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Digital assets and currencies

Understand assets, networks and trading mechanics with sources you can check.

Fiat currencies

Ben Bernanke

Ben Shalom Bernanke ( bər-NANG-kee; born December 13, 1953) is an American economist who served as the 14th chairman of the Federal Reserve from 2006 to 2014. After leaving the Federal Reserve, he was appointed a distinguished fellow at the Brookings Institution. During his tenure as chairman, Bernanke oversaw the Federal Reserve's response to the 2008 financial crisis, for which he was

Finance

Benefice

A benefice () or living is a reward received, usually in exchange for (or as a consequence of) services rendered; such payment also operates as a retainer to help ensure the delivery of such services, or fulfilment of the duties of the relevant office, into the future. The term is still used, although the substance of benefices has recently changed, in many historical parishes and positi

Securities & exchanges

Beneficial ownership

In domestic and international commercial law, a beneficial owner is a natural person (or persons) who ultimately owns or controls an interest in a legal entity or arrangement, such as a company, trust, or foundation. Legal owners (i.e. owners of record), commonly described as registered owners, may hold those interests as beneficial owners or for the benefit of someone else, in which cas

Trading basics

Benihana

Benihana (Japanese: 紅花; "Safflower") is a chain of Japanese restaurants. Originally founded by Yunosuke Aoki as a cafe in Tokyo in 1945, Benihana spread to the United States in 1964 when his son Hiroaki "Rocky" Aoki opened its first restaurant in New York City.

Trading basics

Bennett S. LeBow

Bennett S. LeBow is an American businessman and philanthropist. He is the founder and chairman of the board of Vector Group. After LeBow acquired the cigarette manufacturer Liggett Group in 1986, the company became involved in anti-tobacco lawsuits culminating in the 1998 Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement.

Trading basics

Benton Park View

Benton Park View, located in Benton, a suburb of the City of Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom, is a multi-agency site of the UK Government. The complex is one of the largest secure civilian government complexes in Europe. The site is owned by Newcastle Estates Partnership and the principal tenants are His Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) and the Department for Work and Pensions (D

Banking

Berenberg family

The Berenberg family (Dutch for "bear mountain") was a Flemish-origined Hanseatic family of merchants, bankers and senators in Hamburg, with branches in London, Livorno and other European cities. The family was descended from the brothers Hans and Paul Berenberg from Antwerp, who came as Protestant refugees to the city-republic of Hamburg following the Fall of Antwerp in 1585 and who est

Trading basics

Bermudian dollar

The Bermudian dollar or Bermuda Dollar (symbol: $; code: BMD; also abbreviated BD$) is the official currency of the British Overseas Territory of Bermuda. It is subdivided into 100 cents. The Bermudian dollar is not normally traded outside Bermuda, and is pegged to the United States dollar at a one-to-one ratio. Both currencies circulate in Bermuda on an equal basis.

Trading basics

Bernardino Nogara

Bernardino Nogara (June 17, 1870 — November 15, 1958) was the financial advisor to the Vatican between 1929 and 1954, appointed by Pope Pius XI and retained by Pope Pius XII as the first Director of the Special Administration of the Holy See. According to historian John F. Pollard, Nogara laid "the foundations" for "one of the biggest pillars for the Vatican's post-Second World War fina

Trading basics

Bernardino of Siena

Bernardino of Siena, OFM (also Bernardine or Bernadine; born Bernardino degli Albizzeschi; 8 September 1380 – 20 May 1444), was an Italian Catholic priest and Franciscan missionary preacher in the Republic of Siena. He was a systematizer of scholastic economics.

