Retail investors spent the second quarter of 2026 positioning themselves along the plumbing of the artificial intelligence economy rather than its headline names, buying into memory chipmakers, nuclear power operators and commercial space companies. New quarterly data from trading platform eToro, which tracks proportional changes in the number of holders across its global user base, shows flash storage maker SanDisk recorded the sharpest rise in holders of any stock, up 151%.

Ripple has secured full authorisation as a Crypto-Asset Service Provider from Luxembourg's financial regulator, completing its compliance under the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation and clearing the way to offer regulated cryptoasset services across all 30 countries of the European Economic Area. The Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier confirmed the CASP licence on 6 July 2026, converting the preliminary "Green Light Letter" the regulator issued on 23 June

MDOTM closes $27M, Robinhood launches its own chain for tokenized stocks, and Orion earns an AI cert. WealthTech's AI reset is here.

Financial advisers using Iress's Xplan platform can now launch PlannerPal's AI workflow tools directly from within Xplan via single sign-on, the two firms announced on 6 July 2026, extending a partnership that already covers hundreds of UK advice and wealth management firms overseeing more than £150 billion in client assets. What Has Changed in the Iress-PlannerPal Partnership? The update, delivered through the Iress Partnership programme, removes a login step that previously

Deepfake fraud up 495%, DORA turns punitive, and EUDI Wallet ships. What CISOs at banks need to know this week.

FinanceX Magazine is proud to announce its official media partnership with the Handelsblatt Banking Summit 2026, one of Europe's most influential gatherings for the banking and fintech community. The summit takes place on 2-3 September 2026, at Cape Europe in Frankfurt, Germany, bringing together leaders from politics, regulatory bodies, and the financial sector to confront the industry's most pressing challenges. Recognized for hosting the highest density of board members of

Open USD launches, MiCA bites, Mastercard settles on-chain, and BofA goes instant. Inside the week payments quietly rewired itself.

Sweden's private services sector expanded at its fastest pace in seven months in June, with the Purchasing Managers' Index for services climbing to 56.6 from 54.2 in May, according to data released by Swedbank and the Silf purchasing managers' panel. The reading, the highest since November 2025, pushed the index above its long-run average of 55.6 for only the second time this year and arrived alongside a composite PMI of 57.1, itself the strongest since November. The improvem

As of this week, the SEC is drafting its future around digital assets, the DTCC is weeks away from live tokenised trades, and Honeywell just spun quantum computing into its own ticker symbol. Welcome to the summer where the "frontier" started producing actual revenue. For most of the past decade, "technology frontier" in financial services meant a slide deck about blockchain that ended with the phrase "watch this space." As of the last week of June 2026, "this space" has furn