Published
- 09:00 am
Babel Finance announced that it had completed a two-year Market-to-Market Cross Cryptocurrency Swap worth $50 million in Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Why is this transaction important to the global crypto market?
This two-year transaction demonstrates that crypto can be a long term play and that the crypto ecosystem is becoming mature. There is a rising market demand for long-end liquidity, indicating a healthy market structure and growing participant trust.
Transactions lasting 2-years are rare in the cryptocurrency institution market. "Until 2022, we have barely seen liquidity transactions of over 3 months in the crypto market. This might be the first", said Babel Finance's Head of Treasury, Song Yang.
Currently, there is a scarcity of detailed data on the bitcoin lending/borrowing sector. However, according to preliminary estimates, the crypto lending/borrowing market size, which includes CeFi and Defi, is approaching US$8.2 billion (reference: Top Lending/Borrowing Coins by Market Capitalization - CoinGecko). Active parties such as Genesis Capital, Celsius, B2C2, Nexo, Babel Finance, and others rarely provide long-term liquidity.
'This ETH lending shows an increasing long term market demand for ETH, from the developments of DeFi, NFTs and new projects', said Song Yang.
As evidenced by Babel Finance's crypto 2-year swap, further long-term crypto investments and trading are achievable. Long-term crypto investors can earn interest on their Bitcoin by engaging in extra DeFi activities like lending and staking. This is something that Babel Finance's crypto trading arm will be looking into. In the future, the Babel Finance Hong Kong team may, with agreement by their clients, to have their cryptocurrency held in the ecosystem and used to validate transactions in exchange for interest. Furthermore, there's always the possibility that the value of their crypto assets may grow and result in a long-term profit.
Babel Finance, one of the world's leading crypto traders with over 500 institutional clients globally, has shown that crypto finance, Defi, and crypto-based assets will become mainstream in financial markets with institutional and private investors through this deal.
Deal Facts:
- Transaction: Market to Market Cross Cryptocurrency Swap (MtM CCS)
- Currency: BTC and ETH
- Amount: US$ 50M
- 01:00 am
Wealth managers can offer clients fractional access to a full suite of private market assets, helping them gain a competitive advantage over platforms with only public market products
Wealth managers can now introduce more of their end-investors to the world of private investments through a newly-launched institutional service on digital securities exchange ADDX. Corporate treasuries and family offices can also take part in the space via a corporate service to diversify their portfolios through private market products.
Both services fall under a new product line for businesses, called ADDX Advantage. Among some of the first institutions to come on board as partners include StashAway, Southeast Asia’s fastest growing digital wealth manager, and CGS-CIMB, a leading securities brokerage in Asia.
Wealth managers utilising this institutional service can offer their clients fractional access to private market products, which better enhances portfolio diversification away from public markets exposure. This service is designed for brokerages, private banks, external asset managers and multi-family offices. Through a B2B2C model, the service ultimately benefits the wealth manager’s end-clients, who may be individual accredited investors or corporate investors.
Currently, wealth managers looking to offer private market products to their end-clients have to negotiate deals with each issuer separately – a time-consuming process. Being on ADDX means an instant plug-in to a full suite of deals across multiple asset types. The use of blockchain and smart contracts on ADDX also enables the fractionalisation of opportunities down to a minimum of US$10,000, from the US$250,000 to US$5 million typically required when going direct to private market issuers. The lower barrier to entry makes it possible for end-clients to manage risk by spreading their capital across a variety of products.
Depending on the regulatory licenses the wealth managers hold, they can choose between two types of institutional services. They can either execute trades and perform fund transfers on behalf of end-investors, or create sub-accounts in their end-clients’ names and allow the clients to take control of their own activity on ADDX.
CGS-CIMB Group CEO Carol Fong said: “We believe that investments should be made more affordable to a wider group of investors. This means collaborating with platforms such as ADDX that allows more investors to access previously out-of-reach private investments with fractional ownership. This is a start to ‘democratise’ the private equity market to make it more inclusive.”
ADDX’s corporate service operates under a B2B model and is designed for institutional investors, as well as businesses investing their own capital, such as corporate treasuries and family offices. For example, corporate treasuries with excess cash on hand may now benefit from short-term investment instruments that pay a higher return than bank fixed deposits. A three-month commercial paper with a yield of 2.3% p.a. by the SGX-listed ValueMax is currently listed on ADDX. Family offices, on the other hand, often have longer horizons and more sophisticated investment strategies. They may prefer a wider range of products, including opportunities with higher risk-reward profiles. For them, the lower minimum investment sizes on ADDX can help them build optimal portfolios, narrowing the handicap they traditionally face due to their smaller pool of investable capital vis-à-vis large institutional players like sovereign wealth funds and pension funds.
