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Digital assets and currencies

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Finance

Skattrannsóknarstjóri ríkisins

Skattrannsóknarstjóri ríkisins, also known as the Directorate of Tax Investigations (DTI) is responsible for investigating legal cases where suspicions of tax fraud, tax evasion, or other violations of tax law are found within Iceland. The DTI is accountable to the Minister of Finance.

Trading basics

Slippage (finance)

In finance and the stock market, slippage is the difference between the execution price expected by the trader (usually the one indicated by the trading software) and the one at which the transaction actually happens. Market impact, liquidity, and frictional costs may contribute to slippage.

Assets

Smart contract

A smart contract is a computer program or a transaction protocol that is intended to automatically execute, control or document events and actions according to the terms of a contract or an agreement. The objectives of smart contracts are the reduction of need for trusted intermediators, arbitration costs, and fraud losses, as well as the reduction of malicious and accidental exceptions.

Fiat currencies

Smithsonian Agreement

The Smithsonian Agreement, announced in December 1971, created a new dollar standard, whereby the currencies of a number of industrialized states were pegged to the US dollar. These currencies were allowed to fluctuate by 2.25% against the dollar. The Smithsonian Agreement was created when the Group of Ten (G-10) states (Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Sw

Fiat currencies

Snake in the tunnel

The snake in the tunnel was a system of European monetary cooperation in the 1970s which aimed at limiting fluctuations between different European currencies. It was the first attempt at European monetary cooperation. It attempted to create a single currency band for the European Economic Community (EEC), essentially pegging all the EEC currencies to one another.

Finance

Social trading

Social trading is a form of investing that allows investors to observe the trading behavior of their peers and expert traders. The primary objective is to follow their investment strategies using copy trading or mirror trading. Social trading requires little or no knowledge about financial markets.

Networks

Solana (blockchain platform)

Solana is a public blockchain platform that uses a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism and provides smart contract functionality. The platform's native cryptocurrency is SOL. Solana was founded in 2018 by Toly Yakovenko and Raj Gokal, and the network was launched in March 2020 by their San Francisco-based company, Solana Labs.

Finance

Sovereign wealth fund

A sovereign wealth fund (SWF), or sovereign investment fund, is a state-owned investment fund that invests in real and financial assets such as stocks, bonds, real estate, precious metals, or in alternative investments such as private equity funds or hedge funds. Sovereign wealth funds invest globally. Most SWFs are funded by revenues from commodity exports or from foreign exchange reser

Fiat currencies

Spahn tax

A Spahn tax is a type of currency transaction tax that is meant to be used for the purpose of controlling exchange-rate volatility. This idea was proposed by Paul Bernd Spahn in 1995.

Fiat currencies

Special drawing rights

Special drawing rights (SDRs, code XDR) are a supplementary foreign exchange reserve asset defined and maintained by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). SDRs are the units of account for the IMF, and not a currency; rather, SDR value is based on a basket of currencies, the specific composition of which is reviewed every five years. SDRs represent a claim to currency held by IMF member

Trading basics

Special-purpose acquisition company

A special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC; ), also known as a blank check company or a blind-pool stock offering, is a shell corporation listed on a stock exchange with the purpose of acquiring (or merging with) a private company, thus taking the private company public through a procedure which requires fewer regulatory filings and has fewer safeguards for investors than the initial pu

Finance

Speculation

In finance, speculation is the purchase of an asset (a commodity, goods, or real estate) with the hope that that asset will become more valuable in a brief amount of time.

Finance

Spoofing (finance)

Spoofing is a disruptive algorithmic trading activity employed by traders to outpace other market participants and to manipulate markets. Spoofers feign interest in trading futures, stocks, and other products in financial markets creating an illusion of the demand and supply of the traded asset. In an order driven market, spoofers post a relatively large number of limit orders on one sid

Assets

Stablecoin

A stablecoin is a type of cryptocurrency that aims to maintain a stable value relative to a specified asset, a pool or basket of assets. The specified asset might refer to fiat currency, commodity, or other cryptocurrencies. Despite the name, stablecoins are not necessarily stable. Stablecoins rely on stabilization tools such as reserve assets or algorithms that match supply and demand

Trading basics

Statistical arbitrage

In finance, statistical arbitrage (Stat Arb or StatArb) is a class of short-term financial trading strategies that employ mean reversion models involving broadly diversified portfolios of securities (hundreds to thousands) held for short periods of time (generally seconds to days). These strategies are supported by substantial mathematical, computational, and trading platforms.

