Digital Financial News

Murray Roos, head of capital markets at the LSE Group, told the FT the firm had decided to push forward with the project after 12-months of internal debate on the potential for a blockchain-powered trading venture.The UK exchange is reportedly mulling a sepearate entity for the new venture and is now engaged in conversations with the UK government and regulators on the idea.Ross stressed that the project does not involve cryptocurrencies and only uses the blockchain technology underpinning the digital assets to make buying, selling and holding of traditional assets more efficient."The idea is to use digital technology to make a process that is slicker, smoother, cheaper and more transparent . . . and to have it regulated," Roos said.

The co-operative in March published the findings of a 12-week period of sandbox testing, in which almost 5,000 transactions were simulated between two different blockchain networks and with existing fiat-based payment systems. The beta solution has taken its next step, with three central banks and monetary authorities, including the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) and the National Bank of Kazakhstan, integrating the solution with their own infrastructure for direct testing.Swift has also initiated a second phase of sandbox testing, in which commercial banks, central banks and financial market infrastructures are exploring additional use cases, including trigger-based payments for digital trade platforms, foreign exchange models, delivery vs payment and liquidity saving mechanisms.

EmotiCoin (EMOTI) has emerged as the break-out on-chain token of the week, as dramatic upside price action is bolstered by high-octane tokenomics.

EPIC Foundation, a not-for-profit organization founded by industry veterans and co-founders of HCL, Ajai Chowdhry and Arjun Malhotra, have announced the launch of two ‘Made In India’ products by signing an MOU with Karnataka Digital Economy Mission (KDEM). Their aim is to turn India into a global hub for electronic hardware product design and manufacturing while imparting education and empowerment. With a skilled young workforce, combined with partnerships and government support, the foundation believes India can emerge as a dominant player in the electronics industry, contributing significantly to a US $400 billion Electronics sector. According to a statement, as part of this initiative, the foundation has announced the launch of two products- a) LED Driver Chip, designed by a startup in Bengaluru, to replace a Chinese counterpart and b) 100% designed in India tablet with unique features such as repairability and upgradability while aligning with the principles of sustainability. Ajai Chowdhry, Chairman of EPIC Foundation and a member of the MeitY task force, said in a statement, «EPIC Foundation aims to be the interface between Industry and State Government with MEITY, Niti Aayog DST and DPIIT to address key challenges and recalibrate the policies.

Apple said on Wednesday its iPhone 12 model was certified by multiple international bodies as compliant with global radiation standards after a French watchdog ordered it to stop selling the handset on the grounds it breaches European exposure limits. The ANFR radiation watchdog told Apple on Tuesday to halt sales of iPhone 12s in France after tests which it said showed the phone's Specific Absorption Rate (SAR)- a measure of the rate of radiofrequency energy absorbed by the body from a piece of equipment — was higher than legally allowed.

In the ever-evolving landscape of cryptocurrency, Bitcoin continues to hold its ground, currently trading at $25,952, reflecting a noteworthy 3% increase on this Wednesday.

Meta Platforms in San Francisco federal court on Tuesday, accusing the tech giant of misusing their works to train its Llama artificial-intelligence software. Chabon, Tony-winning playwright David Henry Hwang and authors Matthew Klam, Rachel Louise Snyder and Ayelet Waldman in a lawsuit said Meta taught the Llama large-language model to respond to human text prompts with datasets that included pirated versions of their writings.

UPI, debit, and credit cards, direct-to-bank, via QR code scans, buy-now-pay-later, wallet, and link-based payment options. The Payment Lounge is underpinned by PhiCommerce’s omnichannel payment platform PayPhi - a one-stop solution that serves businesses' diverse payment needs across both online and offline channels.

Rohit Srivastava, Founder & Market Strategist, Indiacharts.com, says For the midcap index, the reading was at around 89 on the day before’s close. Yesterday's closing, it has come back to 63 and right now live, it is trading at 60. For the small cap index, the similar thing would be the day before, it would have been at 87.98. After yesterday's close, it is down to 59 and right now also it is at around 59. As mid and smallcap indices are coming very close to the 20-day moving average, we will expect them to get support and bounce back over the next couple of days.”Yesterday's fall and today's follow-up activity, how do you read it?This is part of a minor correction in what is a bigger trend in favour of mid and smallcaps. We have to view it from both the short term time horizon and the long term time horizon. In the short term, indicators like the RSI is hitting overbought but what that usually means is we get a one day knee-jerk reaction, maximum two days and then that is it, because then it takes only two days for the RSI to come off from something like 85-87 which is an extremely overbought state to something like a 65-66 or even 60 which we have already seen yesterday and are further seeing today. Both the mid and smallcap indices now are coming very close to the 20-day moving average and that is more significant because that is where we will expect them to get support and bounce back over the next couple of days.

