A Wall Street Journal report published Jan. 12 claims European eToro users were given just four hours notice that the platform's margin trading services would be halted on Friday. EToro users were informed they must increase their margin collateral to 100% in an email sent at 4:46 UTC on Jan. 8. The platform closed the contracts of any European crypto trader who didn’t bolster their margin collateral to 100% by 9:00 PM. When the firm called in the margin trades, the users’ crypto was automatically converted into U.S. dollars. Amy Butler, an eToro spokeswoman, said “most traders were in the …

On Wednesday, the decision by the United Kingdom's Financial Conduct Authority to ban crypto futures and exchange-traded notes finally went into effect. The FCA initially announced the ban back in October 2020 following a year-long consideration of the matter. At the time, the FCA argued that crypto derivatives were ill-suited to retail investors who were at risk of incurring significant losses. Commenting on the decision as the ban went into effect on Wednesday, Ian Taylor, chair of the self-regulatory trade group CryptoUK, told Cointelegraph: “The regulator is clearly focused on consumer protection, and rightfully so. Derivatives allow for leverage — …

Binance.US, the American branch of the global crypto exchange, and crypto-friendly asset trading service eToro are the latest platforms to suspend XRP trading in the United States. Announcing the news on Thursday, eToro revealed that U.S. customers will not be able to trade XRP starting Jan. 3, 2021. Customers with existing trades at the time will have three weeks from that date to close all open positions, the platform added in its statement. For Binance.US, the effective date of its XRP delisting is Jan. 13, 2021. However, the delisting will not affect the claim process for Flare's Spark (FLR) token …

Trading platform eToro reportedly could go public in 2021. Sources told Cointelegraph that eToro has been working with the London Stock Exchange's "Elite" program to prepare for an initial public offering. "EToro does not comment on market rumours," an eToro representative told Cointelegraph. However, employees at eToro have shared an article from Israel-based media outlet Calcalist announcing the IPO on LinkedIn, apparently with the blessing of CEO Yoni Assia. EToro "is targeting an IPO in the second quarter of 2021 after doubling its revenue to $500 million and gaining five million new customers in 2020," says the Tuesday article from …

A nonprofit initiative that leverages decentralized finance as a means to offer a digital income for its users has announced that people have now claimed more than 14 million of its tokens. According to a Wednesday announcement, the universal basic income, or UBI, project from GoodDollar has reached more than 40,000 people from 180 countries since it launched in September. The project reported that more than half of the participants were claiming its reserve-based token, G$, every day. 14 million tokens have been claimed so far. The project mints its G$ tokens through interest generated by third-party permissionless protocols from …

According to data collected by Brad Michelson, a senior marketing manager at major trading and investment platform eToro, monthly global volume for Bitcoin searches in the December 2017 bull run was lower than in November 2020. Citing SEO data provider SEMrush, Michelson said that Bitcoin-related global monthly search volumes in November 2020 accounted for 8.9 million. This is 356% more than BTC search volumes recorded back in December 2017, which amounted to 2.5 million, according to Michelson’s data. Michelson pointed out a huge discrepancy between SEMrush’s data and Google Trends, a popular tool for analyzing the popularity of top search …

EToro, the major multi-asset brokerage, released a crypto market quarterly report for Q3 2020. The report, titled “What Moves the Prices of Cryptoassets,” delves into the main factors that cause cryptocurrencies to rise in value. The 15 “significant developments” that directly affect the value of a crypto asset include mergers, funding, halving, partnerships, staking and announcements. The researchers analyzed how crypto assets perform after one hour, one day, and one week after the developments occur. How long do crypto assets rally after announcements? According to data from eToro and The Tie, crypto assets typically rise the most over a period …

DeFi failed to catch on eight years ago, according to comments from Yoni Assia, founder and CEO of financial platform eToro. "I think that DeFi is super interesting," Assia said on Oct. 6 during a panel on crypto exchanges and venture investments, as part of the LA Blockchain Summit. "We actually built a decentralized exchange back in 2012 based on the Colored Coin protocol we developed in eToro, which was tokenizing assets on top of the Bitcoin network, so this was really really premature — the beginning of thinking of tokenization." Ethereum has made a name for itself as one …

The eToro trading platform announced on Thursday the launch of a dedicated staking service for its clients, letting users earn staking rewards from Cardano (ADA) and Tron (TRX). Users who hold positions in either of these currencies will be eligible for staking rewards, awarded monthly. The company said that other assets will be introduced later on as well. The system is completely automated and does not require any action from the part of the users, who are able to trade the assets normally. An eToro spokesperson told Cointelegraph that the rewards are calculated based on daily snapshots taken at 00:00 …

INX, a cryptocurrency firm holding the first-ever token initial public offering approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission, has chosen a digital asset custody provider. According to an announcement Thursday, INX has enlisted Israeli crypto startup GK8 for digital asset custody for its upcoming crypto exchange. INX tweeted that the platform will use GK8's end-to-end platform for managing and safeguarding digital assets. The platform includes GK8’s patented “air-gapped vault that can create, sign, and send blockchain transactions while staying 100% offline,” INX noted. Based in Gibraltar, INX is planning to raise $117 million from its ongoing security token IPO targeting …

According to Brave browser, businesses like eToro, BlockFi, and Nexo have achieved unprecedented results by advertising to the platform's users. Considering the popularity of Brave within the crypto community, this does not come as a surprise. For instance, the crypto-lending platform BlockFi was able to reduce its customer acquisition costs by 75% with Brave ads. The campaign was also twice as effective as a Google campaign in terms of the percent of respondents who opened accounts. BlockFi’s marketing manager Nick Ries was quoted as saying: “Brave has proven to be one of the most effective channels in driving new customers …

Fortune picked out a number of individuals deemed as most influential for 2020, listing 40 different names across five separate sectors. Binance.US CEO, Catherine Coley, and eToro CEO Yoni Assia found their names on the list, published on Sept. 2, under the finance section. Technology, politics, healthcare and media made up the other sections, each holding the top 40 people under the age of 40 — putting a total of 200 individuals on the list across all sectors. Binance.US serves as the United States' regulatory-friendly crypto trading option under exchange powerhouse Binance. EToro gives investors and traders access to crypto …