Assets

Stellar (payment network)

Stellar, or Stellar Lumens (symbol: XLM), is a cryptocurrency protocol which allows transactions between any pair of currencies.

Finance

STET-CORE

The STET-CORE system is a French interbank automated clearing house. STET SA, whose name refers to Systèmes Technologiques d'Echange et de Traitement (lit. 'Exchange and Processing Technological Systems'), is the system's operating company, based in Paris La Défense. CORE, whose name refers to COmpensation REtail (compensation being French for clearing), is the main platform developed by

Trading basics

Stock

Stocks (also capital stock, or sometimes interchangeably, shares) consist of all the shares by which ownership of a corporation or company is divided. A single share of the stock means fractional ownership of the corporation in proportion to the total number of shares. This typically entitles the shareholder (stockholder) to that fraction of the company's earnings, proceeds from liquidat

Securities & exchanges

Stock exchange

A stock exchange, securities exchange, or bourse is an exchange where stockbrokers and traders can buy and sell securities, such as shares of stock, bonds and other financial instruments. Stock exchanges may also provide facilities for the issue and redemption of such securities and instruments and capital events including the payment of income and dividends. Securities traded on a stock

Finance

Stock market crashes in India

Since the beginning of the Bombay stock exchange, stock markets in India, particularly the Bombay Stock Exchange and National Stock Exchange of India have seen a number of booms as well as crashes.

Payments & settlement

SWIFT

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), legally S.W.I.F.T. SC, is a cooperative established in 1973 in Belgium (French: Société Coopérative) and owned by the banks and other member firms that use its service. SWIFT provides the main messaging network through which international payments are initiated. It also sells software and services to financial insti

Finance

Swing trading

Swing trading is a speculative trading strategy in financial markets where a tradable asset is held for one or more days in an effort to profit from price changes or swings. A swing trading position is typically held longer than a day trading position, but shorter than buy-and-hold investment strategies that can be held for months or years. Profits can be sought by either buying an asse

Finance

Taleb distribution

In economics and finance, a Taleb distribution is the statistical profile of an investment which normally provides a payoff of small positive returns, while carrying a small but significant risk of catastrophic losses. The term was coined by journalist Martin Wolf and economist John Kay to describe investments with a "high probability of a modest gain and a low probability of huge losses

Banking

TARGET2-Securities

TARGET2-Securities, in shorthand T2S, is the Eurosystem's platform for securities settlement in central bank money. T2S offers centralised delivery-versus-payment (DvP) settlement across several European securities markets, without being itself a central securities depository (CSD) since it does not offer CSD services such as custody or asset servicing.

Trading basics

Taxation of private equity and hedge funds

Private equity funds and hedge funds are private investment vehicles used to pool investment capital, usually for a small group of large institutional or wealthy individual investors. They are subject to favorable regulatory treatment in most jurisdictions from which they are managed, which allows them to engage in financial activities that are off-limits for more regulated companies.

Fiat currencies

Technical analysis

In finance, technical analysis is an analysis methodology for analysing and forecasting the direction of prices through the study of past market data, primarily price and volume. As a type of active management, it stands in contradiction to much of modern portfolio theory. The efficacy of technical analysis is disputed by the efficient-market hypothesis, which states that stock market pr

Networks

Terra (blockchain)

Terra is a blockchain protocol and payment platform used for algorithmic stablecoins. The project was created in 2018 by Terraform Labs, a startup co-founded by Do Kwon and Daniel Shin. It is best known for its Terra algorithmic stablecoin and the associated LUNA reserve asset cryptocurrency.

Networks

Tezos

Tezos is an open-source blockchain that can execute peer-to-peer transactions and serve as a platform for deploying smart contracts. The native cryptocurrency for the Tezos blockchain is the tez (ISO 4217: XTZ; sign: ꜩ). The Tezos network achieves consensus using proof-of-stake. Tezos uses an on-chain governance model that enables the protocol to be amended when upgrade proposals receive

Assets

The DAO

The DAO was a digital decentralized autonomous organization and a form of investor-directed venture capital fund. After launching in April 2016 via a token sale, it became one of the largest crowdfunding campaigns in history, but it ceased activity after much of its funds - in the form of US$ exchanged for "Ether-crypto coins" - were taken in a hack in June 2016.

