From a lively Finance Magnates newsroom this week, here are the top stories from the forex, fintech and crypto worlds, in our best of the week segment.
Trading 212 Blames Interactive Brokers for Trade Execution Delay
As Finance Magnates reported on Tuesday, Trading 212, a fintech company and FCA-regulated broker, announced that its platform experienced technical difficulties related to execution services, following a recent Interactive Brokers’ malfunction.
In what was the second confirmed system outage at Trading 212 so far this month, Trading 212 stated on its website: “Order execution was delayed today as our intermediary Interactive Brokers had downtime, which completely hampered our ability to process trades. They are currently working on improving redundancy so that this cannot happen again.”
Read more on the Trading 212 outage here.
PayPal Bans User for Trading Cryptocurrencies
Dominating the crypto news this week was Paypal permanently banning an account for frequent crypto trading and imposing a 180-day hold on funds.
The online Payments giant banned the user citing potential risks associated with crypto day trading.
PayPal banned the user after its technical system termed his frequent crypto trading as 'item SALES'.
Read more on the PayPal Crypto user ban here.
Bitcoin & Ether Plummet More than 10% Each: The End of the Bull Run?
All eyes have been on Bitcoin and Ethereum (ETH) over the course of the last week as both coins shot for the moon: Bitcoin saw an impressive push to nearly $20,000, while Etherium was on a bull run of its own. ETH reached highs of nearly $620 earlier this week, its highest point since June of 2018.
However, it seems that the bull run that both coins were riding for most of this month may be coming to an end after heavy, heavy falls for both.
With expert insights from Scott Freeman, Co-founder of JST Capital, and Ed Nwokedi, Chief Executive at real estate tokenization platform RedSwan CRE, Finance Magnates asked and answered the question; is this the end of the bull run?
Read more on the Bitcoin and Ethereum plummet here.
Anonymous Crypto Whale Transfers 40 Million XRP to Bitstamp
Blockchain tracking and analytics company, Whale Alert identified that an anonymous XRP holder moved around 40 million tokens to Luxembourg-based cryptocurrency exchange, Bitstamp.
Whale Alert claimed that the mentioned address is associated with the genesis block of the XRP blockchain. A similar transaction happened earlier this month related to bitcoin after an unidentified user moved more than $1 billion in bitcoin to an address linked with the silk road darknet.
Read more on the Whale XRP Transfer here.
Chinese Police Seize over $4.2 Billion from PlusToken Proceeds
The Chinese police have seized more than $4.2 billion worth of cryptocurrency assets in its crackdown against the PlusToken scheme, a recent local court ruling revealed.
The court has convicted 15 people associated with the scheme so far, sentencing jail time between 2 to 11 years, along with fines between $100,000 to $1 million.
Read more on the PlusToken raids seizures here.
IRS Sends Warning Notices to Crypto Investors
As Finance Magnates covered on Friday, The Internal Revenue Service in the United States (IRS) is reportedly sending notices to US investors for under-reporting crypto gains.
Over the last week, dozens of individuals received CP2000 from the IRS. An IRS issue CP2000 notice is sent to an individual if the agency thinks that there is a difference between the income information IRS has on file and the information a person has reported on tax returns.
However, tax experts say that the IRS is mistaken and added that the main problem is that coinbase and other crypto exchanges use form 1099K to report user data instead of 1099 or 1099B.
Read more on the IRS Crypto warnings here.
