The world’s payment juggernaut, Ant Group, is hoping to raise $34.5 billion in its dual initial public offering (IPO) after setting the price for its shares today, making it the biggest listing of all in modern history, in a report credited to CNBC news.

The Chinese financial powerhouse had earlier disclosed previously that it would divide its stock issuance equally across Chinese major stock exchanges, which include Shanghai and Hong Kong, issuing 1.67 billion new shares at each of those exchanges.

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Ant Group’s Shanghai-listed shares will be quoted at 68.8 yuan each. The issuing of 1.67 billion shares would raise 114.94 billion yuan or $17.23 billion.

• The Hong Kong-listed shares have been priced at 80 Hong Kong dollars each, raising 133.65 billion Hong Kong dollars or $17.24 billion.
• The listing would produce a return of at least $34.5 billion, as the figure could go higher if the so-called over-allotment option is exercised, depending on demand.
• It would make it the largest initial public offer of recent memory, putting it ahead of previous record-holder Saudi Aramco, which raised about $29 billion.

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What you should know

Ant Group, formerly known as Ant Financial and Alipay, is an affiliate company of the popularly known e-commerce company Alibaba.

• Ant Group remains the world’s most valuable FinTech company, and most valuable unicorn company, with a target valuation of over US$280 billion.
• The group owns China’s largest digital payment platform, Alipay, which serves over one billion users and 80 million merchants, with total payment volume (TPV) transaction reaching RMB118 trillion in June 2020.

Explore Data on the Nairametrics Research Website

In the crypto-verse, Nigeria remains one of the fastest-growing and lucrative markets for crypto traders and global investors to be in. 

Data retrieved from a Chainalysis report ranked Nigeria as the eighth (out of 154 countries) in its 2019-2020 global adoption index. Africa’s largest economy is first among other African countries in peer-to-peer payments (moving $139 million in the past year). 

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The increased usage by many young, educated Nigerians is often attributed to the high bureaucratic processes by many commercial banks for transfers, not forgetting stringent cash control mechanisms set by the Nigerian Central bank in controlling cash flows. Crypto provides low-fee remittances and an alternative way to preserve and grow wealth. 

Nairametrics decided to seek the opinions of crypto experts on what cryptos they would consider investing in, apart from the known flagship crypto Bitcoin. Their responses were as insightful as they were diverse, ranging from popularly known altcoins to some new ones. 

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Clement Hugbo – Founder and CEO at Crevatal Technologies 

“As volatile and unpredictable as cryptocurrencies are, they are still one of the best investments to get right on and it’s never too late. 

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5 Cryptocurrencies I will advise to invest in at this time are: 

1. Binancecoin, BNB 
2. Ethereum, ETH
3. Bundle token (coming soon)
4. PhoenixDAO, PHNX
5. Uniswap, UNI.

I chose these tokens because they not only have infrastructures and working products to back their assets, but they play deeply within the DeFi ecosystem which currently is the future of money.  

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While Binance is the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world and has diverse use cases for its token, it recently launched its own Smart chain, bringing DeFi possibilities and flexibilities to more developers and communities. Bundle token will be Africa’s Binance coin as its use cases are diverse, being a partnering project with Binance. PhoenixDAO has diverse products like staking dApps, DAO, events and so much more, with brands using her protocols for products development. 

Ethereum, being the mother of smart contracts and Tokenization, has diverse use cases by devs and communities in the ecosystem.  

READ: Ethereum miners earning more than their Bitcoin rivals

Lastly, Uniswap is the mother of DeFi and decentralization, enabling traders to transact in a permissionless and decentralized platform, completely excluding their parties.  

My choices are based on the consistent use cases of these tokens and their relevance to creating lasting solutions in the Blockchain ecosystem.”

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Henry Muna – Founder & CEO, Muna Wallet 

“USDN (Neutrino USD) is an algorithmic stablecoin soft-pegged to the US Dollar and collateralized by WAVES. 

The stable exchange rate is maintained using an advanced stability algorithm. 

USDN offers 10-15% annual percentage returns without the risk of liquidation. 

It leverages the staking reward system of the Waves monetary policy and LPoS consensus algorithm. Staking rewards are distributed according to your contribution to the network with additional USDN.  

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Its asset is available on Waves and Ethereum blockchain, with staking services available on Muna, Waves.exchange, Kucoin, and any Etheruem wallet. 

1 USDN = 1 USD; it lets traders hedge against market volatility. 

USDN staking is governed by a smart contract, not by a central authority. 

Neutrino’s smart contract resilience is verified by Beosin (Chengdu LianAn) Technology Co. Ltd.”

