The past week brought some interesting news for stocks, cryptocurrency and trades. One of the biggest stories this week is that Wall Street got ran over by Reddit members. Robinhood is a trading platform. Reddit users mobilized retail traders to short-squeeze two large hedge funds. They did it. Wall Street was mad, and the platform halted trading. Other apps also stopped the buying function for traders to buy GameStop stock or shorts. It appears that the rich guys don't like being beat at their own game. The Redditors didn't do anything illegal, and certainly no worse than what the hedge fund operators do on a daily basis. There was a lot of public outcry against Robinhood and the other apps from preventing the Redditors from doing their trades.

In Iran, the encrypted messenger Signal had a lot of problems trying to operate. The Iranian government put a stop to Bitcoin mining and WhatsApp. It is now trying to get rid of Signal. Signal is a service that offers end-to-end encryption for messaging and transactions.

In the Netherlands, cryptocurrency exchanges and users are trying to fight off intrusive rules that allow companies to ask their clients a lot of questions. Some of the companies are requiring people to answer those questions in order to use the platforms. The requirements include identifying the owner of the cryptocurrency wallet and showing proof that the wallet belongs to them. A large cryptocurrency exchange called Bitonic says that there is no legal basis for companies to collect that data. The Netherlands continues to be a trading hub for stocks, but it will lose out if it puts too many regulations on cryptocurrency traders.

In China, the central bank is adding more financial data to its routine surveillance activities. China has also had a huge increase in ransomware attacks in the past year.

For next week, investors should pay attention to the case of the Securities and Exchange Commission versus Ripple. It is possible that a ruling could cause Ripple to be shut down. A ruling is not likely to happen until at least late February.