PRICE CHANGE: WTD/YTD

- BTC ($5,394): -33% / -25%
- ETH ($125): -40% / -4%
- LTC ($36): -31% / -13%
- XRP ($0.15): -27% / -20%
- Crypto Market Cap ($154B): -34% / -19%
- BTC Dominance: 64%

THIS WEEK IN CRYPTO

- Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies experienced significant declines this week as traders sold off risky assets across the board on fears of the economic impact from the coronavirus pandemic. Bitcoin fell below $4,000 on Friday but ended the week above $5,000. On Thursday bitcoin fell almost 40%, suffering its worst daily loss in nearly seven years. The cryptocurrency fell to $3,850 before ending the week above $5,000. For a while many analysts believed Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies could be a hedge against broader market risk, but the most recent sell-off makes it appear as though they will trade with risk assets like the broader equity markets.  Link. 

- Exchange data suggests that whales - individual or entities that hold large amounts of digital currencies - started moving coins from wallets to exchanges four days before the massive market sell-off on Thursday. The increased inflow of BTC into exchanges was a sign that large sellers were getting ready to offload their positions, resulting in the 40% price decline of BTC on Thursday. Link. 

- BitMEX and Gemini briefly went out of service for 45 minutes on Thursday, when bitcoin crashed by almost 40% in a single day. BitMEX, a crypto derivatives exchange, saw forced liquidations of $1.1 billion worth of long and short positions during the day and blamed its outage on hardware issues with its cloud provider. Gemini went under 'emergency maintenance' to address a technical issue. Link. 

- The Ethereum network became so congested on Thursday that some DeFi (decentralized finance) apps couldn't function, as orders became backlogged on the Ethereum mainnet and traders were forced to pay exorbitant gas fees to settle. Link. 

- Crypto lenders like Genesis Capital and BlockFi called additional collateral on some of its clients, as the price of bitcoin and ethereum fell significantly this week. Rival Celsius Network - which lends to 225 institutions and has a loan book of $400-$600 million, said it saw margin calls in the hundreds of millions. Many customers were able to post collateral on their loan books, while others were forced to liquidate their collateral due to an inability to make the calls. The severe price decline has led many crypto lenders to stop making new loans. Link. 

- Crypto exchange Coinbase rolled out Bitcoin transaction batching, which allows batching multiple transactions into one to reduce the load on the Bitcoin network. Coinbase believes this could save users up to 50% on transaction fees. Kraken, Bitfinex, Shapeshift and other exchanges already offer bitcoin transaction batching. Link. 

- The Supreme Court of India struck down a 2018 circular issued by the Reserve Bank of India banning banks from dealing in cryptocurrency transactions. The RBI's ban forced many Indian crypto exchanges to shut down their businesses, move to new locations, or shift their services from fiat-to-crypto to crypto-to-crypto. The new guidance means crypto exchanges will now be able to get banking access and crypto trading can return to India. Link. 

- Crypto custodian BitGo announced the launch of a $150 million lending business called BitGo Prime LLC. The firm is targeting loan sizes of more than $1 million with a small group of 20-30 large investors. BitGo says its loan book has quadrupled since January. Link.  

- Facebook is backing away from the Libra token to appease regulators, and instead will develop several different digital tokens, each pegged to a different government-issued currency such as dollars and euros. The new tokens will be available through Facebook's digital wallet Calibra. The Libra Association is expected to forge ahead with its planned Libra token, which will be begged to a basket of government-issued currencies. Link. 

- Circle announced it was launching a toolbox of APIs for businesses to adopt USDC stablecoins. One of its first offerings will be for a payments API that would allow companies to accept card payments that can settle into USDC. Link. 

- South Korea's government passed legislation that provides a framework for the regulation and legalization of cryptocurrencies and crypto exchanges. The legislation authorizes Korea's financial regulators to develop rules around AML and other processes. Link. 

- Figure Technologies, the blockchain lending startup founded by former SoFi CEO Mike Cagney, completed its first asset-backed securitization of home equity loans on its native blockchain Provenance. Figure said the blockchain-based securitization process saved over 100 basis points in operational and third-party costs on the $150 million securitization. Link. 

- Roughly 10% of models on PornHub's platform opt for crypto payments even though cryptocurrencies account for less than 1% of purchases made on the platform. Pornhub has been exploring crypto since April 2018 when it first introduced premium subscription via privacy-oriented coin Verge. Since then it has added support for Horizon (ZEN), Tron (TRX), and Tether (USDT) as payment options. Link. 

- Arweave, a blockchain startup focused on the permanent storage of Internet content, raised $8.3 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures, and Coinbase Ventures. The protocol went live in June 2018 and has more than 1 million pieces of data stored on its permaweb and nearly 200 apps built upon it. Link. 

- Bitmain co-founder Jihan Wu's crypto financial services startup Matrixport is reportedly raising $40 million at a $300 million post-money valuation. Matrixport has been operating since February 2019 and offers services including crypto trading, lending, and custody for both retail and institutional clients. Matrixport reportedly made $7-$8 million in revenue in 2019 across over $500 million of crypto under custody. Link.  

- Paradigm Labs, a DeFi project backed by Polychain Capital, Dragonfly Capital, and Chapter One Ventures, announced it was shutting down due to failure to identify product-market fit and a lack of funding. 

- Development studio Horizon Blockchain Games raised $5 million in new funding led by Initialized Capital with participation from Polychain Capital, Golden Ventures, and DCG. The capital will be used to continue developing its 'SkyWeaver' digital trading card game, a game created in the spirit of Magic the Gathering but built on top of Ethereum. The company is currently in closed beta test of SkyWeaver with around 12,000 users, with plans to launch an open beta later this year to the 92,000 users on the wait list. Link.