The U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback’s strength against a basket of six major currencies, was down 0.18% to 96.53 by 03:33 AM ET (08:33 AM GMT), after gaining 0.68% in the previous session.

European markets opened higher and U.S. futures rose as risk aversion eased in the wake of a slump on Wall Street on Tuesday, which carried over into Asian markets overnight.

The rout in equities prompted investors to seek safety in the dollar, which rebounded from two-week lows on Tuesday.

The greenback had been pressured lower after dovish comments from Federal Reserve policymakers and some unexpectedly weak U.S. economic data indicated that the central bank could slow the pace of interest rate hikes.

The yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasuries came off Tuesday’s seven-week lows, rising to 3.081%.

The dollar edged higher against the yen, with USD/JPY changing hands at 112.83 after falling to a three-week low of 112.29 on Tuesday.

The euro pushed higher, with EUR/USD up 0.25% to 1.1398 after dropping 0.71% in the previous session.

The single currency found support from reports that Italy’s government could be open to some budget revisions.

The pound was a touch higher against the dollar, with GBP/USD rising 0.17% to 1.2810, but was little changed against the euro, with EUR/GBP at 0.8894.

British Prime Minister Theresa May was to travel to Brussels later in the day to discuss Brexit negotiations with the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker.

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Concerns over Italy’s rising debts and strains in emerging markets will also remain in focus as markets continue to digest Friday’s mixed U.S. non-farm payrolls report.

The Labor Department reported Friday that the rate of job creation slowed sharply in September, likely due to the effects of Hurricane Florence, while wage growth also eased.

The U.S. economy added 134,000 jobs last month, the fewest in a year, though the figure for August was revised up to 270,000 from 201,000.

Annual earnings growth came in at 2.8%, down from 2.9% in August.

While jobs growth slowed the unemployment rate fell to a near 49-year low of 3.7%, down from 3.9% in August.

The report did little to alter expectations that the Federal Reserve will press on with plans to raise interest rates again in December and beyond.

The dollar slipped lower following the report, with the U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback’s strength against a basket of six major currencies, slipping 0.13% to 95.31 late Friday. The index ended the week up 0.6%, its second straight weekly gain.

Hawkish Fed speakers and strong U.S. economic reports have supported the greenback in recent weeks.

The dollar was slightly lower against the yen late Friday, with USD/JPY down 0.15% to 113.72, to end the week almost unchanged.

The euro was fractionally higher, with EUR/USD at 1.1523, not far from Thursday’s six-week lows of 1.1462. For the week the euro was down 0.73%.

The single currency has been pressured lower by worries that the Italian government’s spending plans could trigger another round of the country’s debt crisis.

Meanwhile, the pound was sharply higher; with GBP/USD climbing 0.74% to 1.3117 following reports that EU sources claimed a Brexit deal is very close.

Sterling also gained ground against the euro, with EUR/GBP down 0.71% to 0.8778 in late trade.

Ahead of the coming week, Investing.com has compiled a list of significant events likely to affect the markets.

Monday, October 8

Financial markets in Japan will be closed for a holiday.

Markets in Canada will be closed for the Thanksgiving holiday.

In the U.S., the stock market will be open, but the bond market will be closed for Columbus Day.

Tuesday, October 9

Australia is to release data on business confidence.

Wednesday, October 10

New York Fed President John Williams is to speak at an event in Bali.

The UK is to publish its monthly GDP report, along with data on manufacturing and industrial production.

The U.S. is to release a report on producer price inflation.

Thursday, October 11

The European Central Bank is to publish the minutes of its latest rate setting meeting.

The U.S. is release figures on consumer price inflation along with the weekly report on initial jobless claims.

Friday, October 12

China is to publish its latest trade figures.

The U.S. is to round up the week with preliminary data on consumer sentiment.

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The U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback’s strength against a basket of six major currencies, rose 0.17% to 95.15 as of 10:54 AM ET (14:54 GMT).

The U.S. economy added 201,000 in August, while wage inflation rose to 2.9%. The positive data locks in expectations that the Fed will raise rates at its next meeting Sept. 25-26.

Meanwhile, trade tensions lingered, as U.S. President Donald Trump could put tariffs on another $200 billion worth of Chinese goods that could go into effect as soon as Friday. China said it would retaliate if new tariffs were imposed.