Securities & exchanges

Bernie Madoff

Bernard Lawrence Madoff (; April 29, 1938 – April 14, 2021) was an American financier, con artist, and stock broker who was the admitted mastermind of the largest-known Ponzi scheme in history, worth an estimated $65 billion. He was at one time chairman of the Nasdaq stock exchange. Madoff's firm had two basic units: a stock brokerage and an asset management business; the Ponzi scheme w

Fiat currencies

Bertil Ohlin

Bertil Gotthard Ohlin (Swedish: [ˈbæ̌ʈːɪl ʊˈliːn]) (23 April 1899 – 3 August 1979) was a Swedish economist and politician. He was a professor of economics at the Stockholm School of Economics from 1929 to 1965. He was also leader of the People's Party, a social-liberal party which at the time was the largest party in opposition to the governing Social Democratic Party, from 1944 to 1967.

Trading basics

Bertrand competition

Bertrand competition is a model of competition used in economics, named after Joseph Louis François Bertrand (1822–1900). It describes interactions among firms (sellers) that set prices and their customers (buyers) that choose quantities at the prices set. The model was formulated in 1883 by Bertrand in a review of Antoine Augustin Cournot's book Recherches sur les Principes Mathématiqu

Trading basics

Bertrand–Edgeworth model

In microeconomics, the Bertrand–Edgeworth model of price-setting oligopoly explores what happens when firms compete to sell a homogeneous product (a good for which consumers buy only from the cheapest available seller) but face limits on how much they can supply. Unlike in the standard Bertrand competition model, where firms are assumed to meet all demand at their chosen price, the Bertr

Finance

Beta (finance)

In finance, the beta (β or market beta or beta coefficient) is a statistic that measures the expected increase or decrease of an individual stock price in proportion to movements of the stock market as a whole. Beta can be used to indicate the contribution of an individual asset to the market risk of a portfolio when it is added in small quantity. It refers to an asset's non-diversifiabl

Banking

Bethmann family

The Bethmann family (; BET-mahn) has been remarkable for the high proportion of its male members who succeeded at mercantile or financial endeavors. This family trait began in medieval northern Germany and continued with the Bethmann bank, which Johann Philipp Bethmann (1715–1793) and Simon Moritz Bethmann (1721–1782) founded in 1748 and soon catapulted into the foremost ranks of German

Payments & settlement

BharatPe

BharatPe is an Indian fintech company headquartered in New Delhi (Delhi NCR) that provides digital payment and financial services to small merchants and Grocery stores. Founded in 2018, the company offers unified QR code payment acceptance, point-of-sale (POS) devices, and merchant credit facilities.

Trading basics

Bharti Airtel

Bharti Airtel is an Indian multinational telecommunications company, headquartered in New Delhi. It operates in 18 countries across the Indian subcontinent, Africa, and the Channel Islands. In India, the company provides mobile telephony services using 5G, 4G, and LTE Advanced technologies, along with fixed-line broadband and voice services, while the range of services varies by country

Trading basics

Bhutanese ngultrum

The ngultrum ( əng-GUUL-trəm or əng-GOO(L)-trəm; Dzongkha: དངུལ་ཀྲམ, romanized: dngul kram, IPA: [ŋýˈʈúm], lit. 'silver coin'; symbol: Nu., code: BTN) is the currency of the Kingdom of Bhutan. It is subdivided into 100 chhertum (Dzongkha: ཕྱེད་ཏམ, romanized: phyed tam, IPA: [pt͡ɕʰɛ́ˈtám], lit. 'half [coin]'; spelled as chetrums on coins until 1979). The Royal Monetary Authority of Bhuta

Finance

Bias ratio

The bias ratio is an indicator used in finance to analyze the returns of investment portfolios, and in performing due diligence.

Finance

Bibby Financial Services

Bibby Financial Services (BFS) is a multinational corporation that provides financial services to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Trading basics

Bid–ask spread

The bid–ask spread (also bid–offer or bid/ask and buy/sell in the case of a market maker) is the difference between the prices quoted (either by a single market maker or in a limit order book) for an immediate sale (ask) and an immediate purchase (bid) for stocks, futures contracts, options, or currency pairs in some auction scenario. The size of the bid–ask spread in a security is one m

Trading basics

Bidding

Bidding is an offer (often competitive) to set a price tag by an individual or business for a product or service or a demand that something be done. Bidding is used to determine the cost or value of something.

