Crypto weekly is authored by maaria

PRICE CHANGE: WTD/YTD
- BTC ($9,768): -3% WoW / -27% YTD
- ETH ($830): +14% WoW / +14% YTD
- LTC ($214): -5% WoW / -3% YTD
- XRP ($1.07): -8% WoW / -45% YTD

TECH SPOTLIGHT
- LitePay, a Litecoin payment system, will become available in 41 countries on February 26. The payment method promises to allow businesses and individuals to use Litecoin for everyday transactions, hoping to become the 'world's first borderless payment network'.

- The main feature of this new international payment circuit is the issue of a card similar to a prepaid card, where users can deposit their Litecoin and use similar to a Visa card. Stores that accept Litecoin with LitePay will only pay a 1% settlement charge to receive the direct bank deposit compared to the standard 3% credit card processing fees. BitPay provides a similar service using Bitcoin but charges a minimum $5 fee per transaction, making small purchases impractical on the platform.

- Merchants using LitePay will receive instantaneous settlement, without having to worry about current price volatility in the cryptocurrency. LitePay instantly converts Litecoins into the local fiat currency and deposits the money into the merchant's bank account.

- LitePay can save merchants money on transactions fees, while simultaneously providing liquidity to Litecoin holders. The Litecoin Foundation wants to see Litecoin adoption increase as people begin using it for everyday purchases.

IN THE NEWS
- Telegram raises an initial $850 million in pre-sales for its billion-dollar token offering.

- South Korea softens its stance on cryptocurrency trading and has said the government will support 'normal' cryptocurrency transactions. It is reportedly encouraging banks to work with cryptocurrency exchanges to counter money laundering.

- Wyoming House of Representatives unanimously passed a bill exempting some utility tokens from securities regulations. The bill is now with the senate for approval.

- Israel's government confirms it will tax Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as a kind of property for taxes. Cryptocurrencies will be subject to capital gains tax at rates between 20% and 25%, while individuals mining or trading cryptocurrencies in conjunction with businesses must pay a 17% value-added tax in addition to capital gains tax.

- Venezuela's government officially opened the pre-sale of its "petro" cryptocurrency, making 82.4 million of the commodity-backed virtual coins available (backed by oil, gas, gold and diamond reserves). The aim of the project is to bust the economic blockade imposed on the country by the U.S. People can buy the petro using other cryptocurrencies and "hard currencies" but not, in this first phase, the bolivar. However, the cryptocurrency will be usable for buying local currency once the system is fully up and running. The US has warned potential investors that buying it could violate sanctions.

- Hacker's exploit a vulnerability in Tesla's cloud environment and siphon computer processing power in order to mine cryptocurrencies. Tesla says the hack has not had any impact on customer data protection or the safety and security of its vehicles. This incident is only one example in an ever-growing list of high-profile "cryptojacking" compromises. Earlier this month, hackers made more than $3 million by mining Monero on the servers of the popular web development application Jenkins.

- Robinhood formally launches cryptocurrency trading in 5 states including California, Massachusetts, Missouri, Montana, and New Hampshire. Users can buy and sell Bitcoin and Ethereum with no extra fees, and everyone can track those and 14 other coins in Robinhood's app. Compare this no-fee offering to Coinbase, which charges between 1.5% - 4% in fees. Interest in Robinhood crypto has driven Tobinhood's total registered user count to more than 4 million, up from 3 million in November.

- French startup Ledger, maker of cryptocurrency hardware wallets, announces brand new native apps for all desktop and mobile platforms. Right now, Ledger relies on Google Chrome for its desktop apps. The new Ledger app will provide a dashboard for users to track their portfolios, and eventually will allow for third-party integrations to allow users to buy and sell cryptocurrencies on exchanges directly from the Ledger app.

- New York lawmakers announce they are open to revisiting BitLicense, the controversial 2015 cryptocurrency regulation that some argue is overly burdensome for small companies. A bill to reform the regulation could be introduced 'very soon,' said State Senator David Carlucci.

- Bank of America cites cryptocurrency as a material risk to its business in its annual filing with the SEC. The bank says cryptocurrencies make it difficult to comply with anti-money-laundering regulations, pose a competitive threat, and will force the company to spend more to keep up with the changing landscape. Bank of America is one of several U.S. banks that recently banned credit card purchases of cryptocurrency.

- Austria joins the list of countries planning to regulate cryptocurrencies. In order to curb the use of cryptocurrencies for money laundering, the government plans to require cryptocurrency market participants to identify all trading parties and to disclose trades of $12,300 or more to the government's financial intelligence unit.

- Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin proposes a new model for ICOs, designed to give investors more control and safety. Referred to as a DAICO, the model uses smart contracts to distribute ICO funds in a way that is 'decentralized autonomous'. One project has already taken this approach.

- Ethereum developers are battling over a controversial code proposal called EIP 867. The code would make it easier for Ethereum users to reclaim lost ether through a formal process maintained by the technology. Glitchy software, typos, code errors are common and cause funds to be locked up or lost forever. While some users believe refunding lost ether is acceptable, others are vehemently opposed and believe that such efforts threaten the integrity of the Ethereum platform.

- Bank of China files a patent application for a process it says is better able to scale blockchain systems. Instead of letting a new block store transactions from its previous one, a data compressing system could be used to pack transactions from multiple blocks into what the patent calls a 'data block'. For example, once the system receives a request to compress transactions from block 1 to 1,000 it causes a new data block to be formed and temporarily hosted on a different storage system. The system will then run the packed data through a hash function with a hash value. Using this method can reduce the amount of data stored in new blocks as transactions mount in a blockchain, while ensuring that data from all previous transactions will still be tamper-proof and traceable.

- Georgia state senate is considering a bill that will allow citizens to pay their license fees and tax bills using cryptocurrencies. The state will convert the cryptocurrency into USD within 24 hours after receiving them and the converted amount would be credited to the taxpayer's account. Georgia is the second state to consider accepting cryptocurrencies for tax payments, following in the footsteps of Arizona which proposed a similar bill in January.

- Coinbase begins rolling out SegWit for its customer base, a move which should help reduce fees for users and will allow use of the Lightning Network. Coinbase also announced it was committed to implementing additional Bitcoin scalability improvements like transaction batching and improved UTXO management (UTXO = unspent transaction output).