203 Exchange Invest Weekly Podcast July 22nd, 2023
Transcript:
This week in the parish of bourses and market structure:
Nigerian Derivatives Go Live
AIX Makes A Great Leap Forward
ASIC CHESS Intervention
And there’s a Big GIFT Horse Looking From India To The Rest Of The World
My name is Patrick L Young
Welcome to the bourse business weekly digest
It's the Exchange Invest Weekly Podcast Episode 203
Good day, ladies and gentlemen, this is a very brief reduction of highlights amongst the key headlines from the week in market structure. All the analysis of the many events and happenings from the past 7 days can be found in Exchange Invest daily subscriber newsletter, the unique guide to the bourse business sent daily to your inbox.
More details at ExchangeInvest.com In parish notes this week we were discussing The Lina Khan Dilemma.
Microsoft buying Activision (appears a raging certainty with Call of Duty staying on PlayStation for the next decade) thats not directly related to the parish of exchanges but one deal concerning the parish is ICE and Black Knight has been subjected to some fairly aggressive action from the FTC. But stay tuned, the FTC is on the retreat and that could mean great news for ICE.
Oh, and also stay tuned as we talk about ICE’s interesting deal of the week to further mitigate this process.
In Bitcarnage, we quoted this week, the former CEO of the bankrupt Celsius “Somebody is lying. Either the bank is lying or Celsius or lying.”
Well, it seems like the question was answered comprehensively this week with Alex Mashinsky and his bankrupt Celsius network not merely dead but as he has been arrested for both fraud by the CFTC and the SEC simultaneously with the DOJ it looks very game over for his long-term liberty facing, I do believe, a sheet of seven charges with a potential 107 plus year term in jail.
Meanwhile, Binance was “4:FUD!” with aplomb all week long and then there was The Curious Case of what we christened Schrödinger's crypto - a term later copied by others reporting the crypto space - where Ripple is at once not a security and is a security according to a very strange interim judgment and we expect one of those definitions to drop away in due course.
If you enjoyed this excerpt, you may be interested to know that you can read Bitcarnage every day in Exchange Invest. Alternatively, if you want to follow Bitcarnage as a standalone, the daily update and happenings in the world of crypto and digital assets then you can find it as a standalone on Substack Bitcarnage.
Exchange Invest Bitcarnage
Over in legacy exchanges this week, the European Union Court upholds Commission's decision on Clearstream in US sanctions on Iran. They were right to allow Clearstream Banking AG, a unit of Deutsche Boerse of course to comply with US sanctions on Iran and therefore interrupt payments to Tehran-controlled holding, the European Union's General Court had said.
Euroclear faces a $2 billion lawsuit from a Russian fund manager over well, the similar sort of shenanigans that have been going on in the world of Russian sanctions of late.
Meanwhile, in results, one set it's a private market albeit Astana International Exchange (AIX) has made a great leap forward in profits as it demonstrates robust listing and secondary markets. Great to see trading turnover of +82% and the official daily listener has 138 issues of securities of 92 different issuers.
After all those years you have to put in, it genuinely looks as if AIX is poised for liftoff. Stunning retail account growth too from 505,000 accounts to 858,000 in the past year alone.
New markets this week, the FMDQ Security Exchange Ltd and FMDQ clearing, a CCP arm, have gone live with Exchange Traded Derivatives in Nigeria.
Meanwhile Capturiant which are regulated in the Bahamas have some form of crypto digital assets exchange have launched a regulated environmental asset exchange market.
Deal news this week, it was busy at least concentrated on one done deal and one very exciting prospect. Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) and Black Knight announced an agreement to sell Black Knights Optimal Blue Business to Constellation Software Inc. That's a second ICE divestment within the ICE-Black Knight deal which remains stalled with US antitrust: Constellation well acquire Black Knights Optimal Blue Business for $700 million, presuming the FTC relents or its opposition is stymied by the courts.
Previous of course, ICE and Black Knight had announced that they had an agreement to sell Black Knight’s Empower loan origination software system (LOS) business, including its Exchange, LendingSpace, and AIVA solutions to a subsidiary of Constellation Software no less.