Trading basics

Biens mal acquis

Biens mal acquis (lit. 'ill-gotten goods') is a phrase used in French courts for litigation seeking the repayment of assets stolen from poor countries by corrupt officials. The phrase refers to anti-corruption legal proceedings against former dictators and strongmen outside of their country, the seizure of assets within the country of the legal proceedings, and the return of the assets t

Trading basics

Biflation

Biflation (sometimes mixflation, indeflation, or compartflation) is a state of the economy, in which the processes of inflation and deflation occur simultaneously in different parts of the economy. The term was coined in 2003 by F. Osborne Brown, a senior financial analyst at Phoenix Investment Group, and has later been widely used in the media. During the biflation, there is a simultane

Trading basics

Big Bang (financial markets)

The phrase Big Bang, used in reference to the sudden deregulation of financial markets, was coined to describe measures, including abolition of fixed commission charges and of the distinction between stockjobbers and stockbrokers on the London Stock Exchange and change from open outcry to screen-based electronic trading, effected by UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1986.

Banking

Big Five banks of Canada

Big Five is the name colloquially given to the five largest banks that dominate the banking industry of Canada: Bank of Montreal (BMO), Bank of Nova Scotia (Scotiabank), Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC), Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), and Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD).

Securities & exchanges

Bill Ackman

William Albert Ackman (born May 11, 1966) is an American billionaire hedge fund manager who is the founder and chief executive of Pershing Square Capital Management, an investment management company. He has been described as an activist investor. As of April 2026, Ackman's net worth was estimated at $8 billion by Bloomberg.

Trading basics

Bill Chisholm (businessman)

William F. Chisholm Jr. is an American businessman. He is the managing partner and chief investment officer for STG Partners, LLC, a private equity firm, and has been the owner of the National Basketball Association (NBA)'s Boston Celtics since 2025. He purchased the Celtics for a record $6.1 billion.

Trading basics

Bill Conway (politician)

William Elias "Bill" Conway III (born May 8, 1978) is an American politician, attorney, businessman, and military veteran. He is the alderman for the 34th ward in the Chicago City Council, having won the 2023 election for the office. He also serves as the Democratic committeeperson for the 34th ward.

Securities & exchanges

Bill Hwang

Sung Kook Hwang (Korean: 황성국; Hanja: 黃城國), also known as Bill Hwang, is an American investor, trader and convicted fraudster. He ran Archegos Capital Management, whose default on March 26, 2021 caused major losses to several notable investment banks. In April 2021, The Wall Street Journal reported that Hwang had lost US$20 billion over 10 days in late March, imposing large losses on hi

Trading basics

Bill of sale

A bill of sale is a document that transfers ownership of goods from one person to another. It is used in situations where the former owner transfers possession of the goods to a new owner. Bills of sale may be used in a wide variety of transactions: to sell goods, exchange, give, or mortgage objects. They can be used only to transfer ownership of goods that people already own or to trans

Trading basics

Bill.com

BILL Holdings, Inc. is an American company based in San Jose, California, that provides automated, cloud-based software for financial operations for small businesses in the United States. A white-labeled, end-to-end payments automation platform, Bill.com Connect is offered to financial institutions as part of their single sign-on online business banking ecosystem.

Finance

BillGuard

BillGuard was a personal finance security and productivity company. Its mobile and web applications scanned credit and debit card transactions, alerting users to potential scams, billing errors, fraudulent charges, and hidden fees.

Trading basics

Bills of Exchange Act 1882

The Bills of Exchange Act 1882 (45 & 46 Vict. c. 61) is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that codified the law relating to bills of exchange. Bills of exchange are widely used to finance trade and, when discounted with a financial institution, to obtain credit.

Fiat currencies

Bimetallism

Bimetallism, also known as the bimetallic standard, is a monetary standard in which the value of the monetary unit is defined as equivalent to certain quantities of two metals, creating a fixed rate of exchange between them. In all known historical cases, the metals are gold and silver.

