Bitcoin Soars, XRP Drama Latest, eToro $5 Billion IPO: Editor’s Pick

In a busy week for news, here are the standout stories from the worlds of forex, fintech and crypto in our best of the week segment.

Bitcoin Soars Past $34K as Record-Breaking Rally Continues

As Finance Magnates covered this week, Bitcoin surged past $34,000, ending the year with a 305% increase, and enjoying 50% growth in the last two weeks after finally passing the big psychological barrier of $20,000.

Read more on the Bitcoin surge here.

Bitcoin Crash Scenario, Sellers Target January 2021

Before the weekend’s surge in Bitcoin price, Finance Magnates looked at a crash scenario where sellers are potentially targeting a January sell-off.

Could there be a January sell-off? Read more on the Bitcoin crash scenario here.

XRP Drama Latest

It’s been another busy week for Ripple (XRP). Finance Magnates reported strong support for XRP in Japanese exchanges as the SEC’s lawsuit against Ripple will have no impact on the status of XRP in Japan because the cryptocurrency does not fall under the category of security in Japan.

Read more on the Japanese exchange support for Ripple here.

Finance Magnates also looked at whether the XRP economy can survive. Read the XRP survival analysis here.

Grayscale Crypto Fund Proactively Offloads Stellar XLM Alongside XRP

Data shared by the crypto futures trading platform, Bybt showed that Grayscale Investments fund has offloaded massive amounts of its XRP and XLM holdings.

Specifically, the New York-based crypto-fund manager sold 9.18 million units in Ripple’s associated token (worth roughly $2 million) and liquidated $1.2 million worth of Stellar’s token by dumping 9.74 million XLM.

Read more on the Grayscale XLM and XRP Offload here.

Major Darknet Marketplace Stops Accepting Bitcoin

Whilst Bitcoin was witnessing an astronomical increase in demand from both retail and institutional investors, White House Market, a major marketplace on the darknet, stopped taking payments in Bitcoin.

The move was forced by the blocking of Tor nodes by the darknet market’s third-party payment processor partner Morphtoken. The platform is now accepting only Monero, a popular privacy coin.

Read more on the Major Darknet Marketplace Bitcoin move here.

eToro Plans for a $5 Billion US IPO: Report

As Finance Magnates covered this week, Israel-based brokerage, eToro is planning for an initial public offering (IPO) next year with a valuation of $5 billion.

The broker is eyeing a listing in New York and is already in talks with Goldman Sachs for making the arrangements for the public listing, the report outlined.

Though officially not confirmed, the Israeli company is planning to end the listing by the end of the second quarter of 2021. Additionally, eToro is considering a possible merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) to expedite the listing process.

However, eToro calls the claim the possibility of a public listed ‘rumours’.

Read more on the eToro $5 Billion IPO here.

IG Group’s UK Entity Stops Servicing EEA Clients after Brexit Transition

The IG Group said this week that its UK entity will no longer be able to service EEA clients. Europe’s largest spread betting and CFDs provider will set non-UK clients’ accounts to ‘closings only’ from 31 December 2020. Affected clients will have one month to close their trades manually, otherwise, IG Groupe will liquidate their positions on 31 January 2021.

Announced with only two days to go until the end of the Brexit transition period, UK brokers are losing so-called ‘passporting’ rights which allow them to provide services and products across the continent. Instead, they will need country-specific approvals in order to provide their services, which has prompted some brokers to terminate offering to non-UK clients.

Read more on the IG Group’s BREXIT transition moves here.

Crypto Derivatives Ban: FXOpen Stops Offering Crypto CFDs in the UK

UK-regulated brokerage, FXOpen announced on Wednesday that it will stop offering cryptocurrency CFDs from January 5 to comply with the Financial Conduct Authority’s ban on the retail sale of crypto derivatives.

“Following the decision by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to prohibit retail clients from trading cryptocurrency CFDs, we regret to inform you as of 5th January 2021, you will be unable to open any new cryptocurrency CFD orders or positions,” the broker stated.

“All positions in cryptocurrency CFDs will need to be closed before 5th January. Any remaining open positions that are not closed by 12:00 pm GMT on 5th January will be force-closed at the market price on this date.”

Read more on FXOpen’s end to Crypto CFDs in the UK here.

South African Bitcoin Trader MTI Enters Liquidation, CEO on Run

A Cape Town court has granted a provisional liquidation order against Mirror Trading International (MTI), a South African Bitcoin trader company, as thousands of its clients were unable to withdraw their funds.

The orders came as two MTI clients approached the court with an urgent application against the shady business. MTI is believed to be holding around R9.45 billion ($644 million) received from almost 28,000 investors spanning across the globe.

Read more on the MTI demise here.