So two deals to Constellation Software in this great work to diversify or at least reduce the anti-trust threat to ICE.
Meanwhile, the big rumor of the week, the BSE (Bombay Stock Exchange), and the NSE (National Stock Exchange of India) may merge their international units at GIFT IFSC in order to create a joint international platform to sell India to the world via the GIFT offshore financial centre, as India retains all manner of ridiculous prescriptions against almost every foreign investor imaginable. Fascinating prospects from this possible deal and interesting to see the relatively new CEOs of both BSE and NSE coming together to make this deal, a possibility.
Meanwhile, if you're looking for some exciting summer reading, don't forget to pick up a copy of my most recent book “Victory or Death?” Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, and the FinTech World. It's a binary world, your career will sustain or collapse in the next stage of the digital marketplace, hence the title “Victory or Death?” and it's not to be barked out ladies and gentlemen, lest you need reminding of the exciting times for finance in which we are living. “Victory or Death?” is published by DV Books and is distributed by Ingram worldwide. Don't forget, if you're not sufficiently digital, the puppies will be coming for you.
While you're waiting for your copy of “Victory or Death?” to arrive, don't forget to check out our LiveStream Tuesday 6pm London, 1 o'clock New York time - the IPO video live show. Catch the back episodes on LinkedIn and YouTube via IPO-Vid.
This week show #114 was spectacular, we had a great financial futurist, journalist, and best-selling acclaimed author Hamish McRae visited us from Scotland and we were talking about his latest book The World in 2050, an absolute must-read.
Coming next week, we've got an exciting show with Susan Abbott Gidel and we'll be talking about Astrology, the Markets, and You.
Meanwhile, our “Finance Book Of The Week”, this week is a Dominic Frisby’s “Daylight Robbery”, where Dominic Frisby who was of course, our IPO-Vid guest for Episode 13 is offering an alternative vision of a system that is as old as civilization itself. A whirlwind journey through the history of taxation, from ancient Mesopotamia right up to the present day explaining the key dynamics of taxation around the world and arguing that governments are going to have to radically change who they tax and how if they're to succeed in the future.
Product news this week, Guangzhou Futures Exchange is going to start lithium carbonate futures trading from July 21st.
The CME is meanwhile planning a battery metals expansion with a second cobalt contract.
Most exciting news of the week in the storage world Shanghai Futures Exchange are targeting commodity storage outside China according to sources.
IOSCO criticism of credit-sensitive interest rate benchmarks, a clear problem for the AFX and their plans for a Ameribor derivatives now under new management of course, having been sold relatively recently. But it also demonstrates a clear problem with the regulatory nexus which continues to repeat the vision failures which have troubled regulators ever since they received permission to regulate
IOSCO is alas demonstrating its limitations where we need unbound markets to improve the lot of all borrowers and lenders.
Technology news this week, MCX may skip to the TCS platform before December according to a headline in Mint.
Those whose first reaction to this statement was “and pigs might fly” may not be wholly wide of the mark. cynical as that thought maybe.
Maybe just maybe TCS might install the new MCX IT stack before December but at the same time, if you're going to go around publicizing these sorts of things, does India not have an equivalent saying to “When you're in a hole, stop digging?”.
Speaking of those who've dug the most incredible hole for themselves, pretty much I think they've started in Sydney and dug their way to pretty much the center of the Earth, if not, perhaps right across the Pacific to somewhere completely different. ASIC has stepped in they're going to host an industry round table in support of ASX’s CHESS replacement project.
ASX meanwhile is going to prepare and develop a new high-level stakeholder advisory group following an ASIC request.
The poacher gamekeeper theme here is a most worrisome one. ASIC have taken a remarkable step (particularly given their frustrating history of prior non intervention) actually hosting a roundtable even if ASX can apparently create their own industry stakeholder advisory group, as the CHESS debacle looks to be an ongoing festering hole eating at the credibility of Australia as a financial center thanks to ASX’s past or indeed current (ongoing?) failures.