Assets

Binance

Binance Holdings Ltd., branded Binance, is the largest cryptocurrency exchange in terms of daily trading volume of cryptocurrencies. Binance was founded in 2017 by Changpeng Zhao. It was initially based in China, then moved to Japan, subsequently left Japan for Malta, and now has no official company headquarters.

Securities & exchanges

Binary option

A binary option is a financial exotic option in which the payoff is either some fixed monetary amount or nothing at all. The two main types of binary options are the cash-or-nothing binary option and the asset-or-nothing binary option. The former pays some fixed amount of cash if the option expires in-the-money while the latter pays the value of the underlying security. They are also cal

Finance

Binomial options pricing model

In finance, the binomial options pricing model (BOPM) provides a generalizable numerical method for the valuation of options. Essentially, the model uses a "discrete-time" (lattice based) model of the varying price over time of the underlying financial instrument, addressing cases where the closed-form Black–Scholes formula is wanting, which in general does not exist for the BOPM.

Trading basics

Biodiversity Impact Credit

A Biodiversity Impact Credit (BIC) is a transferable biodiversity credit designed to reduce global species extinction risk. The underlying BIC metric, developed by academics working at Queen Mary University of London and Bar-Ilan University, is given by a simple formula that quantifies the positive and negative effects that interventions in nature have on the mean long-term survival pro

Trading basics

Biomet

Biomet, Inc., was a medical device manufacturer located in the Warsaw, Indiana, business cluster. The company specialized in reconstructive products for orthopedic surgery, neurosurgery, craniomaxillofacial surgery and operating room supplies. In 2015, Biomet became part of the new company Zimmer Biomet.

Trading basics

Birds Eye

Birds Eye (also named Iglo in some countries) is an international brand of frozen foods founded in the United States and now owned by Conagra Brands in the United States, by Nomad Foods in Europe, and Simplot in Australia.

Trading basics

Birkenstock

Birkenstock Holding plc is a German shoe manufacturer known for its sandals and other shoes notable for contoured cork footbeds (soles), made with layers of suede and jute, which conform to the shape of their wearers' feet. Founded in 1774 by Johann Adam Birkenstock and headquartered in Neustadt (Wied), Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, the company's original purpose was to create shoes tha

Assets

Bitchcoin

Bitchcoin is a non-fungible token (NFT) on the Ethereum blockchain. The project was launched in early 2015 as a fork of Bitcoin, several months before the launch of Ethereum. Bitchcoin was originally backed by the artist Sarah Meyohas' photography at a fixed rate of one token to 25 square-inches of one of the artist's photographs. This was one of the first instances of a physical work of

Assets

BitClout

BitClout was an open source blockchain-based social media platform. On the platform, users could post short-form writings and photos, award money to posts they particularly like by clicking a diamond icon, as well as buy and sell "creator coins" (personalized tokens whose value depends on people's reputations). BitClout ran on a custom proof of work blockchain, and was a prototype of wha

Assets

Bitcoin

Bitcoin (abbreviation: BTC; sign: ₿) is the first decentralized cryptocurrency. Based on a free-market ideology, bitcoin was invented in 2008 when an unknown person published a white paper under the pseudonym of Satoshi Nakamoto. Use of bitcoin as a currency began in 2009, with the release of its open-source implementation. From 2021 to 2025, El Salvador adopted it as legal tender curren

Trading basics

Bitcoin and politics

Bitcoin and politics influence each other in several ways. Governments of several countries use Bitcoin in various capacities, and some politicians use Bitcoin in their electoral programs.

Trading basics

Bitcoin buried in Newport landfill

In 2013, Welsh computer engineer James Howells mistakenly disposed of a laptop hard drive containing the private key for 8,000 Bitcoin in the Docksway landfill in Newport, Wales. Howells subsequently assembled a team of specialists and secured funding to excavate the site, but Newport City Council refused permission, citing galvanic corrosion of the device and health concerns of city re

Trading basics

Bitcoin City

Bitcoin City is a planned smart city project in La Unión, El Salvador. The planned city is intended to be a tax haven, and to use geothermal energy to power Bitcoin mining. The feasibility of its reliance on both geothermal energy and Bitcoin have been the subject of criticism, alongside concerns regarding delays in the project's financing and construction.