READ: Binance offers DeFi coders $100,000; DeFi market value hits $8 billion

David Effiiong (Davizoe) – National community director at Bitfxt Technology 

Ethereum: It’s a blockchain that allows decentralized applications to be built on. 

Dapps are decentralized applications without censorship which give people freedom. People are building games, and social media platforms on it because of its scalability. 

On ethereum, smart contracts are built also; it acts as the middle man. 

READ: Ethereum whales on the rise, as Ether hits $420

EOS: EOS is a blockchain network that is more scalable and allows Dapps, and smart contracts to be built. The transaction on this blockchain is less than 5 secs, and on Eos.io you can build several blockchains on it. 

The recent mind-blowing announcement is the partnership of Google with EOS; this shows its scalability. 

READ: Crypto: UniSwap gives each owner over $2,000

BitDeFi (BFi): It’s a decentralized finance (DeFi) token that brings the banking system on the blockchain. 

BFi is just 200,000 max supplies and 50% will be burnt because it uses a burning mechanism which makes it a deflationary token. I can boldly say it’s 100k in max supply because of 50% burning away. 

BitDeFi allows you to perform all bank use cases like savings, investment, loan, capital rendering, and many more. 

20,000 of BFi will be available for the next 5 –10yrs and it’s a community token which allows banking to be decentralized.”

READ: Ethereum transaction fees drop by 80%

Charles Okaformbah – Blockchain Solutions Architect 

“Asides Ethereum, from a protocol pov, and value that DAO tokens seem to garner in the long run, I would advise traders to look at Polkadot’s DOT.  

Currently sitting in the top 10 of coinmarketcap, with one of its founders being Gavin Wood (cofounders of Ethereum), it’s a cross-chain protocol that connects several chains together in a single network, allowing them to process transactions in parallel and exchange data between chains with security guarantees.  

READ: Fate of $2.3 billion worth of Bitcoins in Limbo

It’s been in development for years now and the DOT token is majorly used as a governance token. 

Another project from a utility pov would be Kittiefight’s KTY (full disclosure, I’m a team member). Online Betting generates massive tonnes of revenue for its stakeholders.  

What if that revenue is shared with a community of users who participate in the funding of each game’s jackpot via a DeFi backed algorithm? Not only that, KTY serves as a utility token for in-game activities. Currently, Kittiefight is rated 8 in the Top 10 DeFi lending platform by coinmarketcap.” 

Bottomline

It’s fair to say that the crypto experts interviewed were not short on selecting different altcoins that serve as alternatives to Bitcoin.  

That said, crypto experts are also taking advantage of altcoins and their prevalence for high price swings. As the old financial saying goes, volatility is king, on the basis that volatility provides a great way to increase one’s holdings and potentially make some good profits. 

Nigerian stock market ended its last trading session on an impressive note. The All Share Index gained 0.47% to close at 28,697.06 points as against +0.40% appreciation recorded on Thursday.

Nigerian Stock Exchange market capitalization now stands at N14.99 Trillion. Its Year-to-Date (YTD) returns currently stands at +6.91%.

• However, the Nigerian bourse trading turnover fell short of expectation as volume moved dipped by 9.11% as against -4.67% downtick recorded on Thursday. ACCESS, GUARANTY, and UBA were the most active to boost market turnover.
• AFRINSURE leads the list of active stocks that recorded an impressive volume spike at the end of today’s session.
• Market breadth closed positive as NASCON led 20 Gainers as against 6 Losers topped by NNFM at the end of today’s session – an improved performance when compared with the previous outlook.

Top gainers

1. NASCON up 10.00% to close at N14.3
2. PZ up 7.32% to close at N4.4
3. ZENITHBANK up 1.69% to close at N21
4. GUARANTY up 1.50% to close at N30.45
5. DANGCEM up 0.67% to close at N151

Top losers

1. NNFM down 9.89% to close at N4.19
2. NPFMCRFBK down 4.29% to close at N1.34
3. HONYFLOUR down 4.21% to close at N0.91
4. UNIONDAC down 3.70% to close at N0.26
5. VITAFOAM down 3.23% to close at N6

Outlook

Nigerian bourse continued its bullish run amid a shutdown of economic activities at Nigeria’s economic nerve center Lagos and Rivers amid ongoing curfew put in place in order to calm hostilities prevalent in some areas.

• Bulls seem to be rallying high amid soaring crude oil prices, and high buying pressure noticed in some Nigerian blue-chip stocks like Dangote Cement and GTBank.
• However, Nairametrics expects you to seek the advice of a certified stockbroker when choosing stocks to buy, as some of these stocks exhibit cyclic returns in principle.