ADDX CEO Oi-Yee Choo said: “ADDX was founded with a vision of democratizing private markets for individual investors. Our B2C experience has shown us how investors now have the platform to accumulate a diversified private markets portfolio powered by our technology. We would like to expand our approach to tailoring private markets for more efficient access to our partners in the wealth management space.”
Ms Choo added: “Corporate investors and family offices too face serious pain points in the market. We had the solutions to these problems, having built an efficient platform for individual investors with a steady stream of deals. The last mile was building the technology to serve institutional and corporate investors, which required time and investments, as their needs are more complex – ranging from API connections to multi-user access.”
“For ADDX, this latest move represents an important strategic pivot that strengthens the competitiveness of our exchange by expanding and diversifying our investor base. This will better equip us to attract high-quality issuers to list on ADDX, knowing there will be sufficient investor demand. As an exchange, our goal is to ensure a critical mass of both issuers and investors at the table, so that capital can find worthwhile investment projects, and vice versa. In launching private market services for wealth managers and corporate investors, we have made a long stride towards this goal,” she said.
Established in 2017, ADDX uses blockchain and smart contract technology to automate manual processes that have thus far made it inefficient for private market securities to be distributed to a large number of investors. The efficiencies from tokenising these securities enables ADDX to reduce minimum investment sizes to US$10,000. Asset classes available on the ADDX platform include private equity, venture capital, private debt, real estate, hedge funds, cryptocurrency funds, and structured products. ADDX has listed 26 deals to date, working with blue-chip names such as Partners Group, UOB, Investcorp, CGS-CIMB, as well as Temasek-owned entities Mapletree, Azalea and SeaTown.
Table 1: Comparison of Institutional and Corporate Service
ADDX Advantage | ||
Service Type | Institutional | Corporate |
Target Users | Wealth Managers (e.g. Brokerages, Private Banks, External Asset Managers and Multi-Family Offices) | Corporate Investors (e.g. Institutional Investors, Corporate Treasuries and Single-Family Offices) |
Nature of service | B2B2C | B2B |
How it works | Wealth Manager can invest and trade on behalf of end-client or allow end-client to take control of their own trades | Corporate Investors are investing their own capital |
- 03:00 am
It was recently announced that MailChimp was hacked last month, with the criminals absconding information from more than 100 users, using that data to phish owners of Trezor cryptocurrency wallets. Staff of the popular email marketing company were apprised of the breach on March 26, and learned that the hacker used internal tools for account administration.
“Hackers are getting more creative,” said Richard Gardner, CEO of Modulus, a US-based developer of ultra-high-performance trading and surveillance technology that powers global equities, derivatives, and digital asset exchanges. “Especially with the looming Russo-Ukrainian war, which has included heightened cyberwarfare techniques, exchanges and other institutions are taking security more seriously. Now, hackers are looking for new ways to obtain ill-gotten gains.”
Siobhan Smyth, Mailchimp CISO, offered the following statement to Gizmodo:
The incident was propagated by an external actor who conducted a successful social engineering attack on Mailchimp employees, resulting in employee credentials being compromised,” said Smyth. The hacker or hackers then used its access to the company to get its hands on subscriber data. “Based on our investigation, we believe that about 300 Mailchimp accounts were viewed and audience data was exported from 102 of those accounts.
“It looks like the hacker zeroed in on those who were in the cryptocurrency and financial sectors, including a Trezor newsletter mailing list. This was a sophisticated attack, which even included a lookalike Trezor app, prompting users for their seed. This was much more complex than many of your more run-of-the-mill phishing campaigns,” Gardner said.
Modulus is known throughout the financial technology segment as a leader in the development of ultra-high frequency trading systems and blockchain technologies. Modulus has provided its exchange solution to some of the industry’s most profitable digital asset exchanges, including a well-known multi-billion-dollar cryptocurrency exchange. Over the past twenty years, the company has built technology for the world’s most notable institutions, with a client list which includes NASA, NASDAQ, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Barclays, Siemens, Shell, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Cornell University, and the University of Chicago.
