PRICE CHANGE WTD/YTD

- BTC ($4,092): +2% / +9%
- ETH ($141): +3% / +6%
- LTC ($60): +2% / +97%
- XRP ($0.31): 0% / -12%
- Crypto Market Cap ($144B): +3% / +15%
- BTC dominance: 50%

THIS WEEK IN CRYPTO

- Bithumb, the largest crypto exchange in South Korea, was hacked again on Friday. More than 3 million EOS (~$12.7 million) and 20 million XRP (~$6.2 million) were stolen. Bithumb alleges that all of the stolen cryptocurrency is owned by Bithumb, and that user funds are protected in cold wallets which has led to speculation that the hack was led by insiders. The hack comes less than one year after another hack in June 2017, when hackers stole $31 million of user's crypto from the exchange's hot wallets. Link. 

- Coinbase Custody is offering staking services to institutional clients, starting with the Tezos proof-of-stake network. Client assets will remain inside Coinbase's fully insured cold storage at all times, mitigating risk to investors, and Coinbase will put up its own coins to assume the risk. Clients can expect to earn about 6.6 percent annually after Coinbase's fee. Unlike Bitcoin's proof-of-work mechanism - which relies on computation - proof of stake requires participants to have skin in the game by depositing assets to the network and then helping validate decisions about which transactions and blocks should be added. For doing this, validators receive payouts much like traditional miners in a PoW system. Participants can delegate their assets to someone else and earn a passive income on staking these assets, ranging from 5 to 25 percent annually. Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap, is expected to migrate to a PoS system eventually. Link. 

- Bitcoin broke above $4,000 for the first time since early January, though it is still trading well below its 200-day average of $5,400. The broach of $4,000 is seen as an important milestone for speculators though who saw bitcoin fall to $3,150 in December, down 80% from a record $19,511 the year prior. Link. 

- Luxury brand conglomerate LVMH is launching a blockchain for proving the authenticity of high priced goods. The blockchain could theoretically identify an individual good like a handbag and trace the whole journey of its lifecycle from supply chain to store, and then the multiple chains of owners who have owned and sold it. Code-named AURA, the platform is expected to go live in May or June with Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior, and then will be extended to LVMH's other 60-plus luxury brands and eventually others. LVMH has employed a full-time blockchain team who has been in stealth mode for over a year, but have been working closely with ConsenSys and Microsoft Azure. AURA has been built using a permissioned version of the ethereum blockchain called Quorum, which was developed by JPMorgan. Link. 

- Crypto miner Bitmain's IPO application has officially lapsed, only 6 months after it filed with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. In the IPO application Bitmain disclosed it had made a net profit of nearly $1 billion in the first half of 2018 and a total of $1 billion for all of 2017. Profits dropped during the second half of 2018 in line with the market slump, and Bitmain suffered a loss of about $500 million in the third quarter of last year. In its IPO filing Bitmain disclosed it might be required to repay more than $700 million to its Series A and Series B venture investors, in the event the company is not sold or goes public. Bitmain also announced that its co-founders Jihan Wu and Micree Zhan stepped down as co-CEOs. Link. 

- Coinbase executive Christine Sandler is leaving the startup to lead institutional marketing and sales at Fidelity in its crypto custody business. Sandler was at Coinbase for only a year and joins a long list of executives who have left the company in the last year. The departure isn't a surprise though as Coinbase announced at the beginning of the year that it was halting its institutional efforts to concentrated on crypto native funds. Link. 

- According to indeed.com research cited by Forbes, JPMorgan is hiring for more blockchain jobs than any other financial firm. The bank was in the top 10 companies posting job offers related to "Blockchain," "cryptocurrency," or "bitcoin". In February 2019 JPMorgan unveiled the JPM Coin, a plan to use blockchain to simplify payments between its clients. The only companies to post more blockchain jobs than JPM were tech firms IBM and Cisco and consulting firms Deloitte, Accenture, EY, and KPMG. Link. 

- Crypto brokerage Tagomi Trading became the 18th company to receive a BitLicense from the New York Department of Financial Services. Tagomi recently raised $12 million to offer prime brokerage services to hedge funds investing in cryptocurrencies. The startup went live in December and raised a total of $28 million. Link. 

- Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten has been granted a license to launch a cryptocurrency exchange. The exchange, called Rakuten Wallet, is a rebrand of Everybody's Bitcoin, which Rakuten acquired for $2.4 million last August. Link. 

- Blockchain-based trading platform CEDEX secured a supply of 6,000 diamonds worth over $50 million ahead of its launch of a diamond ETF. CEDEX is using its blockchain tech and a proprietary algorithm to make diamonds into a tradable asset class like gold. Link. 

- PE firm Ares Management files trademark infringement complaint against crypto exchange ARESCOIN. Ares alleges Starlight Capital, the group behind ARESCOIN, used the same font and color scheme in their logo. Link. 

- Live streaming platform Twitch has reportedly removed the cryptocurrency payment option for subscriptions. Twitch had previously allowed users to pay in bitcoin and bitcoin cash through blockchain payments processor BitPay. Link.  

- Ex-Enron CEO, Jeffrey Skilling, is reportedly looking to start a blockchain company in the oil and gas industry  just a month after being freed from jail for his role in the energy giant's massive accounting scandal back in 2001. Link.