Rakesh Arora, Managing Partner, Go India Stocks, says “cement is our preferred pick for the next few months. In steel, largely it is the long products which are seeing some bit of an uptick. But China has been producing a lot of steel and they have been exporting and so steel prices have not really been moving up in the global market. Any hint of a little bit of demand pickup is resulting in raw metal prices, iron ore and coking coal moving much ahead of steel prices.”Everybody is stunned by the magnitude of market fall yesterday. In isolation it looks ugly, but do you think that was an overbought market which was looking for a reason to correct? And unfortunately yesterday was that day.It is a minor correction in the whole scheme of things. And actually stocks are stabilising today, so I do not really see too much worry. Obviously, when something is overbought, such corrections are welcome and then only the strength of the up move can actually, the strength is much better if there are these kinds of corrections during the up move.

Solidus Labs, a leading entity in crypto-native trade surveillance and risk monitoring, has recently unveiled that a minimum of $2 billion worth of cryptocurrency has been wash-traded on Ethereum-based decentralized exchanges (DEXs) since 2020. This revelation is part of Solidus Labs' latest Crypto Market Manipulation Report.

JioCinema will open its innings to broadcast Indian cricket team's home matches riding on its free playbook, as the media unit today said it will stream India's 3-match ODI home series against Australia for free. This is the first international series in the rights cycle that will be presented on JioCinema. The OTT will stream the matches in 11 languages and has also roped in Suresh Raina, Kedar Jadhav, Aakash Chopra, Amit Mishra, Hanuma Vihari, Kiran More, Anirudha Srikanth, Sarandeep Singh, among others, to be part of the expert panel. Viacom18, a subsidiary of Reliance Industries, has secured exclusive media rights for international and domestic matches by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) for a cumulative figure of Rs 5,963 crore for the next five years between September 2023-March 2028.

Mumbai: IndiaFirst Life Insurance Company Limited (IndiaFirst Life) has introduced a novel offering -- IndiaFirst Life Guaranteed Single Premium Plan. This unique plan is designed to provide individuals with a seamless blend of financial protection and savings.

The head of Binance.US, the US offshoot of the largest crypto exchange Binance, has left the digital assets giant as the company is reportedly cutting its workforce by one-third.

More Chinese companies are using the digital yuan to pay their workers, as Beijing looks to spur the adoption of its CBDC.

European venture capital giant Lakestar, an early supporter of fintech unicorn Revolut, has emerged as a prominent backer of French fintech startup Swan.

In a major milestone for the electronic conveyancing market, the first property transactions have been settled using both of the competing electronic lodgment network operators, Property Exchange Australia (PEXA) and Sympli.

₹5,923 per gram."The nominal value of the bond based on the simple average of closing price (for gold of 999 purity)... works out to ₹5,923 per gram of gold," the central bank said, while announcing the issue price of Sovereign Gold Bond Scheme 2023-24 Series II (second tranche). The RBI has announced ₹50 per 10 gm discount for investors applying online and making the payment against the application through digital mode.

Google has exploited its dominance of the internet search market to lock out competitors and smother innovation, the Department of Justice said Tuesday at the opening of the biggest U.S. antitrust trial in a quarter century. «This case is about the future of the internet and whether Google's search engine will ever face meaningful competition,» said Kenneth Dintzer, the Justice Department's lead litigator.

TSMC, which is making an unprecedented push into chip manufacturing overseas, is taking an increasingly optimistic view of Japan as a production base, two industry sources said, as problems persist at its new factory in Arizona. TSMC, the world's largest contract chipmaker, is frustrated in Arizona, the sources said, where it has struggled to recruit workers for the gruelling chipmaking trade and faced pushback from unions on efforts to bring in workers from Taiwan.

“Corrections, whether through consolidation over time or absolute fall, cannot be ruled out in such instances. However, at the index level, we expect mid and small-cap outperformance over large-cap to persist over the next 12 to 18 months,” says Anand Rathi, Founder & Chairman, Anand Rathi Group. In an interview with ETMarkets, Rathi, said: “Currently, the future profits prognosis for mid- and small-cap firms appears to be more promising than that of large-cap stocks” Edited excerpts:Nifty@20,000 but it seems to be finding some resistance at higher levels – What is your take on markets at present?The Indian equities market has risen throughout the current fiscal year after remaining range-bound since October 2021. In the last 12 months, the large-cap has gained roughly 12%, the midcap around 25%, and the small cap over 30%.