Crypto’s Last Week
This edition of “Crypto’s Last Week” accounts for some of the most notable, and crypto-related — institutional, investment, or regulatory — news published between Saturday, November 21, 2020, and Friday, November 27, 2020
What do two of the most renowned universities and crypto have in common? Arguably it could be said that Oxford or Cambridge sit atop the list of higher education institutions with a select few such as Harvard and M.I.T. while cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, for many, sit in a similar if not superior asset class like gold,
Recently APEX:E3, a crypto algorithmic trading firm, announced their participation in what seems to be only a straightforward asset trading competition, but what seems to add to the “Oxbridge” rivalry of centuries now in the trading of the newest asset class known to humans.
APEX:E3 has disclosed that the trading competition has been active since November 16, that students have been building up algorithms extending to machine-learning and neural networks among others. The crypto firm is also providing all involved participants from the math and computer science departments access to the firm’s API, technical support, mentorship, and even a certain amount of capital.
Dr. Quentin Stafford-Fraser, Department of Computer Science, University of Cambridge, stated:
“Algorithmic Trading is an important use of many areas of cutting-edge Computer Science in today’s world, and by turning it into a competition, APEX:E3 has created a fun and risk-free way for students to learn about the industry and bring their creativity and expertise to bear on the particular challenges of this domain.”
This innovative competition also brings the likes of FTX, Coinbase Pro, Six Digital Exchange, LMAX Digital, and ConsenSys Mesh as important partners to make this event possible.
Making this a norm within the higher education environment is a critical aspect of promoting the future generations to understand the inner workings of algorithmic trading and crypto assets, leaving behind the fringe-like impression of crypto traders and encouraging highly prepared individuals to push the boundaries of technological advancements, planting the seed for future ground-breaking technologies.
Cointelegraph has recently reported preliminary results of a Deloitte survey focused on the outlook of the financial services for 2021, which includes the role blockchain will have in the upcoming year and the tentative number of institutions that are willing to increase their investment in the application of this technological enhancement to their operations.
The auditing giant and member of the “Big Four” brings this latest round of information to light after a February report had released positive results, indicating 39% of 1,488 senior executives in 14 countries had responded positively to having incorporated blockchain at their companies. With the numbers increasing when only accounting for companies above $100 million in revenue, with the highlight of China having 59% of respondents included within the companies that were working with blockchain, compared to 31% in the United States.
This most recent survey reflects a positive evolution on the previous one while being more exclusively focused on institutions that posted a $1 billion revenue in 2019. According to the information shared on the crypto news media site “27% of the institutions surveyed expect a “slight increase in spend” for blockchain and distributed ledger technology, while 14% are expecting a large increase. A further 33% expect no change, with the remaining 27% looking to cut their expenditure slightly.”
The survey also seems to have revealed that blockchain is not only polarizing as part of a larger group of emerging technologies, but only second to cloud computing regarding the expected increase in expenditure.
Thank you for joining us and reading “Crypto’s Last Week.”
Don’t forget to follow us for a daily review of cryptocurrency and blockchain news on Twitter and LinkedIn.
