Despite the ongoing cryptocurrency market decline and associated forced layoffs in major crypto firms, a career in crypto doesn’t turn less attractive to many traditional finance executives. European crypto exchange-traded fund (ETF) provider 21Shares announced three major hires on Wednesday to expand its presence in countries like France, Germany and the United Arab Emirates. Marina Baudéan, 21Shares’ newly appointed head of France, Belgium and Luxembourg, is debuting her crypto career after working for more than 15 years at the British universal bank Barclays. Baudéan is confident that crypto is “all about the next generation of technology,” and it’s here to …

Banking giants Goldman Sachs and the United Kingdom’s Barclays have joined a $70 million Series A funding round for the institutional crypto trading platform Elwood Technologies, founded by billionaire British hedge fund manager Alan Howard. Joining the round was crypto-friendly German bank Commerzbank, crypto investment manager Galaxy Digital and Dawn Capital, as reported by the Financial Times on Sunday. The fundraising round valued the company at around $500 million, according to the report. Despite the recent fall in crypto markets, Elwood said it’s betting that traditional financial institutions such as hedge funds and banks will still be interested in investing …

Spain-based bank Santander’s U.K. business will no longer be allowing its customers to send payments to Binance, citing warnings from the Financial Conduct Authority. Several replies from Santander’s U.K. Twitter help account today said the bank has “decided to prevent payments” to the world’s biggest crypto exchange in an effort to prevent fraud. The bank reportedly told customers they would still be able to withdraw cash from Binance, but it would be “following the FCA’s warning to consumers” in banning payments. Many Santander account holders expressed negative feelings about the bank’s decision: “As one of your long standing account holders, …

Barclays’ decision to stop facilitating British customers’ payments to Binance has been met with criticism by the cryptocurrency exchange after a spokesperson told Cointelegraph that the bank acted with “an inaccurate understanding of events.” “We are disappointed that Barclays appears to have taken unilateral action based on what appears to be an inaccurate understanding of events,” the spokesperson said, referring to a recent edict by the United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) barring Binance Markets Limited from operating in the country. “The FCA notice relates to [Binance Markets Limited], which is a company incorporated in the U.K. and regulated by …

United Kingdom-based crypto exchange Bitstamp has hired Sameer Dubey, the former director of financial services company Barclays’ payments team, as its chief operating officer. In an announcement on Thursday, Bistamp said it would be appointing Dubey to the executive position as part of its effort to scale across the firm’s businesses. Dubey worked as the head of payments for Barclays corporate division and was a member of the team behind the bank’s blockchain and distributed ledger council. Until recently, he also served as the head of operations for U.K. neobank N26. The crypto exchange said the addition of Dubey would …

Upon the announcement of the United Kingdom budget for 2020, Chancellor Rishi Sunak commissioned Ron Kalifa to conduct an independent review of the U.K. fintech sector. On Friday, eight months later, the FCA published the 108-page report, and it contains multiple clear guidelines aimed at cementing the U.K.’s position as a fintech powerhouse. Over $95 billion was spent by U.K. fintech firms in 2019, and with 10% of the global market share, the U.K. is already ahead of the curve when it comes to fintech adoption and business. Investments in U.K. fintech firms totaled $4.1 billion in 2020, notes the …

Coming every Sunday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link. Top Stories This Week SEC on “unfounded fishing expedition,” Telegram lawyers tell judge Telegram’s lawyers haven’t had a quiet start to 2020. A judge gave them less than a single business day to respond to a request from the United States Securities and Exchange Commission to hand over details of how the company spent the proceeds of its $1.7 …

Mark Hipperson, who was head of technology for the Barclays group for over a decade as well as co-founder and former CTO at U.K. challenger bank, Starling, is planning a Q1 2020 launch for his latest digital banking venture, Ziglu. Billing itself as the next step in the challenger bank concept, the all-digital account will allow multiple currencies, both fiat and digital, to be held in the same account. HODL, exchange, spend The free account will not just be able to hold balances in multiple currencies, but also freely exchange funds between them. Foreign currencies will be available to buy …

It is being reported that Barclays, the London-based global bank, recently stopped banking for Coinbase, the United States-based crypto exchange. Coinbase reportedly found a quick replacement in the form of another United Kingdom-based establishment, ClearBank. While Barclays connected San Francisco-based Coinbase to the U.K. Faster Payments Scheme (FPS), enabling instant withdrawals and deposits of British pounds at the exchange, ClearBank won’t offer the exchange the same service until at least the end of Q3 2019. Deposits and withdrawals in pounds for Coinbase’s U.K. customers, which once took seconds, will for now take days to process. In the wake of Barclay’s …

Coming every Sunday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link. Top Stories This Week Premiums for Bitcoin in Hong Kong and Argentina despite price slump Bitcoin (BTC) briefly veered back into four figures this week — reversing recent gains. It comes amid cooling tensions between the United States and China in their long-running trade war, with Washington deciding to delay the introduction of new tariffs that would have affected …

British banking giant Barclays has reportedly cut ties with United States crypto exchange Coinbase. As Coindesk reported on Aug. 13, unnamed industry sources have said that Barclays will no longer be banking for Coinbase, severing a relationship that began when Coinbase opened a Barclays account in March 2018. The news is expected to hit the crypto community hard, as, in addition to linking a major crypto exchange with a heavy hitter among the traditional banking establishment, the break may end Coinbase users’ access to the United Kingdom’s Faster Payments Scheme and slow the exchange of cryptocurrencies for British pounds sterling …

The blockchain-based subsidiary of retail giant Overstock, tZERO, has appointed three new managers. The company announced the new hires in a press release on July 17. According to the announcement, new appointees Brooke Navarro, Michael Mougias and Alexandra Sotiropoulos have been official managers since July 15. The company states that these new executives are the firms head of issuance, head of investor relations and head of communications, respectively. The CEO of tZERO, Saum Noursalehi, remarked on the intended role for these new hires, saying: “On the issuance front, Brooke will drive strategic development of our security token ecosystem by focusing …