures trading volume on MEXC exceeded $7.1 billion in USDT in the weeks following SpaceX’s listing on 12 June, according to the exchange’s own second-quarter report. The figure has not been independently audited. The headline number is eye-catching, but the fuller picture from MEXC’s Q2 report raises questions the report itself does not answer. SpaceX as the Test Case for a Full Equity Stack MEXC positioned itself to sell a SpaceX-linked product at every stage of the company’s journey from private to publicly traded. While SpaceX was still private, the exchange ran two SPACEX(PRE) subscription rounds, collecting over 173…
The Muinmos HACA Partners deal marks a quiet but telling expansion for the Danish regtech firm: rather than signing another broker or crypto exchange, Muinmos has won a Luxembourg-based audit and consulting firm as a client. HACA Partners, which operates from offices in Luxembourg, Paris, Casablanca and Dakar and says it serves more than 500 internationally active clients, will use Muinmos’ automated screening platform to handle know-your-customer (KYC) and anti-money-laundering (AML) checks. Neither party disclosed contract terms or a start date.What the Muinmos HACA Partners Deal Actually CoversHACA is not onboarding retail traders. It is verifying corporate clients on its…
Investors with any exposure to European crypto markets got a first look at the MiCA licence post-deadline landscape this week, and the picture is less an orderly migration than a scramble driven by confusion. Two early data points have emerged since the transitional window closed on 1 July 2026, one from OKX and one from Paybis, and they point in different directions. What OKX’s Download Numbers Actually Show OKX reported a 158% increase in EU app downloads in the 12 days following 24 June 2026, the date Binance withdrew its MiCA licence application in Greece and confirmed it would stop…
Investors watching Japan’s digital asset sector learned on 14 July 2026 that the SBI Solana Global venture is now a legal entity in the making, after SBI Holdings and the Solana Foundation announced their partnership at the WebX Tokyo conference on 13 July 2026. The structure is straightforward: the Solana Foundation will take an equity stake (a direct ownership share) in SBI R3 Japan, a company that already counts SBI Holdings and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group among its shareholders. Sumitomo Mitsui is classified as a G-SIB, meaning a globally systemically important bank, the tier of institution regulators treat as too…
The FlexTrade Portx integration, announced on 13 July 2026, brings portfolio construction, optimisation and real-time risk analytics into FlexONE, the buy-side order and execution management system (OEMS: the platform through which fund managers place, route and monitor trades) used by hedge funds and institutional asset managers. The deal adds Portx’s analytics directly into the FlexONE workflow, meaning portfolio managers can assess risk and review exposures without switching between systems. The two companies say the integration is designed to help users evaluate the potential impact of trades and make portfolio adjustments before and during execution. What the FlexTrade Portx Integration Actually…
Choosing the best brokers in Mexico for CFD and forex trading means weighing more than just a tight spread. Regulation transparency, Spanish-language support, and the leverage environment specific to Mexican residents all shape the decision. This comparison examines IUX, XTB, and eToro across the criteria that matter most before funding an account. How We Chose the Best Brokers in Mexico Eight criteria formed the evaluation framework: regulatory entity visibility, maximum leverage, platform availability, tradable asset range, account tier structure, minimum deposit clarity, fee transparency, and Spanish-language readiness. For Mexico-based traders, that final criterion carries particular weight because it determines how…
Investors following Webull’s European expansion learned this week that the Webull EU MiCA authorisation has been granted by the Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM), making the broker one of the first firms to clear the post-grandfathering hurdle under the Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation, the EU’s harmonised rulebook for digital-asset firms. The approval, reported by FFnews, covers crypto trading and custody services, with Webull planning to launch those operations in late 2026. FFnews also notes that Webull is using Coinbase for trade execution as part of its regulated crypto-asset offering across the EU. Andries van Luijk, chief executive…
Broker expansion, regulatory moves and a wave of AI upgrades defined the past seven days, as firms across the CFD, crypto and equities sectors either seized new licences or found old ones cancelled. For UK retail investors and ISA holders with exposure to any of these businesses, the developments carry practical implications from dividend risk to platform access. Broker Expansion and Regulatory Moves: The Week in Full IG Group asked shareholders to approve a new Jersey-incorporated holding company, framing the move as part of the strategic review launched in March. The group reported an 18% rise in first-half revenue to…
Investors following the digital assets sector learned on 10 July 2026 that Circle’s Circle OCC trust bank approval is now final, with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC, the primary regulator for US national banks) giving the green light for the USDC stablecoin issuer to operate a federally chartered trust bank for the first time. The new institution carries the formal legal name First National Digital Currency Bank, N.A., and will trade under the brand Circle National Trust. For holders of USDC or anyone with exposure to Circle through exchange-listed products, the practical meaning is that the…
