It’s that time of the week when we take a look back at the biggest news stories from the worlds of Forex, Fintech and Crypto in our best of the week segment.

Plus500 Q3 FY21 Revenue Drops by 2% YoY

Plus500 has published its financials for the third quarter of 2021, reporting a marginal pullback in its revenue and earnings from last year as the effects of the pandemic from the retail trading market are wearing off. However, the numbers jumped significantly when compared to the pre-pandemic levels.

The revenue of the company came in at $211.4 million in the period, which is 2 percent down from the figures of the same quarter in the previous year, according to the latest trading update by the company. This was primarily driven by customer income that came in at $156.9 million.

Additionally, EBITDA for the quarter at $128.6 million declined by 4 percent, while EBITDA margin decreased by 2 percent.

Moreover, the number of newly onboarded customers in the three months slumped by 43 percent year-over-year to 26,169, while it closed the quarter with an active customer base of 166,310.

Read more on the Plus500 Revenue Drop here.

Shiba Inu Beats the Market Cap of Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin

Due to the latest spike, SHIB’s market cap has jumped above leading digital assets, including Chainlink (LINK), Litecoin (LTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH). Shiba Inu is now the 13th most valuable cryptocurrency asset in the world.

Shiba Inu is +26% in the past 24 hours while the rest of the crypto markets are mostly flat. The young rising asset continues pumping eerily in tandem with moments of crowd negativity and doubtful commentary.

Read more on the Shiba Inu Market Cap here.

AMC Theatres Considers Adding Shiba Inu as a Means of Payment

Staying with Shiba Inu, AMC Theatres, one of the biggest movie theatre chains globally, is reportedly considering adding Shiba Inu (SHIB) as one of its means of payment for ticket purchases.

During a poll published on Twitter, its CEO, Adam Aron, is asking people if the company should add the meme coin or not.

Read more on the AMC Theatres Shiba Inu consideration.

IC Markets Signs Sponsorship Deals with Six German Football Clubs

Sports sponsorships remain popular among the trading platforms as IC Markets becomes the latest forex and CFDs broker to ink partnership deals with six German football clubs.

The sponsored clubs are Bayer Leverkusen, Hertha Berlin, FC Augsburg, Arminia Bielefeld, Greuther Fürth and VfL Bochum, all of which are playing in the country’s top domestic league, Bundesliga.

Under the signed agreements, the broker will receive advertising rights on the LED perimeter of the field, along with logo and IP rights. However, none of the parties concerned has disclosed the financials involved in the deal.

Read more on the IC Markets German Football Sponsorships here.

NAGA Launches Stock Trading Globally and Announces Its Own NFT Marketplace

The Hamburg-based social trading platform, NAGA AG (XETRA: N4G) announced this week that it had launched global stock trading and its own NFT platform, allowing the creation and trading of such assets.

The company is adding trading stocks for EUR 0.99 per trade for customers globally.

Its NFT marketplace is set to launch in late Q4 of this year, which will allow users to create and trade their own works, including art, music and digital content. In addition, the NAGA NFT platform will be available via a wallet connect. Also, the social trading platform noted that NFT owners could set a ‘royalty fee’ and receive a percentage of the trade per transaction.

Read more on the NAGA expansion here.

UP Fintech Completes Acquisition of Hong Kong-Based Joy Securities

UP Fintech (Nasdaq: TIGR), the operator of Tiger Brokers, announced on Friday the completion of the acquisition of Ocean Joy Securities Limited, which holds Type 1 and Type 2 licenses from the Hong Kong securities market regulator.

The Type 1 license allows Hong Kong companies to deal in securities, whereas they can deal in futures contracts with the Type 2 license.

After the latest acquisition, UP Fintech is expected to start operating brokerage business in the Chinese autonomous administrative territory.

Read more on the UP Fintech Tiger Brokers acquisition here.

The Greatest Trade of All Time?

A wallet has conducted what is believed to be the biggest trade of all time performed by an individual: it bought $8,000 of Shiba Inu (SHIB) last August, which is now worth $5.7 billion.

According to a tweet published by Morning Brew, the investment came from $8,000 to $5.7 billion in just 400 days.

Read more on the greatest trade of all time here.

Is Ethereum (ETH) Still a Good Buy?

Ethereum may not be the most talked-about cryptocurrency in the world, but the digital asset quietly touched an all-time high of $4,400 on Friday.

In the crypto world of Bitcoin and Shiba Inu, ETH has gained its share of popularity, slowly and steadily. In 2021, Ethereum’s price jumped from $700 on 1 January to as high as $4,400 on 29 October. With a market cap of nearly $520 billion, ETH is the world’s second most dominant crypto asset.

However, with ETH at an all-time high, Finance Magnates delves into whether Ethereum is still a good buy?

Read more on if Ethereum is a good buy here.

Saxo Markets Secures Two New Licenses from Hong Kong Regulator

Saxo Capital Markets HK Limited, the Hong Kong-based subsidiary of Saxo Markets, has obtained Type 4 and Type 9 licenses from the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) in the special administrative region.

Type 4 license will allow the company to provide advice on securities, while with Type 9 license, it can launch asset management services. The acquisition of both licenses will enable the Denmark-headquartered company to expand services in asset and wealth management.

Read more on the Saxo Capital Markets HK Limited New Hong Kong Licenses here.

Memecoins Hype: Will Their Popularity Fade Soon?

The meme coin-mania, the meme coin-extravaganza, you name it. The fact is that Dogecoin (DOGE) and Shiba Inu (DOGE) have been the headliners in recent days due to their price action, which led to several crypto holders moving towards these kinds of assets.

In a Finance Magnates analysis, we looked at the memecoin hype and whether or not it will last.

