PRICE CHANGE WTD/YTD

- BTC ($3,548): +1% / -5%
- ETH ($114): -3% / -15%
- LTC ($32): +3% / +5%
- XRP ($0.31): -3% / -12%
- Crypto Market Cap ($119B): 0% / -5%
- BTC dominance: 53%

THIS WEEK IN CRYPTO

- Crypto custodian Anchorage came out of stealth this week and launched its institutional-grade custody service to the public. Anchorage holds crypto assets for institutions like hedge funds and venture funds, and only allows transactions verified by an array of biometrics, behavioral analysis, and human reviewers. The company raised a $17 million Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz last year that included investors like Khosla Ventures, Max Levchin, Elad Gil, and Naval Ravikant. Link. 

- Coinbase announced plans to offer its OTC trading unit in Asia, UK, and Europe. Some reports estimate that trading activity on the OTC market is three times larger than trading activity on exchanges. Coinbase is trying to assert market dominance globally though it faces tough competition from Binance and Huobi Global in Asia. Binance, the largest crypto exchange by volume, saw $1.2 billion of crypto trading on its platform over the last 7 days compared to Coinbase's $134 million. Link. 

- Coinbase announced resources for US customers to claim crypto trades on their taxes, in addition to an integration with popular tax software TurboTax. Link. 

- Galaxy Digital, the crypto merchant bank founded by ex-hedge fund trader Mike Novogratz, is reportedly raising a $250 million credit fund to help floundering crypto firms. This credit fund will provide loans to crypto-native firms struggling in the current bear markets. Link. 

- Robinhood Crypto received regulatory approval from New York state regulators to bring its services to the state. New York clients will now be able to invest in 7 cryptocurrencies on the Robinhood platform including bitcoin and ethereum. The company is now one of a handful of companies to receive a BitLicense from the NY Department of Financial Services, joining groups like Genesis Tradings and Square. Link. 

- Southeast Asia ride hailing unicorn Go-Jek bought Philippines-based Coins.ph mobile wallet for $95 million. Coins.ph provides a blockchain-based remittance solution, P2P money transfer into the Philippines, and other financial services to 10% of the adult Philippines population. According to reports, 77 percent of Filipinos do not have bank accounts a problem that Coins.ph is trying to solve with its mobile banking platform. Link.  

- Crypto wallet BRD raised a $15 million Series B from SBI Crypto, a subsidiary of Japanese financial services company SBI Holdings, to expand into Japan and broader Asia. Despite the crypto winter, BRD doubled its total install base in 2018 and ended the year with 1.8 million users globally. It also said it was storing $6 billion mostly in Bitcoin and Ethereum, and saw a 24 percent increase in monthly active users between Nov and Dec, after it started accepting stablecoins. Link. 

- Steemit, an early blockchain startup developing a decentralized Reddit, announced a new CEO less than two months after laying off 70 percent of its staff as a result of the crypto winter. At its peak, Steemit had more than a million registered users and was one of the most successful crypto projects in terms of adoption. Users are compensated in Steem tokens for creating or curating popular content. Link. 

- A new report alleges that the currently quoted XRP "market cap" available on third party crypto data services and exchanges, is overstated by as much as $6.1 billion, or 48 percent of its $13 billion crypto market The report alleges that over 19 billion of the 41 billion XRP currently quoted as in circulation may be illiquid or subject to significant selling restrictions. Link. 

- Bitcoin ATMs are booming, particularly in emerging markets where these ATMs serve as an alternative to banks. There are now 4,213 crypto ATM machines deployed worldwide compared to 471 machines worldwide in 2015. Though majority of bitcoin ATMs are currently located in North America, demand from Latin America is accelerating due to high inflation and political unrest. Link.

- Symbiont.io, a startup applying blockchain technology to capital markets, raised $20 million from investors like Nasdaq, Citigroup, and Galaxy Digital. The company has built a smart contract platform called Assembly, which enables financial institutions to share and verify data. The technology speeds up settlement times for syndicated loans and improves efficiency in the mortgage bond market. Link. 

- Blockchain project Polkadot is reportedly raising up to $60 million through a second ICO. Polkadot previously raised $145 million via a token sale in 2017, though it had $98 million frozen due to a bug in its wallets. The Polkadot protocol is designed to allow blockchains to communicate with each other and facilitate upgrades automatically without system-wide upgrades or hard forks, The network is expected to launch in Q3 2019. Link. 

- RealBlocks, a tokenized real-estate startup, raised a $3.1 million seed round from investors like Science Inc, Ulu Ventures, and Cross Culture Ventures. RealBlocks is an ethereum-based real estate platform that allows firms to raise capital through tokenized securities, while investors can purchase assets using both crypto and fiat. Link. 

- Bitwise Asset Management and NYSE Arca filed paperwork to launch the first Bitcoin ETF in the US. Bitwise has said this differs from previous efforts to launch an ETF because a third-party custodian would store the bitcoins and pricing would come from a large number of exchanges. Link. 

- According to a report from Chainalysis, the use of cryptocurrency on the dark net fell to $600 million in 2018 from $700 million in 2017, though volumes doubled towards the end of 2018 and reached an average of $2 million daily. Overall volumes slowed due to the closure of two major dark net markets in id-2017 and increased law enforcement activity. Link. 

- Jarrod Dicker has stepped down as CEO of po.et to return to the Washington Post as VP of Commercial Technology and Development. Dicker had joined po.et a year ago with the ambition of growing it into a decentralized media economy platform. Link.