Four licensed exchanges launched overlapping MiCA crypto deposit bonuses campaigns within ten days in late June 2026, using incentive tools that EU financial regulators stripped from the CFD market more than seven years ago. The timing was deliberate. On 1 July, national grandfathering arrangements for platforms without a Crypto-Asset Service Provider (CASP) licence expired, cutting Binance and other unlicensed operators off from onboarding new users across the European Economic Area (EEA). The licensed platforms moved quickly to compete for those displaced customers. Four Campaigns, One Deadline Kraken moved first. From 19 June to 31 July, every euro deposited by enrolled…
Investors and firms holding or distributing stablecoins face a clearer picture of the first federal stablecoin regime after seven US agencies spent the past seven months publishing their GENIUS Act stablecoin rules in draft form, even as the 18 July deadline for finalising them approaches with the rulebook still incomplete. The seven agencies required to complete rulemaking by 18 July are the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the FDIC, the Federal Reserve, the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA), the Treasury, FinCEN and OFAC. Between December 2025 and June 2026, they released proposals covering capital, reserves, liquidity, redemption,…
The gold death cross signal forming on the XAU/USD daily chart sits at the centre of a collision between two forecasts that operate on completely different timescales. Gold was trading near $4,110 per ounce on 10 July 2026, down about 0.3% on the session, and the chart is closing in on its first death cross (where the 50-day moving average falls below the 200-day) since 2023. Robert Kiyosaki, author of Rich Dad Poor Dad, is not looking at the daily chart. He is still calling for gold at $35,000 an ounce within roughly five years. Both views can coexist. They…
Paul Grewal, who has served as Coinbase’s Chief Legal Officer for six years, will leave the role on 31 July 2026, with the company expecting to name Molly Abraham, currently Vice President of Legal, as his successor. Grewal notified Coinbase of his resignation on 8 July 2026, according to an 8-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). He will stay on as an adviser through October, under a three-month salary arrangement, having written on LinkedIn: ‘I will be a Coinbase ally.’ The departure is unplanned from the outside: Grewal gave no indication of where he is heading next,…
The IG Group South Africa exit is now complete, with the London-listed broker having closed its Sandton office and surrendered its local regulatory licences, while former chief executive Aphindile AB Bokleni has moved on to Investec’s Prime Services division. IG Group confirmed the operational closure on 24 February 2026, laying off local staff in the process. The broker had previously had around 90 employees in the country, though the exact number made redundant in the final closure could not be confirmed. A Decade in South Africa, Then a Phased Withdrawal IG Markets South Africa Limited was established in 2010 and…
PrimeXBT has launched gold 24/7 trading on its PXTrader 2.0 platform, allowing traders to hold and adjust gold positions across weekends for the first time on the broker’s system. For UK retail investors watching gold’s extraordinary run, the launch raises a practical question worth unpacking: what does round-the-clock gold access actually mean, and for whom does it apply? Gold’s Run in Context Gold’s recent performance gives the launch its backdrop. According to the LBMA Precious Metals Market Report for Q4 and the full year 2025, gold broke through $4,000 per ounce on 8 October 2025 and hit a temporary all-time…
For B2C brands still routing most of their marketing budget through paid press placements, a single organic short-form video now poses a direct challenge to that allocation. One Instagram Reel reaching one million views can match or exceed the audience of a national press campaign, at a fraction of the spend. Paid Instagram Reels carry average CPMs (cost per thousand impressions) of $4.29 to $12, meaning one million views costs between $4,300 and $12,000 before any creative production. eMarketer forecast Instagram’s average CPM at $9.46 in Q2 2025, placing it above Facebook’s CPM and cementing Instagram as Meta’s primary platform.…
The easyMarkets anniversary campaign, launched to mark the broker’s 25th year in operation, is offering up to $2.5 million in total rewards to eligible clients worldwide, but the small print matters, particularly for traders based in Europe. The campaign, titled ‘$2.5 Million Reasons to Trade’ and running until 31 December 2026, is easyMarkets’ largest client rewards initiative to date. The broker, founded in 2001 as one of the early entrants to online forex trading, has structured the promotion around four distinct reward tiers based on qualifying deposit size. What the easyMarkets Anniversary Campaign Actually Offers Eligible clients can choose one…