Read more on the memecoins hype here.

XTB Reports a 40.8% Increase in Revenues in the Third Quarter of 2021

Poland-based X-Trade Brokers, better known as XTB, has released its preliminary financial and operating results for the third quarter of the year on Monday, noting a strong consolidated net profit in the period.

According to the report, it netted PLN 101.5 million compared to PLN 68.4 million in the same period last year.

Read more on the XTB Revenue Increase here.

The Philippines Arrests Alleged Mastermind of Forex Fraud Based Eastern Europe

An Israeli who was the alleged mastermind of a Forex scam scheme was arrested in the Philippines one year after fleeing Bulgaria.

According to reports, Kfir Levy operated a fraud network in Eastern Europe running forex and binary options scams, allegedly deceiving thousands of investors in the region.

The authorities in the Philippines noted that Levy is accused of having scammed ‘hundreds’ of German citizens, stealing around EUR 6.3 million, through his bogus company named ‘G&E Finances,’ where he was listed as the CEO. In fact, the individual faces charges in Germany as two arrest warrants have been issued by a court in the district of Bavaria.

Read more on the Kfir Levy arrest here.

LONDON SUMMIT AWARDS 2021 VOTING NOW OPEN

The first round of voting in the most prestigious event in the finance calendar is now open.

The eagerly awaited FMLS 21 is back and is already the talk of the town.

Since its inception in 2012, the London Summit has earned the trust of the most influential executives as the leading gathering for meeting peers, generating business and staying abreast of the cutting edge of the market.

Bringing together top-level industry executives, the London Summit is the world’s largest event for the financial services sector, hosting retail brokers, institutional buy-side, payment service providers, fintech startups and a growing crypto segment.

Read more about FMLS and cast your vote here.

ADA surges above $2.00 on smart contract news. XRP jumps through $1.00 hurdle ahead of SEC deadline. REQ offers crypto invoicing.

ADA

The Cardano price has vaulted above the $2.00 level as the project nears the adoption of smart contract technology. 

Twitter crypto analyst Lark Davis explained why he is bullish about the upcoming launch of the Alonzo hard fork, which provides support for smart contracts.

The New Zealand-based influencer said of the development: 

Cardano smart contracts are just around the corner, which is a long awaited and very bullish catalyst for the asset… We will soon see for Cardano native DeFi apps, and Apps on other platforms, such as SushiSwap, can then integrate with Cardano to capture liquidity… If all goes well with the Alonzo hard fork, after the launch on the mainnet, we could see $ADA rally a couple hundred percent.

In other Cardano news, a recent survey by crypto exchange Gemini said ADA was the third most popular cryptocurrency in Singapore.

Gemini’s “State of Crypto in Singapore 2021” report surveyed over 4,000 respondents, 2,862 were existing crypto holders and 1,486 were consumers “who might be interested to learn more or start investing in cryptocurrency.” 

The survey showed that 40% of Singaporeans owned Cardano. The top five assets were: Ethereum (78%), Bitcoin (69%), Cardano (40%), Binance Coin (31%), and XRP (25%).

Nigel Hemsley, head of delivery for Cardano, said in a video from Input-Output that the platform would launch the Alonzo upgrade on September 12th. 

The price of ADA trades at $2.11 and is eyeing the all-time highs set in May at $2.40.

XRP

The price of XRP has also jumped higher above the $1.00 level as the Ripple project gets set to release documents to the SEC. 

Another Twitter user, James K. Filan, posted an update of coming events for XRP. August 16th is the deadline for Ripple’s response to the SEC’s emergency motion requesting communications from the Slack messaging platform. The SEC will then respond to that the following day. August 31st is the date for the completion of fact discovery, with October 15th being the expert discovery deadline.

Crypto analysts Santiment also said that the project is seeing very strong developer activity:

Before it decoupled from the #crypto pack, we saw hints of development activity skyrocketing. #XRP‘s team is now submitting the highest #github activity rate in the asset’s history.

There has even been talk of Ripple dipping its toe into the water of Non-Fungible Tokens. 

The XRP Ledger delivers a unique combination of the low cost, high speed and good payments features needed to streamline NFT creation at scale. In particular, the Ledger’s ability to maintain consistent transaction fees—something which is impossible on most other platforms today—as a key benefit for both buyers and sellers.

XRP trades at $1.23 and is now set to move towards the highs at $1.8-1.97.

REQ

Request Token saw a strong rally in the last week with the coin vaulting from around $0.06 to hit highs of $0.3000. That level was a previous resistance, and the price has retreated from there. The $0.2000 level was a previous high and will provide support for now.

The Request Network enables employers to pay their staff with cryptocurrency. The project offers simple payment requests and also fully compliant digital currency invoicing. The network is working with many of the up-and-coming crypto projects in the DeFi space, but the project also aims to be integrated with Quickbooks in the company’s roadmap. That would open the door for further adoption with many sports stars making it popular to receive their pay in cryptocurrencies. That trend has been seen in the NFL, UFC, and Nascar.

The Request platform has a market cap of $243 million and currently occupies the number 173 space in the list of the top crypto projects by valuation.

The project releases monthly updates on its adoption and since September 2020, over $92 million of cryptocurrency payments have been transacted through the Request Invoicing app. For July alone, total payments were around $14 million In cryptocurrency.

REV

The price of Revain was up over 70% in the last week as one of the best-performing assets of the week. 

The Revain project hosts a platform for user reviews and rewards review writers with XP points and eventually REV tokens. Revain now has a market cap of $1 billion and trades at number 88 in the list of the top coins. 

The price of the REV token was trading at $0.011 on Monday after seeing lows near the $0.005 mark last week. The token saw a spike high of $0.055 at the crypto market’s peak in May.