Fiat currencies

The Great Debasement

The Great Debasement (1544–1551) was a currency debasement policy introduced in 1544 England under the order of Henry VIII which saw the amount of precious metal in gold and silver coins reduced and in some cases replaced entirely with cheaper base metals such as copper. Overspending by Henry VIII to pay for his lavish lifestyle and to fund foreign wars with France and Scotland are cited

Finance

ThetaRay

ThetaRay is a fintech software and big data analytics company with headquarters in Hod HaSharon, Israel and New York, and offices in Madrid, London, and Singapore.

Payments & settlement

Threshold pledge system

The threshold pledge or fund and release system is a way of making a fundraising pledge as a group of individuals, often involving charitable goals or financing the provision of a public good. An amount of money is set as the goal or threshold to reach for the specified purpose and interested individuals will pitch in, but the money at first either remains with the pledgers or is held in

Finance

Timeline of artificial intelligence risks in global finance

The following article is a broad timeline of the course of events related to artificial intelligence risks in global finance.

Finance

Tracfin

Tracfin (acronym for Traitement du renseignement et action contre les circuits financiers clandestins, "Intelligence Processing and Action Against Clandestine Financial Circuits") is a service of the French Ministry of Finance. It fights money laundering.

Securities & exchanges

Tracking stock

Tracking stock (also known as letter stock and targeted stock) is a specialized equity offering issued by a company that is based on the operations of a defined business within the larger organization (such as, for instance, a wholly owned subsidiary of a diversified firm). Therefore, the tracking stock will be traded at a price related to the operations of the specific division of the c

Finance

Trade (finance)

In finance, a trade is an exchange of a security such as stocks, bonds, commodities, currencies, derivatives or any valuable financial instrument for "cash". Such a financial transaction is usually done by participants of an exchange such as a stock exchange, commodity exchange or futures exchange with a short-dated promise to pay in the currency of the country where the 'exchange' is lo

Finance

Trading room

A trading room gathers traders operating on financial markets. The trading room is also often called the front office. The terms "dealing room" and "trading floor" are also used, the latter being inspired from that of an open outcry stock exchange. As open outcry is gradually replaced by electronic trading, the trading room becomes the only remaining place that is emblematic of the finan

Networks

Transient-key cryptography

Transient-key cryptography is a form of public-key cryptography wherein keypairs are generated and assigned to brief intervals of time instead of to individuals or organizations, and the blocks of cryptographic data are chained through time. In a transient-key system, private keys are used briefly and then destroyed, which is why it is sometimes nicknamed “disposable crypto.” Data encryp

Fiat currencies

Triangular arbitrage

Triangular arbitrage (also referred to as cross currency arbitrage or three-point arbitrage) is the act of exploiting an arbitrage opportunity resulting from a pricing discrepancy among three different currencies in the foreign exchange market. A triangular arbitrage strategy involves three trades, exchanging the initial currency for a second, the second currency for a third, and the thi

Fiat currencies

Triffin dilemma

In international finance, the Triffin dilemma (sometimes the Triffin paradox) is the conflict of economic interests that arises between short-term domestic and long-term international objectives for countries whose currencies serve as global reserve currencies. This dilemma was identified in the 1960s by Belgian-American economist Robert Triffin. He noted that a country whose currency i

Networks

Tron (blockchain)

Tron (stylized in all caps) is a decentralized, proof-of-stake blockchain with smart contract functionality. The cryptocurrency native to the blockchain is known as Tronix (TRX). It was founded in March 2014 by Justin Sun and, since 2017, has been overseen and supervised by the TRON Foundation, a non-profit organization in Singapore, established in the same year. It is open-source softwa

Finance

U.S. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve

The Strategic Bitcoin Reserve is a proposed reserve asset, funded by the United States Department of the Treasury's forfeited bitcoin, announced by United States president Donald Trump in March 2025. The creation of the United States Digital Asset Stockpile for non-bitcoin assets was also announced. Trump has previously stated that he wants the United States to become the "crypto capita

Securities & exchanges

UNIDROIT

UNIDROIT (formally, the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law; French: Institut international pour l'unification du droit privé) is an intergovernmental organization whose objective is to harmonize private international law across countries through uniform rules, international conventions, and the production of model laws, sets of principles, guides and guidelines. E

Fiat currencies

United States dollar

The United States dollar (symbol: $; currency code: USD) is the official currency of the United States (U.S.) and several other countries. The U.S. Coinage Act of 1792 established the dollar as the base unit, with each dollar divided into 100 cents (symbol: ¢). U.S. banknotes are issued in the form of Federal Reserve Notes, popularly called greenbacks due to their predominantly green col

