Category — Digital Currency

FX Week just announced their e-FX awards for this year.  FX Week is a trade magazine for the forex market that focuses mainly on institutional investing (banks, funds, etc.), but there’s something for retail investors as well.  They give out these awards every year to recognize those companies in the industry who have the best electronic presence and services for their customers. 

            Any company working in e-FX could have been nominated for an award.  And with FX Week recognized as the preeminent weekly paper for the forex market, its yearly awards confer to its recipients a recognition of excellence.  Those who win an e-FX Award have set themselves apart from their competitors and demonstrated to their customers the quality of their offerings.  So without further ado, here’s a list of this year’s e-FX Award recipients (broken down by category:

THE WINNERS

* Best electronic brokerGFI
 
* Best trading technology vendor

Currenex
 
* Most innovative bank e-trading platform

Deutsche Bank
 
* e-FX initiative of the year (bank)

Citi
 
* e-FX initiative of the year (vendor)

FXMarketSpace
 
* Best post-trade services to clients

UBS
 
* Best vendor for post-trade services

DEALHub
 
* Best professional e-trading venue

FXall
 
* Best algorithmic trading technology (bank)

Credit Suisse
 
* Best algorithmic trading technology (vendor)

FlexTrade
 
* Best retail platform

Saxo Bank
 
* Best liquidity outsourcing service

Deutsche Bank
 
* Achievement Award

Lars Seier Christensen and Kim Fournais
Saxo Bank
 

Congratulations to everyone!

More and more companies are creating their own currencies for online exchange of goods and services. With Microsoft’s release of their iPod clone, they created a system where customers buy ‘points’ to purchase media. Some have a negative views on it, like applematters.com:

Adding a completely unnecessary layer of confusion is, in and of itself, a bad thing. But it wouldn’t be Microsoft if they didn’t go that extra mile to rape their customers. You see, when you buy these “points” you can’t buy them as you need them, you have to purchase them in Microsoft defined denominations. In other words, Microsoft just invented a currency and they require you to invest in this currency before they can sell you any music. And just if you were wondering, here are the denominations:

$5 = 400 points
$15 = 1200 points
$25 = 2000 points
$50 = 4000 points

But wait, it gets BETTER! There isn’t a 1 to 1 correspondence between the value of a “point” and the value of a penny. Let me break out some math for you:

If
$5 = 400 points
then
$1 = 80 points
therefore
100 cents = 80 points
meaning
1 cent = .8 points
or
1 point = 1.25 cents

But one company stands out above the rest for a new digital currency. Linden’s Lab’s Second Life has not only a currency with a exchange rate, but one can actually trade it like they would trade the EUR/USD! The USD/SLL is the US Dollar against the Linden Dollar. There’s market data on the company’s website and even a site that offers charts and currency exchange. You can see charts of price and even volume, like this one:

Chart made using slexchange.com.