The Trump Accounts custody race opened on 4 July, when the federal programme began depositing $1,000 into custodial individual retirement accounts for eligible newborns, and brokers that missed out on building the platform immediately began positioning for the transfer business that follows. Robinhood Builds the Rails, BNY Holds the Assets The US Treasury tapped Robinhood as the programme’s technology provider and initial trustee, while designating Bank of New York Mellon (BNY) as financial agent under its statutory authority to appoint qualified financial institutions to perform services for the federal government in a fiduciary capacity. BNY manages the national infrastructure for…
Bitpanda margin trading on stocks, ETFs and ETCs went live on 8 July 2026, giving retail investors across Europe the ability to trade with up to 20 times their initial capital on more than 875 instruments. The Austrian platform, which began as a cryptocurrency exchange, had previously offered leveraged trading on more than 100 cryptocurrencies. Extending that product to equities, exchange-traded funds and exchange-traded commodities marks a shift in how Bitpanda positions itself: less as a crypto app, more as a broad multi-asset trading platform. According to CryptoNews, Bitpanda describes the product as the first margin trading service for stocks…
Investors and fintech professionals following iFX EXPO International 2026 now have access to a series of recorded interviews that go well beyond the conference floor, covering stablecoins, real-world asset tokenisation, prop trading regulation, and the rising cost of operating out of Cyprus. Finance Magnates recorded the sessions live in Limassol, Cyprus, as part of a media partnership with the expo. Six executives sat down with the Finance Magnates News Team, each covering a theme with direct implications for brokers, platform builders, and retail investors watching the fintech space. OpenPayd’s Nasdaq Plans and the Stablecoin Question The session most likely to…
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has formally revived its SEC Retail Fraud Working Group, embedding the unit inside its Division of Enforcement with a brief to pursue pump-and-dump schemes, offering fraud, market manipulation, and breaches of duty by brokers and investment advisers. The announcement came on Tuesday. It puts a formal structure around something Enforcement Director David Woodcock had already signalled publicly, and it lands at an awkward moment for an agency whose overall enforcement caseload is shrinking. What the SEC Retail Fraud Working Group Will Actually Do The group will generate cases targeting fraud aimed at ordinary investors:…
Plus500 has appointed Muhammad Alamer as its Plus500 UAE brand ambassador, selecting a former private banker with close to 20 years of experience across Emirates NBD, Mashreq, Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank and Commercial Bank of Dubai. Alamer holds registration number 4 under the UAE’s licensed financial influencer regime, making him one of the earliest to sign up under rules now overseen by the Capital Market Authority (CMA), the regulator previously known as the Securities and Commodities Authority (SCA). From Banking Floors to Social Media According to Plus500’s announcement, Alamer’s career gave him direct sight of a shift in how UAE…
Investors using eToro (ETOR) learned this week that the platform’s new eToro AI investing features form part of a wider repositioning: the broker now describes itself as an AI-first company, having rebuilt its mobile app around an AI assistant, launched a desktop trading platform, and completed an agreement to acquire a crypto wallet provider. Separately, IC Markets confirmed a specific four-hour window for its own planned domain switch. eToro AI Investing Features: What the App Overhaul Includes The centrepiece of the launch is Tori, eToro’s AI assistant. Tori delivers portfolio updates, market signals, and explanations of price movements, and will…
The Coinbase UK investment services authorisation, granted by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), marks the exchange’s most ambitious move in the country yet, allowing it to offer equities, derivatives and crypto under a single roof for the first time. The approval was granted to Coinbase’s UK entity, which already holds an e-money licence and a crypto registration. That existing entity is registered with the FCA as CB Payments Ltd. The new authorisation sits on top of those existing permissions and adds investment services to what Coinbase can do here. UK CEO Keith Grose announced the authorisation, and Coinbase described it…
The AI trading governance framework question dominating brokerage boardrooms right now is not whether to launch AI-enabled products. It is whether the firm’s existing oversight structure can actually supervise them once they go live. Three platforms have moved quickly. Robinhood launched its Agentic Accounts in late May 2026, ring-fencing the feature so that an AI agent can only access funds a user specifically deposits into a dedicated agentic account, separate from the main portfolio. eToro unveiled a new AI-first mobile app on 7 July 2026, built around its proactive AI agent Tori. ThinkMarkets launched ChelseaAI, which became available to ThinkTrader…
Alpaca’s MiFID II passport now covers 29 European Economic Area countries, giving the US brokerage infrastructure firm a single regulatory gateway into markets from Germany and France to Iceland and Liechtenstein. The authorisation runs through a Spanish entity supervised by Spain’s securities regulator, the Comisión Nacional del Mercado de Valores (CNMV), which oversees compliance with the EU’s MiFID II directive, the 2014 rulebook that governs how investment services are authorised and operated across the bloc. MiFID II passporting lets a firm licensed in one EU member state extend those permissions across the bloc without filing separately in each country. For…