Fiat currencies

United Stock Exchange of India

United Stock Exchange of India Limited, also known as the United Stock Exchange (USE), is an Indian government owned stock exchange. It is the 4th pan-India exchange launched for trading financial instruments in India. USE represents the commitment of 21 Indian public sector banks, private banks, international banks and corporate houses to build an institution of repute. Mr. Gaurav Arora

Banking

Universal bank

A universal bank is a type of bank which participates in many kinds of banking activities and is both a commercial bank and an investment bank as well as providing other financial services such as insurance. These are also called full-service financial firms, although there can also be full-service investment banks which provide wealth and asset management, trading, underwriting, researc

Assets

Unspent transaction output

In cryptocurrencies, an unspent transaction output (UTXO, often capitalized as UTxO) is a distinctive element in a subset of digital currency models. A UTXO represents a certain amount of cryptocurrency that has been authorized by a sender and is available to be spent by a recipient. The utilization of UTXOs in transaction processes is a key feature of many cryptocurrencies, but it prima

Securities & exchanges

Value investing

Value investing is an investment paradigm that involves buying securities that appear underpriced by some form of fundamental analysis. Modern value investing derives from the investment philosophy taught by Benjamin Graham and David Dodd at Columbia Business School starting in 1928 and subsequently developed in their 1934 text Security Analysis.

Securities & exchanges

Vanna–Volga pricing

The Vanna–Volga method is a mathematical tool used in finance. It is a technique for pricing first-generation exotic options in foreign exchange market (FX) derivatives.

Assets

Virtual currency law in Iran

In 2018, Iran recognized cryptocurrency mining as a legal industry in order to monitor and regulate the mining farms that were already operating. In December 2025 Iranian regime globally banned any and all transaction and transfer of cryptocurrency and along with that of in gold. In July 2018, President Hassan Rouhani's administration declared its intention of launching a national crypto

Finance

Volatility arbitrage

In finance, volatility arbitrage (vol arb) is a term for financial arbitrage techniques directly dependent and based on volatility.

Trading basics

Vulture fund

A vulture fund is a hedge fund or private-equity fund that invests in debt considered to be very weak or in default, known as distressed debt. Investors in the fund profit by buying debt at a discounted price on a secondary market and then using numerous methods to sell the debt for more than the purchasing price. Debtors include companies, countries, and individuals.

Payments & settlement

Wero

Wero is a European digital wallet and instant account-to-account payment service developed by the European Payments Initiative (EPI). It was launched in Germany on 2 July 2024, followed by France and Belgium later that year. Wero is currently available in Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. Leading Austrian banks are planning to introduce the service.

Assets

WhopperCoin

WhopperCoin was a cryptocurrency launched by the Russian branch of Burger King as a loyalty program in the summer of 2017. It was primarily notable for being the first issuance of branded cryptocurrency by a major company and the first form of loyalty points that could be traded freely; the BBC noted that Burger King was the "first major corporate brand to issue its own crypto-cash", wit

Fiat currencies

World currency

A world currency, supranational currency, or global currency is a currency that is widely used in international finance or in international trade to price goods or other transactions. It is generally a currency which is stable in terms of inflation and has a high demand on the foreign exchange market. Greek and Roman coins were the first world currency, followed by Dutch guilders in the

Finance

World Liberty Financial

World Liberty Financial (WLFI) is a decentralized finance protocol developed by its namesake company. It was founded in 2024 by Zachary Folkman, Chase Herro, Alex Witkoff, Zach Witkoff, and Trump family members. It is a business venture of the Trump family. The Trump family receives 75% of net proceeds when WLFI sells tokens, as well as gets a cut of stablecoin profits. By December 2025,

Fiat currencies

XRP Ledger

The XRP Ledger (XRPL), also called the Ripple Protocol, is a cryptocurrency platform launched in 2012 by Ripple Labs. The XRPL employs the native cryptocurrency known as XRP, and supports tokens, cryptocurrency or other units of value such as frequent flyer miles or mobile minutes.

Finance

Yeouido

Yeouido (Korean: 여의도; lit. 'Yeoui Island'), also Yoido, is a river island on the Han River in Seoul, South Korea. It is Seoul's main finance, media, and investment banking district. It is 8.4 square kilometres (3.2 mi2) large and has a population of 32,674 as of August 2023.

Assets

Zcash

Zcash is a privacy-focused cryptocurrency which features an encrypted ledger using zero-knowledge proofs.