The outage appears to have been caused by a recent update to CrowdStrike security software, which is common to many Microsoft machines. The update is believed to have caused computers to repeatedly crash and display ‘blue screens of death’.

The outage has affected a wide range of businesses and organizations, including:

Airlines: United Airlines, Delta Air Lines, American Airlines, Lufthansa, Qantas, Cathay Pacific

Banks: Denizbank, Israel Central Bank

Stock exchanges: London Stock Exchange, Nasdaq

Broadcasting: Sky News

Hospitals: Israel Ministry of Health, emergency services

Hotels: Ocean Park Marriott

The outage has caused major disruptions to operations, including:

Flight cancellations and delays

Banking transactions

Stock trading

News broadcasting

Medical care

Hotel check-ins

Microsoft is currently investigating the outage and working on a fix. The company has advised users to avoid restarting their computers until the issue has been resolved.

The post Microsoft outage causes global crisis: Windows systems crash worldwide appeared first on Coin Engineer.

21Shares and Low Trading Volumes

Unlike U.S. exchange-traded funds, only professional investors are allowed to trade the products, and bringing them up to the retail sector would be a “game changer,” says one of the issuers, 21Shares.

In the UK, 21Shares sells four bitcoin and four ether-backed cross-listed products. WisdomTree oversees two Bitcoin and two Ethereum ETNs; Invesco also provides two products with bitcoin backing. Crypto ETNs must be physically backed, non-leveraged, and expose just bitcoin or ether if they are to be listed on the LSE.

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WisdomTree estimates 59% of the trading volume and 21Shares at 41%; hence, the total turnover for all the products combined amounts to just $504,880 as of June 6. Data from 21Shares shows that thus far, Invesco products have seen 0% trading volume.

The four UK crypto products from WisdomTree have witnessed relative trading volumes thus far. But with 76% of its trading volumes coming from Ethereum among 21Shares‘ products, they have been more successful. Inside that, without a staking payout, 21Shares‘ Ethereum Staking ETPs have witnessed about 57% more trading volume than its Core Ethereum product.

21Shares’ Market Strategy

Based on the statistics shown, 21Shares‘ products keep the tightest average daily spread among the crypto ETNs on the LSE. An essential gauge of the cost of trading and the liquidity of the products on offer, the spread is the average difference between the bid (buy) price and the ask (sell) price of an ETN over a trading day.

Professional traders will usually purchase and sell financial products straight with another party outside of official exchanges like the LSE or via the most liquid exchange, 21Shares observed.

While the FCA opening up the UK market to professional traders is a “huge step in the right direction,” as these are also cross-listed products, meaning the financial instruments are listed and traded on multiple exchanges across different countries or regions, the low trading volumes were “in line with expectations,” 21Shares UK Head Alex Pollak told The Block.

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“Professional investors will trade on markets with the most liquidity, which as of yet is Deutsche Börse Xetra,” Pollak added. For trade in German shares and European ETPs, Xetra serves as the reference market. First to launch crypto ETPs on Xetra in July 2020, 21Shares.

But the FCA and LSE’s “stamp of approval” has meant that many wealth and private banking platforms are now actively thinking about how they might either offer or add a bitcoin or ether allocation to professional client portfolios, Pollak said. Once the platforms finish their onboarding process, we anticipate seeing more trading volume, he said.

“We still believe the FCA approval for professional investors in the UK is a really important step for the asset class. We look forward to the market opening up for retail at some future time, which will be more of a ‘game changer,'” Pollak said.

The post 21Shares: Retail Access to Crypto ETNs a Game Changer appeared first on Coin Engineer.

In a press release dated March 11, the London Stock Exchange (LSE) announced its plans to commence accepting applications for the admission of Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) crypto exchange-traded notes (ETNs) in the second quarter of 2024. While the precise launch date remains undisclosed, the LSE intends to reveal it “in due course,” indicating that applications will be accepted following the guidelines outlined in the crypto ETN factsheet.

According to the factsheet, crypto ETNs will be eligible for trading on the LSE exclusively for professional investors and will fall under designated trading segments. Issuers will have the option to offer up to three different currency lines for each crypto ETN, as stated in the factsheet.

Furthermore, the document specifies that custody of underlying crypto assets for ETNs must primarily be in cold storage. While the LSE provides limited details on this requirement, it emphasizes that custodians must comply with anti-money laundering regulations in jurisdictions such as the U.K., E.U., Jersey, Switzerland, or the U.S.

Following the announcement, Bitcoin’s price surged above $71,000, with ETH also experiencing a significant increase above $4,000. However, it remains unclear whether the LSE’s decision had a direct impact on the appreciation of cryptocurrency prices.

For the London Stock Exchange, this latest move toward embracing the web3 landscape is not entirely unprecedented. The stock exchange has been exploring the potential applications of blockchain technology, including the prospect of facilitating blockchain-based trading for traditional financial assets, for some time. In September 2023, the London Stock Exchange Group unveiled plans to introduce blockchain-based trading for traditional financial assets, reflecting a strategic shift driven by the anticipated benefits of integrating blockchain within traditional markets.

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