Crypto weekly is authored by maaria

PRICE CHANGE: WTD/YTD
- BTC ($6,909): -19% WoW / -48% YTD
- ETH ($384): -26% WoW / -47% YTD
- LTC ($115): -28% WoW / -48% YTD
- XRP ($0.49): -22% WoW / -75% YTD

TECH SPOTLIGHT
- While it’s recommended to use cold storage or a hardware wallet to store your crypto assets, you can also use digital services like MyEtherWallet or MetaMask to store and manage Ethereum and ERC20 tokens. While not as secure as hardware wallets or cold storage, these services are much more secure than the exchanges because you can control your own wallet keys.

- MyEtherWallet is a free, open-source interface for generating Ethereum wallets and interacting with the Ethereum blockchain. The platform generates a free ETH wallet with a private key.

- MetaMask is a Google Chrome extension that allows you to easily access your ETH wallet, usually generated through MyEtherWallet.

- Any time you receive or purchase an ERC20 token, you can send it to your ETH wallet address that was generated via MyEtherWallet. The address can be accessed via MyEtherWallet or the MetaMask extension.

- All ERC20 tokens are based off the Ethereum blockchain, so you send/receive tokens using your Ethereum address. In order to track the specific token details, you need to add the contract address of the specific token. Token addresses are publicly available and can be entered in MetaMask after you receive the tokens into your wallet.

- Example of contract address for OmiseGo: Link. Use ERC20 contract: 0xd26114cd6EE289AccF82350c8d8487fedB8A0C07
- Questions? Feel free to send me an email.

IN THE NEWS
- Telegram successfully raised another $850 million through its initial coin offering private sale, increasing the total amount raised to $1.7 billion. The company had already raised $850 million in late February, which was already one of the largest amounts raised via a token sale to date. Per filings, Telegram may pursue additional offerings and according to reports, may try to raise as much as $2.55 billion. The funds will be used to develop the Telegram Open Network (TON), a blockchain meant to decentralize multiple facets of digital communication, ranging from file sharing to browsing to transactions.

- According to a new report from Indeed.com, interest in cryptocurrency-related jobs has declined in parallel with a slump in cryptocurrency prices. Despite the decline in searches for cryptocurrency positions, searches for blockchain-related roles have remained strong.

- Coinbase says it will add support for the Ethereum ERC20 technical standard in the coming months. Coinbase will only list assets after they are listed on GDAX, after being evaluated for factors such as liquidity, price stability, and other market health metrics. GDAX will likely have more assets listed on the exchange than on Coinbase, but any asset listed on GDAX will be added to the Coinbase Index on a market capitalization weighted basis.

- LitePay, one of the most hyped projects of the Litecoin scene, abruptly shut down this week leading to an over 10% drop in the price of Litecoin. Litecoin creator Charlie Lee and the Litecoin Foundation issued apologies on Monday after it was revealed that LitePay CEO Kenneth Asare had informed them that he had ceased all operations and intended to sell the company, an announcement that came less than two weeks after Asare held a much-lampooned Reddit AMA in which he gave few specifics about the project and was accused of evading questions.

- Since its beta launch a few weeks ago, there are now more than 1,000 lightning nodes running the software on live computers. There are worries that lightning will follow a similar path as bitcoin, where at home mining via PC’s was quickly outpaced by industrial operations and corporate interests. As lightning scales, it is possible that high fees could make it cost prohibitive for average users to constantly open and close channels, but so far the channel fees are very low, costing just a few cents to open a Lightning channel.

- Spring Labs raises $14.75 million in its seed round led by August Capital. The firm aims to use its proprietary blockchain called Spring Network to exchange identity and credit-related information using smart contracts to bring data efficiency and regulatory transparency to the process.

- South Korea plans to release a taxation framework for cryptocurrencies by end of June.

- Bitfinex, the fifth largest crypto trading platform in the world in terms of trading volume, is planning to relocate to Zug, Switzerland.

- Reddit is no longer accepting bitcoin as payment for its Reddit Gold membership program. The decision comes in part due to Coinbase’s decision to discontinue their Merchant Tool product in favor of Coinbase Commerce, which enables merchants to accept multiple cryptocurrencies directly into a user-controlled wallet.

- Ripple donates $29 million of its cryptocurrency XRP to support US public schools, fulfilling over 35,000 funding requests from teachers via DonorsChoose charity fund. DonorsChoose will convert the donations into US dollars over the course of two weeks.

- AirAsia is converting its frequent-flyer rewards program into a cryptocurrency platform called BigCoin, as part of a broader effort to improve its digital services and move towards a cashless system. The move follows a month after Singapore Airlines announced that it was planning to launch a private blockchain for its own frequent-flyer program, thought it did not specifically state it would be developing its own cryptocurrency.

- Ford receives a new patent that allows for car-to-car cryptocurrency transactions. One proposed use case would allow cars to trade tokens for certain services, such as occupying slower lanes of traffic or merging/passing.

- Two Japanese exchanges, Mt. Exchange and Tokyo GateWay, are set to cease operations after receiving orders to improve security after a January hack on Coincheck which led to $533 million worth of NEM tokens being stolen.

- Intel is seeking to patent a process that could reduce bitcoin mining energy usage. The Bitcoin mining hardware accelerator could reduce power by as much as 35 percent. The concept isn’t limited to ASICs, but also applies to processors, SoC, and FPGAs.

- Vitalik Buterin proposes a cap on the supply of ether, set at 120 million, “or exactly 2x the amount of ether” sold in its original sale in 2014. Ethereum has recently been criticized for its lack of clarity around the platform’s monetary policy, and this is one of the first times Buterin has directly addressed the issue.