According to Gizmodo, the phishing note read, in part:
Trezor has experienced a security incident involving data belonging to 106.856 of our customers, […] If you’re receiving this e-mail, it’s because you’ve been affected by the breach. In order to protect your assets, please download the latest version of Trezor Suite and follow the instructions to set up a new PIN for your wallet.
“The most effective way to overcome these attacks is: due diligence, due diligence, due diligence. As hackers get more and more sophisticated, their attacks will look more and more like official communication. Whenever you get an email that appears to be fraudulent or otherwise out of the ordinary, verify it with support from the institution of record. Don’t click on any links. Independently find the method of contact for support, and message them directly,” offered Gardner.
- 07:00 am
INFORM and the Oldenburgische Landesbank AG (OLB) have embarked on a new project to implement RiskShield, a multichannel risk assessment, fraud detection and AML compliance monitoring solution, across several different channels within the financial institution’s operations. |
OLB is a modern, customer-oriented financial institution, with deep roots in northwestern Germany that serves its customers throughout Germany using two brands, OLB Bank and Bankhaus Neelmeyer. An ever-evolving regulatory environment, increased money mule activity across the globe as well as the rapidly changing operating environment all pose growing challenges for financial institutions. OLB decided to face these challenges head on and selected INFORM as an implementation partner. “One of our main focuses while searching for a new risk and fraud management solution was to consolidate our efforts across multiple channels into one tool and take a more holistic approach”, states Elke Genz, Head of Compliance at OLB. “RiskShield is a holistic package solution which can be used in different application areas. This coupled with the software’s real-time capabilities and the possibility to optimize the system on our own were key factors that helped INFORM stand out as a solution provider”, adds Elke Genz. RiskShield, a reliable, fast and responsive anti-fraud solution and financial crime management software, will be rolled out in stages at OLB beginning with the AML and watchlist screening solutions, which will replace existing systems. It offers a flexible and highly configurable risk assessment and fraud prevention solution which monitors a variety of products and channels in banking, payments and cards processing services. To equip financial institutions with improved controls in the fight against financial crime it combines software technologies such as machine-learning, fuzzy logic, dynamic profiling and social network detection to closely monitor the behavior of customer accounts and transactions. OLB pursues a multi-channel approach in the business with retail and business customers, combining regional branch networks with a national digital presence. In the corporate customer sector, the bank operates a regional business for small and medium-sized enterprises, and a higher volume corporate business in which OLB operates throughout Germany and on a selective basis in Austria and Switzerland. In addition, OLB has expertise in specialized areas of lending, such as football financing, acquisition financing and commercial real estate financing. The bank has a capital base of more than one billion euros in core capital. “We are very happy OLB placed its trust in both our team and the RiskShield product suite”, states Roy Prayikulam, Senior Vice President Risk & Fraud at INFORM. “On the one hand, it is great to see our footprint in our home market grow, and on the other hand, we see a need to further expand our AML efforts here in Germany to help curb the increased money laundering and terrorist financing activity that has been on the rise here in recent years. We are certainly looking forward to a successful project and implementation at OLB”, concludes Prayikulam. |
- 06:00 am
New home equity loan and home equity line of credit (HELOC) products go live on Mambu’s composable technology foundation \
Scroll Finance, a next-generation fintech providing smart financing solutions to homeowners, has launched its home equity loan and home equity line of credit (HELOC) products, powered by Mambu’s cloud banking platform.
Scroll enables UK homeowners to unlock equity in their homes for use cases including home improvement, “green” upgrades, buying a holiday home, debt consolidation and deposit for property purchases.
Founded by engineers in 2021, Scroll aims to bring the flexibility, speed and convenience of an unsecured lending application experience to homeowner financing. Its unique solution aims to process applications from initial enquiry to completion in just a few days, compared to the six or seven weeks of traditional home financing options.
Customers can borrow between £25,000 and £1 million at competitive rates, up to an 80% loan to value ratio, and Scroll has already completed its first loan.
Ashish Kashyap, CEO and co-founder of Scroll Finance, said, “We want to be in charge of building a great lending experience for our customers and a key component of that is having full control over the entire life cycle of a loan, from initial enquiry to pay out to servicing and collections. Coupled to this desire of control, is a requirement to develop in a fast, flexible way to adapt to our unique take on global home financing solutions. This is exactly what Mambu offers.”
Building on Mambu’s composable technology foundation gives Scroll Finance the flexibility and control to choose from ‘best-of-breed’ components. This enables the fintech to deliver distinctive customer experiences with no vendor lock-in and wholesale re-platforming. Mambu’s cloud native architecture also ensures an intuitive and responsive journey for Scroll’s customers and brokers.
