PRICE CHANGE WTD/YTD

- BTC ($3,423): -4% / -9%
- ETH ($106): -7% / -21%
- LTC ($33): +3% / +8%
- XRP ($0.31): 0% / -12%
- Crypto Market Cap ($116B): -3% / -8%
- BTC dominance: 53%

THIS WEEK IN CRYPTO

- Bitcoin is officially in the longest stretch of declining prices in its 10-year history. Bitcoin achieved an all-time high of $19.764 on Dec 17, 2017 and is on day 411 of its longest bear market. The currency has lost more than 84 percent of value from its all-time high. Previously, the longest bear market was from 2013 - 2015 when Bitcoin saw its price fall 86 percent. The most severe bear market was 163 days long in 2011 -- the currency saw its price fall more than 93 percent during that time. Link. 

- Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange based on trading volume, has added support for purchasing crypto with Visa and Mastercard. Credit cards can now be used to purchase a limited set of tokens including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and XRP. The support comes via a partnership with crypto-payment company Simplex. Link. 

- Fidelity announced that its crypto trading and custody platform, called Fidelity Digital Asset Services, was in its 'final testing' phase. The company had begun onboarding a select group of eligible clients to test the service. Earlier this month Bloomberg reported that FDAS was planning to launch publicly in March. Fidelity has over $7 trillion in client assets under management. Link. 

- A new report from Chainalysis indicates that two groups are responsible for approximately $1 billion in crypto hacks, a sum that accounts for the majority of the money lost in such scams. Chainalysis spent three months tracking the funds stolen in known hacks and believes that majority of the hacks come from two groups, which it labeled alpha and beta. The report claims Alpha is a "giant, tightly controlled organization at least partly driven by non monetary goals". Beta, the second group, is smaller and less organized, and is a "heavily sanctioned organization absolutely focused on the money". Stolen funds were transferred an averaged of 5,000 times before they were converted into cash. Link. 

- Crypto custody startup Casa launched a browser extension for its lightning network-enabled bitcoin node. Users will be able to interact with their Casa Nodes - hardware devices that connect to and help validate the bitcoin blockchain - directly on any crypto website with lightning network functionality. Lightning is a layer-two payments protocol run on top of the bitcoin network to facilitate faster and larger transactions. Link. 

- Soups Ranjan, director of data science and risk at Coinbase, has left the exchange after 3.5 years. Ranjan supervised the risk teams, built security features for users' accounts, built tools to streamline workflows for legal and compliance, and managed identity verification and KYC integrations. Ranjan did not announce what he would be working on next. Link. 

- Messaging app company Kik is planning to fight a likely SEC enforcement action over its 2017 ICO where it raised almost $100 million for its Kin token. The SEC recently sent the company a Wells notice stating that Kik had violated securities laws. Kik maintains that the Kin token works like a currency and is not an unregistered security. Link. 

- Canadian crypto exchange QuadrigaCX owes its customers $190 million in both crypto and fiat and cannot access most of the funds. The exchange would hold customer crypto holdings in cold storage, which was controlled by CEO Gerald Cotten. Cotten died of Crohn's disease in December and since then Quadriga employees have been unable to access its accounts. The exchange's crypto holdings total $147 million including $92 million of Bitcoin, $46 million of ether, and $6.5 million of Litecoin. The company has since filed for creditor protection. Link. 

- Staked, a crypto startup that enables institutional investors to earn crypto by participating in the validation process of proof-of-stake blockchains, raised a $4.5 million seed round led by Pantera Capital. Staked currently supports Tezos, Dash, Livepeer, Decred, Factom and EOS and wants to add support for another 20 coins in 2019. Staked is also interested in finding ways for investors to easily lend their holdings out on platforms such as dy/dx and Compound. Coinbase Ventures, DCG, and Winklevoss Capital participated in the round. Link. 

- South Korea's top financial regulator has said it will not lift the ban on domestic ICOs, after finding that some projects have been violating rules by illegally raising money from Korean investors. Link. 

- Multicoin Capital announced it was leading a $2.5 million seed round in The Graph, a company that makes it easier to gather data from public blockchains. The Graph is building open source software that indexes blockchains so their data can be accessed by anyone. Link. 

- Genesis Global Capital, the institutional crypto lending firm, said it processed more than $1.1 billion in lends and borrows in 2018 . The company doubled its loan originations in the last three months of the year despite falling prices. 60 percent of the company's loan portfolio was bitcoin, 20 percent was XRP, and the remaining was a slew of other currencies. Link. 

- New malware discovered by Palo Alto Networks is said to steal browser cookies and saved passwords of Mac users to retrieve login credentials for crypto exchanges and wallets. The malware, dubbed CookieMiner, could potentially bypass multi-factor authentication using saved passwords and SMS records. Link. 

- Media company Cheddar announced it was partnering with the Brave browser to offer users three months of free access to premium content. Brave controls advertising using a tokenized display model and will let users view Cheddar Business and Cheddar News via the browser at Cheddar.com.  Brave currently has 5.5 million monthly active users. Link. 

- Micropayments startup SatoshiPay announced a partnership with Europe's largest digital publishing house, Axel Springer, to process blockchain payments for its content globally. SatoshiPay's wallet will be integrated into Axel Springer's online products (which include Business Insider and Rolling Stone) so consumers can directly pay for content. SatoshiPay was originally built on bitcoin technology, though in 2017 they shifted the tech stack to Stellar to enable faster and cheaper micropayments. Link. 

- IBM successfully used blockchain tech to track a shipment of mandarin oranges from China to Singapore. The main shipping document, the bill of lading, was recorded on the blockchain. The electronic bill of lading  can cut operating costs like electricity used for refrigerated cargo containers while they wait for collection at the port, storage costs, and other expenses. Blockchain tech also provides a traceable and tamper proof storage of records, thereby reducing fraud. Link. 

- Blockstrain Technology Corp, which uses blockchain to verify cannabis genetics, announced its first partnership in the US. The company signed an LOI with LA-based NXT Water to develop and launch Akeso Functional Fitness Water, a CBD-infused drink that markets itself as the "first-ever fully transparent beverage". The platform validates the strain's genetics and links it to a QR code so the buyer can verify the strain. Link. 

- Ripple hired Stuart Alderoty as its new General Counsel, filling a role that had been vacant for several months ever since Brynly Llyr left the company in September to join crypto payments startup Celo. Alderoty's hiring comes at a time when Ripple is in the midst of fighting a class action lawsuit brought by investors who accuse Ripple of selling XRP as an unregistered security. Link. 

- Shamoil Shipchandler, a director at the SEC who oversaw high-profile crypto cases, has left the agency for global law firm Jones Day. Shipchandler had led a team of around 140 at the SEC and led enforcement actions against AriseBank and bitcoin futures firm 1Broker. Link.