Trading basics

Bitcoin in El Salvador

El Salvador was the first country in the world to use bitcoin as legal tender, after it was adopted as such by the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador in 2021. It has been promoted by Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, who claimed that it would improve the economy by making banking easier for Salvadorans, and that it would encourage foreign investment. In 2022, more Salvadorians

Trading basics

Bitcoin Law

The Bitcoin Law (Spanish: Ley Bitcoin, pronounced [ˈlej biðˈkojn]) was passed by the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador on 8 June 2021, giving the cryptocurrency bitcoin the status of legal tender within El Salvador after 7 September 2021. It was proposed by President Nayib Bukele. The text of the law stated that "the purpose of this law is to regulate bitcoin as unrestricted legal tend

Trading basics

Bitcoin protocol

The bitcoin protocol is the set of rules that govern the functioning of bitcoin. Its key components and principles are: a peer-to-peer decentralized network with no central oversight; the blockchain technology, a public ledger that records all bitcoin transactions; mining and proof of work, the process to create new bitcoins and verify transactions; and cryptographic security.

Fiat currencies

Bitcoin Satoshi Vision

Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (BSV) is a cryptocurrency that is a hard fork of Bitcoin Cash. Bitcoin Satoshi Vision was created in November 2018 by a group of individuals led by Craig Steven Wright, who has claimed since 2015 to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of the original bitcoin.

Trading basics

Bitcoin scalability

Bitcoin scalability refers to the capability of the Bitcoin network to handle large amounts of transaction data on its platform. Records (known as blocks) in the Bitcoin blockchain are limited in size and frequency to prioritize security and decentralization by keeping the cost of running a Bitcoin node affordable. With an average block creation time of 10 minutes and a block size limit

Trading basics

Bitconnect

Bitconnect (stylized bitconnect and also spelled BitConnect, ticker code BCC) was an open-source cryptocurrency from 2016 to 2018 that was connected with a high-yield investment program, a type of Ponzi scheme. After the platform administrators closed the earning platform on January 16, 2018, and refunded the users' investments in BCC following a 92% coin value crash, confidence was lost

Assets

Bitdeer

Bitdeer Technologies Group, or simply Bitdeer, is a cryptocurrency mining and artificial intelligence (AI) cloud infrastructure company headquartered in Singapore and listed on the Nasdaq under the ticker BTDR. The company was spun off from bitcoin-mining chip producer Bitmain in January 2021 by founder Jihan Wu. Bitdeer is among the largest cryptocurrency miners by computing power and o

Assets

Bitfinex

Bitfinex is a cryptocurrency exchange owned and operated by iFinex Inc, and is registered in the British Virgin Islands and regulated in El Salvador. Bitfinex was founded in 2012. It was originally a peer-to-peer bitcoin exchange, and later added support for other cryptocurrencies. Bitfinex was one of the first professional platforms built for cryptocurrency trading. Bitfinex is the worl

Assets

BitFuFu

BitFuFu Inc. (Nasdaq: FUFU) is a Bitcoin miner and mining services innovator headquartered in Singapore.

Assets

Bitget

Bitget is a cryptocurrency exchange founded in 2018.

Assets

Bitkub

Bitkub is a Thailand-based cryptocurrency exchange operated by Bitkub Online Co., Ltd. (Thai: บริษัทบิทคับ ออนไลน์ จำกัด) under its parent group Bitkub Capital Group Holdings (Bitkub Capital Co., Ltd.). The company was founded in 2018 by Jirayut Srupsrisopa and was among the first exchanges to receive a digital asset license from Thailand’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 201

Assets

BitMEX

BitMEX was a cryptocurrency exchange and derivative trading platform incorporated in the Seychelles. It was operated by HDR Global Trading Limited.