Richard Morgans, General Manager of Mambu UK and Ireland, commented, “Working with Scroll Finance is a testament to the flexibility and capabilities of our cloud banking platform. From scratch, and in just 10 months, the Scroll team designed, built, and launched not only a proprietary origination platform but also a suite of new-to-the-UK product features in addition to their HELOC product. The result is an innovative offering that will empower homeowners to quickly and easily access the equity that they have built up in their home. We are looking forward to continuing our partnership with Scroll to scale and expand their products and services.”
With rising demand for sustainable finance, Scroll plans to offer “green” solutions which help make UK homes more energy efficient. This offering sits alongside a packed product roadmap of innovative and wide-ranging home finance options. Mambu’s API-enabled platform will facilitate this continuous improvement by rapidly configuring and deploying new products, giving the fintech a unique competitive edge in a short space of time.
- 06:00 am
- New American Express Trendex research reveals consumers expect transparency from business on their efforts to tackle climate change
- 78% want companies to educate them on ways to reduce their carbon footprint when shopping
- American Express launches new initiatives to support the reduction and removal of carbon emissions
The latest research from American Express has found that UK consumers have high expectations of businesses to be more vocal on environmental issues and efforts to tackle climate change – and will offer support to those that are.
Ahead of Earth Day later this month, the Amex Trendex report revealed that 91% of UK adults want companies to address environmental issues and 89% agreed these businesses should be transparent about their climate impact. Over six in 10 (61%) agreed they pay attention to how a business takes action to reduce the impacts of climate change.
For those businesses that do demonstrate action in this critical area, they will be rewarded with a more loyal customer base; Around eight in 10 of UK adults agreed they would choose to shop with a business that takes actions to reduce the impact of climate change (80%), and they would be more likely to trust a company that works to address environmental issues (79%).
The Trendex research showed that consumers are also turning to businesses for help when it comes to making more informed choices about their purchases. Almost eight in 10 (78%) want companies to educate them on ways to reduce their carbon footprint when shopping with them. Furthermore, 82% of respondents would like companies to provide options to offset carbon emissions associated with their purchases.
Since 2018, American Express has remained a carbon-neutral company across its operations and has been powered with 100% renewable energy. Last year, the company committed to net-zero carbon emissions by 2035 and announced a $10 million grant commitment to organizations and initiatives that drive action on climate change through 2025. Now American Express is taking further action to support the reduction and removal of carbon emissions through a range of innovative solutions.
To reduce consumption of virgin plastic and eliminate waste, the company is expanding the availability of cards made from recycled materials globally with the goal of having the vast majority of plastic cards issued by American Express be made of at least 70% recycled or reclaimed plastic by the end of 2024.
Alongside this, an expanded Carbon Footprint Dashboard will also be available to American Express’ global Corporate clients, including those in the UK, to help track emissions associated with their employees’ travel and entertainment spend – across air travel, and ground transportation, hotel stays, restaurants and retail purchases. This allows these businesses to better understand purchasing behaviors so they can find opportunities to manage carbon emissions.1
Stacey Sterbenz, General Manager, Global Commercial Services UK at American Express, said: “The findings of our latest Trendex research clearly show that consumers expect businesses to step up when it comes to plans and policies around tackling climate change. The data also shows a significant opportunity for those companies that are acting on this critical issue, and the role they can play in helping to better inform their customers. At American Express, we’re proud to be helping back our business customers on this journey by offering them tools and insights to reduce their carbon emissions and promote more sustainable spending.”.
To learn more about American Express’ approach to ESG to support colleagues, customers and communities, check out our 2020-2021 Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Report.
Hussein Al Amine
Head of Business Development and Global Strategic Alliances at Fineon Exchange
Global trade has faced a volatile landscape of significant and mounting challenges in recent years, despite strong overall commercial growth, which have had an impact o see more
- 03:00 am
The third-largest metaverse, Next Earth seems unstoppable. As discussed in a recent Business Insider article, the platform has seen tremendous growth, with over 230,000 users and a host of exciting new features. Today has been the moment their community was waiting for: Next Earth's listing on MEXC Global Exchange, one of the biggest crypto exchanges. According to Coingecko, MEXC the fifth largest cryptocurrency exchange is set to boost liquidity for the 2 months old token.
MEXC is a user-friendly digital asset service provider, with over 3.6 billion dollars daily trading volume, and the listing provides a great opportunity for Next Earthians to trade NXTT tokens.
