Oil prices inch ahead midst IEA requests and removal of sanctions on Iran; State Street expands into crypto; BoE and BIS launches London innovation hub; CME to launch micro treasury futures;
Oil prices inch ahead midst IEA requests and removal of sanctions on Iran
WTI crude oil price continued to climb for another week recording a high of 71.24 USD per barrel and closing the week at 70.81 USD. The price increase comes despite US lifting some sanctions of Iran which included officials of the National Iranian Oil Company.
The increase may have been fuelled by API and EIA inventory reports that showed declines greater than the analyst predictions. S&P Global Platts forecasted a decline of 4.1M barrels whereas EIA data showed that it was as much as 5.2M barrels.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris requested the OPEC+ countries to increase the supply to the market. IEA believes that by 2022, there will be a global demand of 99.5M barrels per day for crude oil.
Sources:
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Oil-Prices-Drop-After-US-Lifts-Sanctions-On-Some-Iranian-Officials.html
https://archive.is/b994D#selection-1877.0-1877.131
State Street expands into crypto
State Street has launched a new unit State Street Digital that will look to increase its presence in the distributed and tokenised market. The company will be using their proprietary GlobalLink technology platform for the new unit. The unit plans to work with regulators and academics in order to bring cryptocurrencies and tokenised securities to the regulated market place.
In 2018, State Street stated its interest in the cryptocurrency. In December 2019, State Street and Gemini launched a new cryptocurrency pilot program. The program provided a custodial service for asset managers for crypto assets. In December 2020, State Street invested in Lukka. Lukka provides a backoffice system that transforms digital ledger data to other industry standard formats.
BoE and BIS launches London innovation hub
Bank of England and Bank of International Settlements launched a new innovation hub in London. In a press release, BIS said that the new innovation hub will focus on six areas.
The new innovation hub comes as an expansion to the existing list of hubs in Hong Kong, Singapore and Switzerland. The areas focused by the London hub includes innovation in regulation technology, central bank digital currencies, and open finance.
Source: https://www.bis.org/press/p210611.htm
CME to launch micro treasury futures
CME announced that they plan to launch micro treasury futures in August 2021. The new product suite will consist of micro futures on 2-Year, 5-Year, 10-Year and 30-Year treasury futures. The futures will be cash settled and the pricing will be based on the new BrokerTec Treasury Benchmarks.