Trading basics

Bitnation

Bitnation, or crypto nation, was a cryptocurrency-based project self-described as a "voluntary nation", wherein all citizens chose to be citizens, founded in 2014 by Susanne Tarkowski Tempelhof. A part of the process for becoming a citizen involved recording vital records, identity, and other legal events through the use of a smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain.

Payments & settlement

BitPay

BitPay is a cryptocurrency payment service provider headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. It was founded in May 2011 by Tony Gallippi and Stephen Pair. BitPay provides crypto payment processing services for merchants and a cryptocurrency wallet available on mobile and desktop.

Trading basics

Bitstamp

Bitstamp is a Luxembourg-based cryptocurrency exchange founded in 2011. Considered the world’s longest-running cryptocurrency exchange, its business operations are conducted from its registered headquarters in Luxembourg City, with a satellite office in Ljubljana.

Assets

Bitwala

Bitwala is a Berlin-based cryptocurrency financial services company offering a self-custodial Bitcoin wallet, a Visa debit card, crypto trading, and crypto-backed loans. The company was founded in 2015 by Jörg von Minckwitz, Jan Goslicki, and Benjamin P. Jones. After operating briefly under the name Nuri from 2021 to 2022, the company returned to the Bitwala brand in late 2023 following

Payments & settlement

BKash

bKash Limited (Bengali: বিকাশ d/b/a: bKash) is a mobile financial service (MFS) in Bangladesh operating under the authority of Bangladesh Bank as a subsidiary of BRAC Bank PLC. This mobile financial service company started as a joint venture between BRAC Bank PLC, and Money in Motion LLC.

Trading basics

Black budget

A black budget or covert appropriation is a government budget that is allocated for classified or other secret operations of a state. The black budget is an account of expenses and spending related to military research and covert operations. The black budget is mostly classified because of security reasons.

Fiat currencies

Black Eagle Silver Certificate

The Black Eagle is a type of one-dollar silver certificate produced in 1899 in the United States. The note measured 7.38 in (187 mm) by 3.18 in (81 mm); it was of the large-size variety of bank-notes issued by the United States. The note featured a Bald eagle with its wings spread. The note was also referred to as "Eagle of the Capitol", because the United States Capitol is visible behin

Finance

Black Knight, Inc.

Black Knight, Inc. is an American corporation that provides integrated technology, services, data and analytics to the mortgage lending, servicing and real estate industries, as well as the capital and secondary markets. Black Knight is also known for its monthly benchmark data reports: Mortgage Monitor, a month-end analysis of mortgage performance statistics derived from Black Knight's

Trading basics

Black market

A black market is a clandestine market or series of transactions that has some aspect of illegality within a legal jurisdiction; it may also not be compliant with an institutional set of rules. If the rule defines the set of goods and services whose production and distribution are prohibited or restricted by law, non-compliance with the rule constitutes a black-market trade since the tra

Finance

Black model

The Black model (also known as the Black-76 model) is a variant of the Black–Scholes option pricing model. Its primary applications are for pricing options on future contracts, bond options, interest rate cap and floors, and swaptions. It was first presented in a paper written by Fischer Black in 1976.

Finance

Black Sea Trade and Development Bank

The Black Sea Trade and Development Bank (BSTDB) is an international development finance institution serving the eleven member founding countries of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation, a regional economic organization. It supports economic development and regional cooperation by providing loans, guarantees, and equity for development projects and trade transactions. BSTDB supports both p

Finance

Black–Derman–Toy model

In mathematical finance, the Black–Derman–Toy model (BDT) is a popular short-rate model used in the pricing of bond options, swaptions and other interest rate derivatives; see Lattice model (finance) § Interest rate derivatives. It is a one-factor model; that is, a single stochastic factor—the short rate—determines the future evolution of all interest rates. It was the first model to com

Finance

Black–Scholes equation

In mathematical finance, the Black–Scholes equation, also called the Black–Scholes–Merton equation, is a partial differential equation (PDE) governing the price evolution of derivatives under the Black–Scholes model. Broadly speaking, the term may refer to a similar PDE that can be derived for a variety of options, or more generally, derivatives.

