CryptoSlate Daily Crypto Newscast CryptoSlate

“Standing on the stones” was the phrase to describe the last resort of the many desperate, hungry, unemployed London workers in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century.
Men who had no fixed employment would rock up early in the morning, thronging in masses to await any possible job tickets that were dispensed two or three times a day.
150 years later, the London docks are the base for businesses at the interface of finance and technology.
Today, fintech entrepreneurs stand on the stones of what remains of the beating heart of trade in the London Docks. Fintech workers like those at Level39 now find themselves “slamming the keys” as they work in offices high above the Docklands’ West Wood Quay, now called Canary Wharf. In doing so, these innovators continue the vibrant trade history of the London docks.
Canary Wharf was named because the docklands’ primary trading partners were the Canary Islands, a Spanish group of islands 3,760 miles from London on the coast of West Africa.
Curiously, the islands themselves were named after the large native dogs inhabiting the islands. Since the Docklands are located on the Isle of Dogs, it was only fitting to name them Canary Wharf.
From 1802 to 1939, this area of London was one of the busiest docks in the world. Harking back to the time when innovation played a vital role in establishing the backbone of society, you can now see a return to these values as a new breed of fintech craftsmen embed themselves in the heart of Canary Wharf.
Designed by world-famous architect, Cesar Pell, One Canada Square established Canary Wharf as a new financial centre.
It was completed in 1991 and was initially the tallest skyscraper in London (it is now the third). It has been followed by another thirty skyscrapers that serve as residential and business establishments.
Set on the 39th floor of One Canada Square in Canary Wharf, the eponymously-named Level39 is a prime example of how a company can successfully provide a space and community for tech startups and scaleups.
Level39’s Ecosystem Development Manager, Nancy Gonzalez-Rivera, told CryptoSlate:
“Over the past nine years, Level39 has grown significantly, now occupying 80,000 sq ft in One Canada Square and boasting a vibrant community of over 180 member companies, operating in fintech, cyber security, smart cities, green tech, and most recently, life sciences and medtech.”
One Canada Square indisputably paved the way for establishing Canary Wharf as one of the main financial centers of the world. But it almost didn’t happen.
A billion-dollar bet that almost went horribly wrong
In the mid-80s London needed to build a new financial hub. At one point while One Canada Square was being constructed, the private group financing the construction was unsure whether establishing Canary Wharf would be a giant failure. The increasing construction costs and lack of an underground transportation line connecting it to the rest of London were the critical factors.
The London financial scene had already changed in the mid-80s when deregulation of the stock exchange occurred and the market went digital; Canary Wharf was primed to address that reality in a way that would facilitate its role as not just a financial center, but the leading fintech center of the world.
How Level39 provides fintech infrastructure
Some of the biggest names in fintech which have made Level39 home have grown to become billion-dollar brands. Heavyweights such as Revolut and Etoro have helped it develop a strong reputation within the fintech and crypto communities.
Of course, taking the leap towards entrepreneurship is not for the faint-hearted. Being associated with Level39’s infrastructure facilitates credibility and strength for the ambitious entrepreneurs diving head-first into the innovative and enigmatic waters of fintech, providing safe sailing to succeed.
Research conducted by the Harvard Business Review found that people who co-work demonstrate higher levels of

IOHK has announced that Daedalus 1.0.0 mainnet wallet has finally launched and is now available to every user of Cardano (ADA). The launch of Daedalus comes after 18 months of work and marks the beginning of a series of important launches from IOHK that will bring about Shelley, the blockchain’s staking era. The company has also released the independent code audit carried out by security experts, R9B

It’s a whole different story today; since the highs set at the peak of 2018’s bubble, altcoins have fallen off dramatically by dozens and dozens of percent, crushed under the pressure of a dominant Bitcoin that has benefited from a strong first-mover advantage and sell-offs in the altcoin market.
But, according to a fund manager and a flurry of fundamental signs, it may be time for Ethereum to start to reclaim some of its lost gains.
Ethereum may have finally printed a “major cycle low”: fund manager
Late last year, ETH traded as low as 0.016 BTC.
But, when Bitcoin maximalists were certain the altcoin was well on its way to zero, it reversed, with the trading pair attempting to double when it nearly reached 0.029 BTC just earlier this year.
According to Mohit Sorout — partner at crypto fund Bitazu Capital — it is “quite possible that ETH has printed a major cycle low [against Bitcoin],” pointing to the below chart, which he claims shows a bullish “weekly market structure.”
As to why exactly it signals upside is likely, he pointed to two factors:
ETH/BTC has begun to print consecutive higher lows and higher highs, indicative of a reversal
And the directional movement index (DMI) indicator has recently crossed bullish.
Quite possible that $ETH/ $BTC has printed a major cycle low.
Weekly market structure is bullish👀
Mohit Sorout 📈 (@singhsoro) April 25, 2020
It’s not only Sorout’s technical analysis that signals the Ethereum low is in, as there are also two fundamental factors corroborating the sentiment the bottom is in.
Last Saturday, the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade got its latest testnet named “Topaz.” According to Etherscan data, there are around 20,000 active validators on the network, suggesting that members of the Ethereum community are excited about this major technical upgrade.
As reported by CryptoSlate previously, the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade — which will make the network purportedly dozens of times faster and usable than the previous iteration — is expected by analysts to have a decisively positive effect on the price of the cryptocurrency.
Furthermore, we’ve seen ETH investors start to accumulate more of the cryptocurrency, with institutions also starting to siphon large sums of capital into the altcoin.
It may be a tad too early to tell
Despite these signs, there is one crypto wild card that could discredit the idea that Ethereum has found a low against Bitcoin: the block reward reduction, or the halving, taking place in just over two weeks from the time of this article’s publishing.
Crypto trader known as “Pentoshi” explained that with the halving near, he is reducing his exposure to altcoins due to the uncertainty around the event, which strongly decreases the chance Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies will outperform BTC. He wrote:
“The halving [is] near. If Bitcoin pumps, altcoins get rekt. if it dumps, altcoins get rekt.”