PRICE CHANGE WTD/YTD

- BTC ($3,792): +1% / +1%
- ETH ($130): -6% / -3%
- LTC ($48): +9% / +58%
- XRP ($0.32): +7% / -9%
- Crypto Market Cap ($130B): +1% / +3%
- BTC dominance: 52%

THIS WEEK IN CRYPTO

- Coinbase sparked outrage last week when it announced that it had acquired Neutrino, a startup that helps law enforcement and financial institutions investigate and track transactions on the blockchain. Neutrino was founded by three former employees of Hacking team, a controversial Italian surveillance vendor that was caught several times selling spyware to governments with dubious human rights records like Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan. The Washington Post reported Hacking Team worked directly with the Saudi Arabian government, including the enforcement group that allegedly murdered dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Users took to Twitter with the #deletecoinbase hashtag. Link. 

- Coinbase announced it was adding trading support for XRP, the third largest cryptocurrency by market cap, to Coinbase Pro. At first, users will be able to transfer XRP to the platform, and once sufficient supply of XRP is established on the platform users will be able to trade XRP/USD, XRP/EUR and XRP/BTC pairs. Coinbase did not mention when XRP would hit the regular Coinbase platform, though in the past new currencies have often followed Coinbase Pro by a few weeks. Link. 

- Casa, the crypto custody startup, announced two new products designed to make multi-sig security mainstream. The first is a key manager mobile app and service called Keymaster, which ranges in price from free to $5,000/year. The second product is a Casa Node, a plug-and-play Bitcoin Lightning node that users can use to validate the blockchain and verify their own transactions. Casa sold out of its initial batch of Casa Nodes within two hours of launch. Jack Dorsey, a long-time bitcoin and Lightning supporter, was one of the first people to receive and set up a Casa Node. Link. 

- An ongoing experiment with bitcoin payments technology, the lightning network, continues to see support from big name individuals and companies. The latest to receive a payment in a chain of transactions now known as the "Lightning Torch" are the digital assets team at Fidelity and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman. Twitter accounts receiving the "torch" - a lightning payment- pass it on after adding a nominal amount of bitcoin to the total. The experiment was kicked off in mid-January and has since been passed among prominent members of the crypto community including Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. Link. 

- Facebook is reportedly working on a cryptocurrency that allows users to send money to contacts instantly. The project is reportedly far enough along that the company has begun having conversations with crypto exchanges about selling the Facebook coin to consumers. It is being reported that the value of the coin will be a stablecoin pegged to a basket of different foreign currencies, not just the dollar. Link. 

- Square reported over $166 million in revenue and $1.7 million in net profit from bitcoin sales last year - making up roughly 5 percent of its $3.3 billion net revenue. Square added bitcoin buying and selling options to its Cash App back in November 2017. Link. 

- Blockstream announced major improvements to bitcoin's lightning network to make it easier for developers to build their own features into the network. The lightning network is seen as bitcoin's best hope for its use in payment and developers are already building lightning network apps. A seven year old built a zombie hunting game that takes bitcoin lightning payments, and it is even possible to order pizza via lightning. Link. 

- When Gerald Cotten, founder of crypto exchange Quadriga, died in December customers feared that the C$190 million of crypto held in cold storage could be lost forever. It looks now like the cold wallets Quadriga was using have been empty since April, marking the latest twist for the Canadian-based exchange. The company shut down in January, leaving 115,000 customers out of pocket for about C$260 million in cash and cryptocurrencies. Link. 

- Inveniam Capital Partners plans to tokenize $260 million in four private real estate and debt transactions, starting with a WeWork-occupied building in downtown Miami, Florida. The firm plans to sell tokenized shares of the building, valued at $65.6 million. Transaction data and reporting will be tracked through the ERC-20 tokens Inveniam is selling. Link. 

- A new report published by Japan's National Police Agency claims more than 7,000 possible crypto-related money laundering cases were reported to the authorities, a more than 10x increase from the previous year. According to the report, some of the cases were linked to cryptocurrencies involved drug-related transactions and child pornography. In April 2017 Japan introduced a new law which required exchanges to disclose all suspicious transactions to the police. Link. 

- Circle, the crypto trading firm, is reportedly raising $250 million. The firm operates an OTC trading desk and crypto exchange, and has raised over $240 million from investors including Goldman Sachs and IDG Capital. It was valued at $3 billion at the time of its last fundraise. Link.