Securities & exchanges

Black–Scholes model

The Black–Scholes or Black–Scholes–Merton model is a mathematical model for the dynamics of a financial market containing derivative investment instruments. From the parabolic partial differential equation in the model, known as the Black–Scholes equation, one can deduce the Black–Scholes formula, which gives a theoretical estimate of the price of European-style options and shows that t

Trading basics

Blackboard (company)

Blackboard, previously Anthology Inc., and before that, Blackboard, is an American educational technology company with corporate headquarters in Boca Raton, Florida. Blackboard is known for Blackboard Learn, a learning management system. Blackboard Inc. merged with Anthology in late 2021.

Trading basics

BlackRock

BlackRock, Inc. is an American multinational investment company. Founded in 1988, initially as an enterprise risk management and fixed income institutional asset manager, BlackRock is the largest asset manager worldwide, with $15.3 trillion in assets under management as of 2026. Headquartered in New York City, BlackRock has 70 offices in 30 countries and clients in 100 countries.

Trading basics

Blackstone Inc.

Blackstone Inc. is an American alternative investment management company based in New York City. It was founded in 1985 as a mergers and acquisitions firm by Peter Peterson and Stephen Schwarzman, who had previously worked together at Lehman Brothers. Blackstone's private equity business has been one of the largest investors in leveraged buyouts in the last three decades, while its real

Securities & exchanges

Blair Hull

Blair Hull (born September 3, 1942) is an American businessman, investor, and Democratic politician.

Finance

Blank cheque

A blank cheque or blank check in the literal sense is a cheque that has no monetary value written in, but is already signed. In the figurative sense, it is used to describe a situation in which an agreement has been made that is open-ended or vague, and therefore subject to abuse, or in which a party is willing to consider any expense in the pursuance of their goals. The term carte blanc

Payments & settlement

Blik

BLIK is a Polish mobile payment system launched in 2015. It is operated by Polski Standard Płatności (PSP).

Trading basics

Blind taste test

In marketing, a blind taste test is often used as a tool for companies to compare their brand to another brand. For example, the Pepsi Challenge is a famous taste test that has been run by Pepsi since 1975. Additionally, taste tests are sometimes used as a tool by companies to develop their brand or new products.

Trading basics

Block trade

A block trade is a high-volume transaction in a security that is privately negotiated and executed outside of the open market for that security. Major broker-dealers often provide "block trading" services—sometimes known as "upstairs trading desks"—to their institutional clients. In the United States and Canada a block trade is usually at least 10,000 shares of a stock or $100,000 of bo

Trading basics

Block, Inc.

Block, Inc. (formerly Square, Inc.) is an American technology company and financial services provider for consumers and merchants. Founded in 2009 by Jack Dorsey, it is the U.S. market leader in point-of-sale systems. As of 2024, Block has 57 million users and 4 million sellers, processing $241 billion in payments annually.

Assets

Blockchain

A blockchain is a distributed ledger with growing lists of records (blocks) that are securely linked together via cryptographic hashes. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a timestamp, and transaction data (generally represented as a Merkle tree, where data nodes are represented by leaves). Since each block contains information about the previous block, they e

Networks

Blockchain analysis

Blockchain analysis is the process of inspecting, identifying, clustering, modeling and visually representing data on a cryptographic distributed ledger known as a blockchain. The goal of blockchain analysis is to discover useful information about different actors transacting in cryptocurrency. Analysis of public blockchains such as Bitcoin and Ethereum is typically conducted by private

Assets

Blockchain game

Video games can include elements that use blockchain technologies, including cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), often as a form of monetization. These elements typically allow players to trade in-game items for cryptocurrency, or represent in-game items with NFTs. Blockchain games have existed since 2017, gaining wider attention from the video game industry in 2021, when se

Networks

Blockchain privacy

Blockchain privacy describes how blockchain systems handle the confidentiality of transaction and record data. Many public blockchains can provide pseudonymity, while ledger transparency can allow transaction tracing through analysis of on-chain activity and related information. The persistence of ledger data can also create data-protection challenges in some applications, including ques

