It might be the definitive sign that cryptocurrencies have arrived on Wall Street.
CFA Institute, whose grueling three-level program has helped train more than 150,000 financial professionals, is adding topics on cryptocurrencies and blockchain to its Level I and II curriculums for the first time next year.
Material for next year’s exams are to be released next month, giving candidates their first opportunity to start logging a recommended 300 hours of study time.
CFA added the topics, part of a new reading called Fintech in Investment Management, after industry participants showed surging interest in surveys and focus groups.
The worlds of finance and crypto have become increasingly intertwined after last year’s Bitcoin boom, with regulated futures now trading in Chicago, blue-chip firms like Goldman Sachs Group Inc dabbling in digital assets, and scores of Wall Streeters joining crypto-related startu-ps.
While digital coins have tumbled this year and the real-world impact of blockchain ventures has thus far been limited, some observers say the technology could ultimately transform swathes of the global financial system.
“We saw the field advancing more quickly than other fields and we also saw it as more durable,” said Stephen Horan, managing director for general education and curriculum at CFA Institute in Charlottesville, Virginia. “This is not a passing fad.”
The CFA material on crypto and blockchain will appear alongside other fintech subjects, including artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data and automated trading.
More crypto topics, such as the intersection of virtual currencies and economics, may eventually be added to the curriculum, Horan said.
“It will be beneficial for us, since there’s been a huge expansion and adoption of crypto in our investment universe,” said Kayden Lee, 27, a financial economics student at Columbia University who took the CFA Level I exam last month and is interning as a fund analyst in Singapore during his summer break.
“But more importantly the focus is on fintech and blockchain,” Lee said. “How it works to improve, unravel or even disrupt certain sectors.”
The new topics will also make an appearance in the CFA readings on professional ethics, an area that some say is lacking in the crypto world.
Many virtual currency projects operate in a legal gray zone, while digital-asset trading venues and initial coin offerings are rife with examples of fraud, market manipulation, money laundering and theft.
Bitcoin, the most popular cryptocurrency, has lost more than half its value this year amid growing regulatory scrutiny and a series of exchange hacks.
A record 227,031 people in 91 countries and territories registered to take CFA exams last month, seeking a better understanding of finance, improved job prospects or some combination of the two. A majority of the candidates came from Asia, which also happens to be where much of the world’s virtual currency trading takes place.
About 45 percent of Bitcoin transactions are paired against the Japanese yen, according to CryptoCompare.com, while South Korean crypto exchanges are some of the world’s largest.
It is positive that organizations like CFA are drawing attention to the space, said Darius Sit, a former foreign-exchange and bond trader at BNP Paribas SA who is now managing partner of cryptocurrency trading firm QCP Capital Pte in Singapore.
“More education is always good,” he said.
Sweeping policy changes under US Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr are having a chilling effect on vaccine makers as anti-vaccine rhetoric has turned into concrete changes in inoculation schedules and recommendations, investors and executives said. The administration of US President Donald Trump has in the past year upended vaccine recommendations, with the country last month ending its longstanding guidance that all children receive inoculations against flu, hepatitis A and other diseases. The unprecedented changes have led to diminished vaccine usage, hurt the investment case for some biotechs, and created a drag that would likely dent revenues and
Global semiconductor stocks advanced yesterday, as comments by Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) at Davos, Switzerland, helped reinforce investor enthusiasm for artificial intelligence (AI). Samsung Electronics Co gained as much as 5 percent to an all-time high, helping drive South Korea’s benchmark KOSPI above 5,000 for the first time. That came after the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index rose more than 3 percent to a fresh record on Wednesday, with a boost from Nvidia. The gains came amid broad risk-on trade after US President Donald Trump withdrew his threat of tariffs on some European nations over backing for Greenland. Huang further
CULPRITS: Factors that affected the slip included falling global crude oil prices, wait-and-see consumer attitudes due to US tariffs and a different Lunar New Year holiday schedule Taiwan’s retail sales ended a nine-year growth streak last year, slipping 0.2 percent from a year earlier as uncertainty over US tariff policies affected demand for durable goods, data released on Friday by the Ministry of Economic Affairs showed. Last year’s retail sales totaled NT$4.84 trillion (US$153.27 billion), down about NT$9.5 billion, or 0.2 percent, from 2024. Despite the decline, the figure was still the second-highest annual sales total on record. Ministry statistics department deputy head Chen Yu-fang (陳玉芳) said sales of cars, motorcycles and related products, which accounted for 17.4 percent of total retail rales last year, fell NT$68.1 billion, or
MediaTek Inc (聯發科) shares yesterday notched their best two-day rally on record, as investors flock to the Taiwanese chip designer on excitement over its tie-up with Google. The Taipei-listed stock jumped 8.59 percent, capping a two-session surge of 19 percent and closing at a fresh all-time high of NT$1,770. That extended a two-month rally on growing awareness of MediaTek’s work on Google’s tensor processing units (TPUs), which are chips used in artificial intelligence (AI) applications. It also highlights how fund managers faced with single-stock limits on their holding of market titan Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) are diversifying into other AI-related firms.
RSS