At the same time, trade negotiations to revamp the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Canada continued, with a deal by the end of September possible, Reuters reported. The loonie was flat against the dollar, with USD/CAD falling 0.01% to 1.3141 amid data showing Canada’s unemployment rate was higher than expected in August.

The dollar rose against the safe-haven yen, with USD/JPY increasing 0.36% to 111.14 amid reports that Trump could look at trade with Japan next. The president has previously expressed concern about the U.S. trade deficit with Japan.

EUR/USD fell 0.30% to 1.1586 and GBP/USD increased 0.33% to 1.2972.

Meanwhile, the Australian dollar was lower, with AUD/USD dipping 0.72% to 0.7146, while NZD/USD was down 0.41% to 0.6560.

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The U.S. Dollar Index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of other currencies, was up 0.05% to 95.12 by 1:45AM ET (05:45 GMT), while the Argentine peso hit a record low on Monday as President Mauricio Macri vowed to employ “emergency” measures to resolve the crisis.

Argentina announced on Monday new austerity measures with the ultimate goal of eventually balancing the budget by next year. These measures include new taxes on exports and further cuts to government spending. The Macri government wants to speed up the release of a $50 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Macri said poverty levels would rise as inflation rises to over 30%. The country raised interest rates to 60% in late August. “This is not just another crisis. It has to be the last,” he said.

Meanwhile, the USD/TRY pair lost 0.5% to 6.6256 after Turkish Finance Minister Berat Albayrak said on Monday that there is no risk to either the country’s banks or its external debts.

The Turkish lira has lost about 40% value against the U.S. dollar this year, rattling markets.

Turkey’s central bank said in a statement on Monday that “(r)ecent developments regarding the inflation outlook indicate significant risks to price stability… [The] monetary stance will be adjusted at the September monetary policy committee meeting in view of the latest developments.”

Emerging markets have been hard hit by concerns that higher U.S. interest rates will pressure countries that have borrowed heavily in dollars in recent years.

Elsewhere, the USD/JPY pair edged up 0.05% to 111.14, while the AUD/USD pair gained 0.3% to 0.7232.

The USD/CNY pair was down 0.3% to 6.8215 as The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) set the yuan reference rate at 6.8183 vs Friday’s fix of 6.8347.

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The pound sank to the lowest levels of the day after data showing that UK manufacturing activity fell to its lowest level in two years in August, weighed down by jitters over Brexit and the U.S.-China trade war.

GBP/USD was down 0.77% to 1.2857 by 08:56 AM ET (12:56 GMT), from an intra-day high of 1.2933.

The pound extended early losses after a report showing that the Markit UK manufacturing index dropped to a 25-month low of 52.8 in August, from 53.8 in July.

Sterling had already come under pressure after the European Union’s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said Sunday that he is “strongly” opposed to British Prime Minister Theresa May’s proposals on future trade after Brexit.

The comments added to concerns over the prospect of a no-deal Brexit.

The pound was also lower against the euro, with EUR/GBP advancing 0.85% to 0.9028.

In emerging markets, Turkey’s lira resumed its decline amid persistent worries over the country’s economic and currency crisis.

Data on Monday showed that Turkish inflation surged to a 15-year high of 17.9% in August, up from 15.9% in July, indicating that the steep selloff in the lira is driving up consumer prices.

Following the inflation data the country’s central bank indicated that a rate hike could be in the offing at its meeting later this month, but investors remain wary given Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan’s firm opposition to high interest rates.

Deteriorating relations between the U.S. and Ankara and worries about Erdogan’s increasing control over monetary policy and the economy have seen the lira tumble more than 40% this year.

The U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback’s strength against a basket of six major currencies, was holding steady near one-week highs at 95.10, as worries over global trade tensions underpinned safe haven demand for the greenback.

Trade volumes were expected to remain thin, with U.S. financial markets closed for the Labor Day holiday.

Concerns over an escalation of the trade row between the U.S. and China lingered as the Trump administration prepared to impose a fresh round of tariffs on Chinese imports.

U.S. President Donald Trump said last week he was ready to implement tariffs on an additional $200 billion worth of imports from China as soon as Thursday.

The step would escalate the trade row with Beijing, after the U.S. already slapped tariffs on $50 billion of Chinese imports.

Trump has also threatened to withdraw from the World Trade Organization, a move that could undermine the system of global trade.

Meanwhile, trade talks with Canada remained at an impasse after stalling on Friday.

The euro and the yen were little changed against the dollar, with EUR/USD last at 1.1608 and USD/JPY trading at 111.13.