Networks

Blockchain-based Service Network

The Blockchain-based Service Network (BSN) is a backend architecture in China for developing and managing blockchain-based applications, and is split into Chinese and International uses. BSN China, designed as the backbone of China's blockchain strategy, was established in 2018 and launched in 2020 by the State Information Center under the National Development and Reform Commission of Ch

Assets

Blockchain.com

Blockchain.com (formerly Blockchain.info) is a cryptocurrency financial services company. The company began as the first Bitcoin blockchain explorer in 2011 and later created a cryptocurrency wallet that accounted for 28% of bitcoin transactions between 2012 and 2020. It also operates a cryptocurrency brokerage and provides institutional markets lending business and data, charts, and ana

Finance

Bloomberg L.P.

Bloomberg L.P. is an American privately held financial, software, data, and media company headquartered in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. It was co-founded by Michael Bloomberg in 1981, with Thomas Secunda, Duncan MacMillan, Charles Zegar, and a 12% ownership investment by Merrill Lynch.

Finance

Bloomberg Terminal

The Bloomberg Terminal is a computer software system provided by the financial data vendor Bloomberg L.P. that enables professionals in the financial service sector and other industries to access Bloomberg Professional Services through which users can monitor and analyze real-time financial market data and place trades on the electronic trading platform. It was developed by employees wor

Trading basics

Bloomingdale's

Bloomingdale's Inc. is an upmarket American department store chain founded in 1861 by Joseph Bloomingdale and Lyman Bloomingdale. It was acquired by Federated Department Stores in 1930. Federated purchased Macy's department store chain in 1994 and was renamed Macy's, Inc. in 2007.

Trading basics

Blue Dot Network

The Blue Dot Network (BDN) is a multilateral organisation that promotes a certification framework for quality infrastructure projects. The initiative is a joint project of the governments of Australia, the Czech Republic, Japan, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the United States that supports investment in high-quality infrastructure projects around the world, especially by the pr

Trading basics

Blurb

A blurb is a short promotional piece accompanying a piece of creative work. It may be written by the author or publisher or quote praise from others. Blurbs were originally printed on the back or rear dust jacket of a book. With the development of the mass-market paperback, they were placed on both covers by most publishers. Now they are also found on web portals and news websites. A blu

Assets

BNB and BNB Chain

BNB is the native asset used by the BNB Chain ecosystem. This article covers its positioning, mechanisms, verification guidelines, and common misconceptions.

Networks

BNB Smart Chain (blockchain platform)

BNB Smart Chain (formerly Binance Smart Chain) is a public blockchain platform that uses a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism and provides smart contract functionality. The platform's native cryptocurrency is BNB. The system is part of the broader Binance ecosystem founded in 2017 by Changpeng Zhao and Yi He.

Securities & exchanges

Boaz Weinstein

Boaz Ronald Weinstein (born 1973) is an American hedge fund manager and founder of Saba Capital Management. He rose to prominence at Deutsche Bank in the early and mid 2000s with his credit default swap and capital structure arbitrage trading strategies. He then formed a proprietary trading group within Deutsche Bank. After leaving the bank in 2009, Weinstein started Saba Capital Managem

Trading basics

Bob Evans Restaurants

Bob Evans Restaurants is an American chain of family style restaurants based in New Albany, Ohio, and owned by Golden Gate Capital until 2026 when 4×4 Capital bought it. After its founding in 1948 by Bob Evans (1918–2007), the restaurant chain evolved into a company with the corporate brand name "Bob Evans Farms, Inc." (BEF), and eventually established a separate food division to handle

Securities & exchanges

Boiler room (business)

In business, a boiler room is an outbound call center selling questionable investments by telephone. It usually refers to a room where salespeople work using unfair, dishonest sales tactics, sometimes selling penny stocks or private placements or committing outright stock fraud. A common boiler room tactic is the use of falsified and bolstered information in combination with verified com