"We've been very strategic with the design and timing of milestones for our token. After 2 months this is the perfect time to introduce NXTT to the global crypto community and MEXC is the perfect partner for that. We have scaled the team significantly since the token launch, and we are now switching gears to make NXTT The Metaverse Token with the most utility. The first developments for utility will be the Launchpad Council and staking enabling token holders to take on governance roles and earn rewards," - said David Taylor, token architect.
In order to thank NXTT community members for their support, there is going to be 1,140,000 NXTT to be won.
From April 11th 3pm UTC to April 15th 3pm UTC, users can win two types of prizes: Grand prizes and participation prizes.
Additionally, MEXC Global will launch a listing campaign initiated by Next Earth, where users can stake tokens to vote towards a predetermined goal. In the kickstarter, users can vote to win 3.1 million NXTT in airdrops.
Finally, MEXC will launch a session of MX DeFi with Next Earth, to enable mining on NXTT tokens from April 18 to April 20. During this campaign, users can stake MX and NXTT to earn liquidity yield on NXTT.
These are exciting opportunities to get involved with Next Earth and win some valuable prizes. For full terms and conditions, please see the MEXC website.
- 01:00 am
Horizon Software is proud to announce that Sagard NewGen is entering into exclusive negotiations to acquire the majority stake of Capza in Horizon Software.
For 24 years, Horizon Software has brought automation to Investment Banks, Brokers, Exchanges and Trading Platforms for their electronic trading needs spanning more than 150 liquidity venues globally.
The Horizon trading platform brings together equity and derivatives departments and provides principal and agency traders with a unique cross-asset solution. By combining native trading functionalities with sophisticated algorithmic capabilities, Horizon Software’s clients create, test and implement automated strategies within incredibly short timescales and with absolute security.
With its managed services approach, Horizon Software offers a SaaS experience to its clients, winning 10 industry awards in the past 5 years.
Currently serving 70 clients in 26 countries, the Horizon trading platform is today the only one that can target the full needs of a trading floor including market making, agency trading and algorithmic trading.
Horizon Software is headquartered in Paris and has offices in Asia, the Middle-East and North America. The company has more than 100 employees and had an ARR growth of 20% in 2021.
Sylvain Thieullent, CEO of Horizon Software, said: “We are very excited about working with the Sagard NewGen team to support the ambitious strategy of the company. Moving forward, our aim is to reinforce the relationships with historical clients and develop new digital asset classes”.
Bérangère Barbe and Agnès Huyghues Despointes, Partners at Sagard NewGen, added: “We are delighted to have been chosen by Sylvain Thieullent to support Horizon Software and its remarkable management team in this new development phase. Under the leadership of its CEO, the company has successfully launched its Managed & Hosted service offering and has leveraged its expertise in algorithmic trading to conquer new international markets and develop its Agency Trading business. We are convinced of Horizon Software’s strong potential. The team will be able to draw on the resources of the Sagard network to accelerate the company’s growth”.
Benoît Choppin, Managing Partner at Capza, also said: “We are glad to have supported Sylvain Thieullent and his management team in the growth acceleration of the group. Horizon Software is today a leading platform in its market”.
- 07:00 am
Bybit, one of the world's fastest growing cryptocurrency exchanges, announced the launch of leveraged token products on its spot exchange starting with two Bitcoin leveraged tokens, BTC3L and BTC3S.
These leveraged tokens are short-term investment vehicles that let traders reap the benefits of leverage with no margin, collateral or liquidation risks. They have no margin requirement, offering traders a diversified product that exposes them to greater gains.
In a prominently bull or bear market, leveraged tokens are popular as a diversified trading product that can help make the most out of a volatile market. Each leveraged token is a basket of perpetual contract positions that can be traded on Bybit's spot exchange. Now, traders can simply buy a leveraged token for exposure to leveraged trades with no fear of margin calls or liquidation.
Bybit's new leveraged tokens, BTC3L and BTC3S and BTC3, represent long and short trades on BTC with 3x leverage. So, if BTC moves 1% in a day then BTC3L would move 3% for example.
Bybit recommends leveraged tokens as short-term investments. To help users fully understand the product, the platform has more on Bybit Leveraged Tokens here.
"We are thrilled to offer our clients another great trading opportunity in launching leveraged tokens," said Ben Zhou, co-founder and CEO of Bybit. "We are always looking for ways to help our users capitalize on market opportunities, and leveraged tokens are an excellent addition."
