The Bucharest – Ilfov region is expected to attract over a third of all new mortgage loans granted countrywide in 2025 and the Romanian mortgage market is projected to exceed the EUR5 billion threshold, according to a report by Ipotecare.ro and financial consultancy firm SVN Credit Romania.
Hidden Road’s clients in the US can now trade cash-settled OTC swaps across major crypto assets, marking one of the first product launches following its acquisition by Ripple. Ripple’s newly acquired prime broker, Hidden Road, has launched cryptocurrency swaps for institutional investors in the United States. The service allows US institutional clients to trade cash-settled over-the-counter (OTC) swaps across multiple major crypto assets, Hidden Road announced on May 28. The new OTC swap product is offered by Hidden Road Partners, the company’s entity regulated by the United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). Read more
While regulators in Europe and the US debate crypto’s future, young Africans are already using blockchain to solve pressing challenges from unstable currencies to internet access. While blockchain headlines in the West often focus on speculation and regulation, in Africa, it’s a different story, one rooted in necessity, innovation and grassroots adoption. The latest episode of The Clear Crypto Podcast explores this ground-up revolution with Kevin Imani, head of StarkWare’s Africa Venture Studio, who shares how communities across the continent are using blockchain to tackle real-world problems in finance, energy and connectivity. “Young students were using blockchain before it was mainstream,” Imani explained. From Kenya to Nigeria, local needs, not hype, drove early adoption. Read more
Bitcoin price hovers around the $111K all-time highs, and multiple onchain and technical data suggests that the upside is not over for BTC. Key takeaways: Bitcoin’s price consolidates below its all-time high of nearly $112,000. Whale accumulation, strong ETF inflows and other factors suggest BTC is on track to $120,000. Read more
Tim Berners-Lee said at ETH Prague that if he were designing a domain system today, he would make it more decentralized, in a nod to concerns over DNS centralization. World Wide Web and hypertext markup language (HTML) inventor Tim Berners-Lee said that if he were building a domain name service (DNS) today, he would make it “more decentralized.” Speaking at ETH Prague on stage alongside Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, Berners-Lee reflected on early internet architecture decisions. “If I could go back […] I would make it more decentralized,“ he said. Read more