With January in full flow, let's take a look back at the news stories from this week that dominated the worlds of Forex, Fintech and Crypto in our best of the week segment.
Bitcoin Price Fell below $40,000 on Monday
The trading week kicked off with some bad news for Bitcoin investors.
Bitcoin plunged below $40,000 for the first time since September 2021. The negative record heightened a bear trend that began six weeks ago.
The dip saw more than $295 million liquidated across the entire crypto market in the previous 24 hours.
Read more on Monday's Bitcoin plunge here.
Record Institutional Outflows Hit Crypto Market
As Bitcoin plunged, Monday saw record institutional outflows in the crypto market.
The weekly digital asset fund flows report posted by CoinShares shows that digital asset investment products witnessed outflows totalling $207 million last week, which is the highest level on record.
Bitcoin-related investment products saw institutional outflows worth $107 million. Ethereum came in the second spot with total weekly outflows of $39 million. In the last 5 weeks, ETH has witnessed institutional outflows worth $200 million.
Read more on the record institutional crypto outflows here.
Four Arrested, 50 Detained in Israeli Police Forex Raid
Four people have been arrested and 50 people detained after Israeli cyber unit Lahav 433 raided an as-yet-unnamed forex company office in the city of Nazareth.
The four managers, all Nazareth residents, along with the 50 employees are alleged to have operated a forex call centre targeting Arabic-speaking clients in the Middle East. Nazareth is a predominately Arab-speaking city in the central Galilee region of Israel.
Read more on the Israeli Police Forex Raid here.
NAGA Group Revenue Hits €55.3 Million for Fiscal Year 2021
NAGA Group, a German fintech social trading-focused online broker, announced its 2021 financial results, indicating that the company exceeded its revenue guidance for 2021. NAGA stated that its consolidated group revenue more than doubled to about €55.3 million compared to what was reached in the previous year (2020: €24.4 million).
The impressive growth was boosted by record EBITDA on strong quarter results that reached €12.8 million in 2021 and doubled compared to the previous year (2020: €6.6 million). Furthermore, the company disclosed that more than 277,000 new accounts joined its trading platform, which is an increase of 128% compared to last year (2020: 120,00 new accounts).
Read more on the NAGA Group Revenue here.
North Korean Hackers Stole $400M Worth Crypto in 2021
North Korean hackers launched at least seven attacks on cryptocurrency exchanges in 2021, stealing around $400 million worth of digital assets, the blockchain analytics firm, Chainalysis revealed in the latest report.
The value of stolen crypto assets by these hackers jumped by 40 percent in 2021 from the prior year.
Read more on the North Korean Crypto Hackers here.
Swissquote Sees Another Record Year as 2021 Profits Jump 111%
Swissquote, an online financial trading services provider, announced on Thursday its yearly financial results for 2021. The company reported record results for the period, beating its revenue and profit guidance.
The net revenue of the broker for the year came in at CHF 472 million, which is almost 49 percent higher than the previous year’s figure, according to the official press release shared with Finance Magnates.
The Switzerland-headquartered company generated a pre-tax profit of CHF 223 million for the year. This number came in more than 111 percent higher than CHF 105.6 million it generated in 2021, which was a record at that time.
Read more on the Swissquote Record Year here.
Swissquote UK CEO Federico Cirulli Steps Down
Swissquote announced on Thursday that Federico Cirulli, the Chief Executive Officer of the group’s UK subsidiary Swissquote Ltd, has decided to step down from his position. He headed the unit for eight years.
Cirulli is an experienced forex executive and has spent almost two decades in the industry. Before joining Swissquote, he headed MIG Capital as the CEO. Additionally, he spent around four years with CMC Markets as the Head of Southern Europe and was the CEO at ActivTrades, which is another forex and CFDs broker.
To fill the gap of the apex role, Swissquote has appointed Michela Pollini and Jack Rawlings as Executive Directors in its UK office.
Read more on the Swissquote UK personnel changes here.
France Added 1.1 Million Retail Investors over Last 3 Years
The Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF), which oversees the French financial markets, revealed that more than one million new retail investors have entered the equities markets in the country over the previous three years.
“In three years, the AMF has recorded a little over 1.1 million new retail investors on equity markets,” the regulator stated. “Transaction volumes remained close to the high levels recorded in 2020.” The regulator found out that the demand in the French retail equities market remained high throughout 2021.
Around 1.6 million individuals in the country placed at least one buy or sell order last year, which is 19 percent higher than the previous year.
Read more on the French Retail Investor Growth here.
Exness Ends December 2021 with $1.24 Trillion in Trading Volume
Exness has ended another impressive month by keeping the monthly total trading volume above $1 trillion for three months in a row.
For December, the retail broker has reported a total trading volume of $1.24 trillion, according to the official figures. Though the trading demand on the brokerage declined by almost 1.6 percent from the record it achieved in November, December remained the second-best month for the broker’s operational history.
On a year-over-year basis, the latest numbers from the broker strengthened by more than 84 percent, maintaining the steady uptrend in demand.
Read more on the Exness December volume here.
FINRA Fines E*TRADE $350K for Surveillance Failures
Electronic trading platform E*TRADE, a subsidiary of Morgan Stanley, has been slapped with a $350,000 fine, along with a censure order, by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) for failures in the establishment and maintenance of supervisory systems.
Announced on Tuesday, the self-regulatory agency alleged multiple violations on the part of the American trading platform.
Read more on the FINRA E*TRADE fine here.
NinjaTrader Buys Tradovate in $115 Million Deal
The NinjaTrader Group, LLC, one of the industry's leading providers of trading software and brokerage services, has acquired Tradovate Holdings, LLC, an online futures brokerage firm and trading technology provider.
The $115 million acquisition by NinjaTrader, which was founded in 2003 and supports more than 500,000 traders now creates one of the most formidable retail futures brokers with a cumulative 2021 trading volume of around 100 million futures contracts.
Read more on the Tradovate Buy here.