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The British pound rallied during the week, testing the 1.13 level. That’s an area that has caused a certain amount of psychological resistance, but if we can break above the top of the weekly candle stick, I think that the market will continue to go much higher. Short-term pullbacks will be supported at the 1.2750 level, and I think at this point we are more than likely going to see more risk to the upside than the down. I think at this point, we will continue to move on rumors more than anything else, but it does look like an area where there could be a lot of support involved. If we were to break down below the candle stick that turned around think that the 1.2750 level, the market will continue to go much lower.

I believe volatility will be one thing you can count on in this market, but how can you expect anything different with the negotiations going on? I believe that eventually we will get some type of solution or lack of a solution to the Brexit, and that will send the British pound higher as it will become of value play. That doesn’t mean that it will go straight up in the meantime, quite frankly would not surprise me at all to see the occasional pullback as people don’t know what to do yet. In general, I think that this market has much more risk to the upside than the down, but it’s not can it be easy.

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One of the more popular trends to emerge in the past year is the ICO bounty program, which rewards users and community members for participating in a variety of activities that help push development and marketing forward. ICO bounties are excellent ways to foster a larger and more engaged community, but they can also be a costly endeavor depending on the extent and reach of the program. Moreover, some industry observers have questioned the real-world value of such programs on the tokens they’re meant to support.

Recently, Element Group, a full-service advisory firm that works with digital capital markets, performed a study to determine how effective ICO bounties truly are when going past the anecdotal evidence available online. Their research model studied over 160 ICOs and found some interesting signs that bounties may be here to stay, and for good reason. Regardless, the study does prompt important questions about ICO bounties and how they may look and act moving forward.

Adding Value To The Community

The argument for ICO bounty programs is that they are an easier way to create goodwill and build organic word-of-mouth reach as they involve not a pricey marketing machine, but rather community members themselves. Bounty programs are multi-faceted and cover a variety of bases for an ICO, ranging from social media and blog posts to Telegram communications and even bug reporting. The goal is to reward community members who participate with tokens, providing companies with a cost-effective strategy for reaching broader audiences.

Moreover, bounty programs can be cleanly characterized in pre-ICO and post-ICO categories, giving companies different tools at each phase. Until now, it has been commonly accepted that these programs do add some value. Even so, there are some risks in the process, and ways that the system can be abused by both community members and companies themselves.

Regardless, Element Group, which offers a variety of services for tokenized companies, wanted to understand the real impact of an ICO bounty program on a company’s fundraising performance over the long term. Thanks to their blend of advisory and research services, the company is uniquely positioned to understand the phenomenon. In their initial scan of the sector, Element found anecdotal evidence of increased awareness for ICOs, as well the possibility of improved funding as a result.

To test their initial findings, Element built a model based on stratified sampling that selected 164 ICOs between late 2017 and early 2018. Excluded from the sample were companies that raised under $1 million and those whose bounty allocations were under $10,000. They also ignored companies that placed a disproportionate number of tokens (over $1 million), as they are generally considered outliers. The goal was to find a correlation between dollars spent on bounties and the amount of funding raised during the ICO process.

ICO Bounties Represent An Effective Tool

Element Group’s findings are surprising, though they do fall in-line with the company’s predictions. In its first pass-through, Element’s model found a positive correlation between dollars spent on ICOs and the total amount raised. The findings were shocking, however, in terms of their scale: the model predicted that $1 dollar allocated to bounties resulted in a $15 increase in the total amount raised.

After concluding that the results seemed too high, the company excluded more outliers from the second iteration. They removed larger ICOs with more internal resources available and added a hard cap limitation to their regressions. Finally, they removed companies that had $0 listed as their bounty allocation. Even with these more restrictive parameters, Element still found a highly positive correlation.

Per the company’s analytical model, a $1 investment in an ICO bounty program translates roughly into an additional $7.70 for the total amount raised. More impressive than the figures themselves was the level of precision with which Element was able to forecast the final amount raised by ICOs simply by analyzing how many tokens were allocated to bounty programs. To test its model, Element examined several ICOs and found that it could predict the amount of capital raised with a high degree of accuracy.

For instance, CREDITS (a cryptocurrency focused on reducing transactional friction) raised $20 million during its token sale, which Element was able to predict within $260,000. The company had similar success predicting several other token sales’ funding, including Expertly (accurate within $400,000) and OriginTrail (which surpassed the prediction by $3 million).

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