Crypto Highlights for September 23: Raiffeisen Expands Crypto Trading, CFTC Warns of Prediction Market Risks

Raiffeisen Bank International is expanding its partnership with Bitpanda across Central and Eastern Europe, a US regulator has flagged the vulnerability of certain prediction markets to manipulation, and 21Shares has brought the first ETP with direct exposure to Zcash to European exchanges.

Raiffeisen and Bitpanda to Expand Crypto Services Across 11 European Markets

Raiffeisen Bank International and Bitpanda have agreed to roll out digital asset trading infrastructure group-wide. Bitpanda Enterprise will provide the technology base that RBI network banks in 11 countries across Central and Eastern Europe can use.

The new services could potentially reach around 18 million customers. They will not launch in all countries at once, however: local banks will decide on the specific crypto assets, functionality and timing based on regulation and demand.

Bitpanda confirms that the new agreement elevates the partnership from individual local integrations to the level of the entire banking group.

The Bitpanda-based crypto service is already live in Austria. An RBI representative told Cointelegraph that the next phase is set to begin in the first half of 2027 in Albania, Czechia and Slovakia.

CFTC Warns of Manipulation on Mention Markets

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission has issued a separate warning about so-called mention markets – a type of prediction market where a contract may depend on whether a person says a particular word, appears at a specific event or interacts with someone.

The CFTC believes such contracts carry a heightened risk of manipulation, since the outcome depends on a specific human action that can sometimes be deliberately triggered or altered.

The regulator did not ban these markets outright, but said exchanges must separately assess each contract’s resilience to manipulation and provide more detailed justification when listing it.

The warning came shortly after the first notable case of its kind. In August, the CFTC ordered former federal employee Gabriel Perez to pay $172,000 for using nonpublic information to trade contracts on words and phrases in presidential speeches.

Perez made more than $107,000 in profit while having access to speech texts before publication. In addition to disgorgement and the fine, he was barred from trading such instruments for three years.

Europe Gets Its First Zcash ETP

21Shares has launched a Zcash ETP with the ticker ZCASH, trading on Euronext Paris and Euronext Amsterdam. It is the first European exchange-traded product to offer direct exposure to ZEC.

The product is physically backed by the cryptocurrency, with the underlying assets held by institutional custodians. Investors do not need to set up a crypto wallet or manage private keys themselves.

21Shares states that the annual fee is 2.5%. The ETP can be bought through a regular brokerage account.

The company also launched an ether.fi ETP (ETHFI). Both products are listed on the Paris and Amsterdam exchanges and are physically backed by the corresponding tokens.

The launches followed a strong run for Zcash over the past year. However, ZEC’s performance does not determine the ETP’s future returns: the product’s value will track the price of the underlying asset minus fees and other expenses.