Regulation news this week, the Philippine SEC want more middle-sized and small to medium enterprises to tap capital markets.
IOSCO have published a final report to help their members develop sound and well-functioning compliance carbon markets.
Finally, in regulatory news this week, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler addressed the national Press Club in Washington DC, where his speech was predominantly about artificial intelligence.
Not a lot happening in career paths this week, Hong Kong Exchanges have announced senior appointments in mainland China Development. Zhou Jiannan joins as Head of Mainland Development and a member of the Management Committee. Zhou is succeeding Mao Zhirong, who becomes Strategic Advisor, Greater Bay Area and China commodities.
Meanwhile, in BigWorld there's only one thing worse than rejecting a real doozy of a business idea and that's finding out some Silicon Valley folks have invested at a weighty multiple. In the current social stage gripping planet Earth, governments are now trying to deliver innovations and big ideas, representing a whole new arena of means to waste taxpayers’ money.
In the BRICs, that interesting group of emerging markets, they're polishing a plan which sparkles only as - how can I put this delicately - dog’s post food trades can achieve.
Yes, the BRICS, aka the government of:
Brazil - which are very, very hard to trust on fiscal matters, to put it mildly, and somewhat volatile, having gone from somewhat right wing to very, very hard left wing of the course of the last year alone.
Russia - who are well their government seems to be hard to trust on any matter, to put it mildly.
India - which is going places but with an inveterate conviction from a regulatory blob, that intervention is the key role of government come what may.
China - which allows folks to do stuff around the edges, but believes this is the exception to its control of everything.
South Africa - which doesn't really intervene, just trousers, everything it can and then wonders why the expensive bits of the power stations are gone AWOL. And indeed, why this formerly the largest national economy in Africa is not only the third largest national economy on the continent of Africa.
Anyway, that group is proposing a new gold-backed currency to wipe out the US dollar and its exorbitant privilege.
Can anybody see a flaw here? Apart from the issuer, it's tough to trust based on past performance amongst any of them. A curious case of the financial infrastructure, which in and of itself is a sanctions issue for many, and in any case quite where / how would such money trade freely without the threat of being restricted if not confiscated, on which all BRICS members have formed in one or both elements.
Western ‘meeja’ meanwhile are ‘bigging’ the whole thing up as if it has coherence.
And on that mysterious and magnificent note, ladies and gentlemen, my name is Patrick L. Young creator of markets the world over, builder of exchanges, and indeed publisher of Exchange Invest.
Join us at ExchangeInvest.com if you want to join the exchange of information and learn what's happening in the bourse business in every possible aspect.
I wish you all a great week in blockchain, life, and markets.
LINKS:
EU Court Upholds Commission's Decision On Clearstream And U.S. Sanctions On Iran
Reuters
Euroclear Faces $2b Lawsuit From Russian Fund Manager
Regulation Asia
AIX Presents Its Results For 1H 2023
AIX
FMDQ Exchange-Traded Derivatives Market Goes Live
Daily Trust
Capturiant Launches Regulated Environmental Asset Exchange
EIN News
BSE, NSE May Merge International Units At GIFT IFSC
The Hindu BusinessLine
Guangzhou Futures Exchange To Start Lithium Carbonate Futures Trading From July 21
Nasdaq
CME Plans Battery Metals Expansion With Second Cobalt Contract
Bloomberg Law News
Exclusive: Shanghai Futures Exchange Targets Commodity Storage Outside China - Sources
Reuters
IOSCO Criticism Dents AFX's Plans For Ameribor Derivatives
Risk.net
MCX May Skip To TCS' Platform Before Dec
Mint
ASIC To Host Industry Roundtable In Support Of ASX’s CHESS Replacement Project
ASIC
ASX Prepares To Develop New High-Level Stakeholder Advisory Group Following ASIC Request
ASX
SEC Wants MSMEs To Tap Capital Markets
The Philippine Star
HKEX Announces Senior Appointments On Mainland China Development
HKEX
Member discussion