Crypto weekly is authored by maaria

PRICE CHANGE: WTD/YTD
- BTC ($6,989): +1% WoW / -48% YTD
- ETH ($398): +4% WoW / -45% YTD
- LTC ($117): +2% WoW / -47% YTD
- XRP ($0.49): 0% WoW / -75% YTD

TECH SPOTLIGHT
- Ethereum has been facing scaling challenges in recent months as transaction volumes and the number of nodes on the network have increased. How does consensus happen on Ethereum? Each and every node in the network does every calculation, and when they all come to a consensus, the transaction is deemed valid. As the number of transactions has been increasing (particularly because of ICOs built on top of Ethereum), the number of calculations that the networks have to go through before they can come to a consensus has increased exponentially as a result. Because consensus occurs in a linear manner, the more nodes added to the network the longer each transaction takes to reach consensus.

- Multiple solutions have been proposed including increasing block sizes (would require a hard fork), using altcoins (makes it easier for miners to get 51% majority on smaller chains), and sharding.

- Sharding splits the network into partitions called shards that contain their own independent piece of state and transaction history. In this system, certain nodes would process transactions only for certain shards, allowing more transactions to be processed across all shards. Nodes only have to process a subset of transactions and supernodes would take the collations across all the shards and combine them in a single block added to the Ethereum blockchain.

- Vitalik Buterin believes sharding and proof of stake will be important for Ethereum to reach Visa-levels of scalability in 3-4 years. In March Buterin indicated that the sharding testnet would be ready for release soon.

THIS WEEK IN CRYPTO
- Twitter suspended @bitcoin Sunday morning. Roger Ver had been accused of purchasing the handle and using it to promote Bitcoin Cash as Bitcoin and for months users on Twitter had been reporting the account, accusing it of tweeting spam and intentionally misleading consumers. The account has previously been restricted by Twitter but this is the first time the account has been suspended.

- Chainalysis, the crypto forensics that provides real-time tracking of blockchain transactions, announces a $16 million Series A raise led by Benchmark. The team came together after the Mt.Gox hack to build intelligent software that could trace specific transactions on the blockchain and be sold to law enforcement. While the platform is available for bitcoin today, Chainalysis is launching 10 more currencies in addition to bitcoin.

- Coinbase announces it is launching a venture fund, promising to finance ‘promising early stage companies that have teams and ideas that can move the space forward in a positive, meaningful way’. Coinbase reportedly made over $1B in revenue in 2017.

- Crypto mining giant Bitmain revealed its new Ethereum ASIC miner, which will begin shipping mid-July. These rigs are far more efficient when compared to current GPU mining rigs. However, according to a recent Twitter poll conducted by Ethereum developer Vlad Zamfir, 57% of voters supported a hard fork that would make Ethereum resistant to ASIC miners. In the same week, Vitalik Buterin announced he opposed a fork that would disable Ethereum ASICs.

- A Medium post revealed a massive blockchain attack on cryptocurrency Verge. While the hacker only stole $1 million from the Verge blockchain by falsely mining blocks, the attack has gained notoriety because it was an attack on an actual blockchain and not a centralized exchange. A lead developer of Verge pushed a hard fork to the entire network in order to ‘fix’ the bug, but failed to solve the vulnerability in the code and the attack continued over the next few days.

- CoinList, a financial services platform for staging and managing ICOs, spun out of AngelList as a standalone company October. CoinList conducts AML/KYC checks on behalf of its clients and helps ICOs with best practices in anticipation of SEC regulation. The company recently announced $9.2 million in seed funding.

- With news of Cambridge Analytica collecting data on millions of Facebook users, more and more consumers are calling for decentralized, blockchain-based social networks where they own their own data. Blockstack, a network for decentralized applications, has built a way for users to own their own identity and data on whatever dApps they use. The first social network to be released is expected to be a decentralized Twitter, build end to end on the platform. Blockstack, a YC alum, raised $50 million in its 2017 ICO with participation from investors like Union Square Ventures, Foundation Capital, Lux Capital, Winklevoss Capital, and Digital Currency Group.

- The SEC is considering two bitcoin ETF proposals, public documents dated March 23 show. ProShares Bitcoin ETF and ProShares Short Bitcoin ETF would each hold Bitcoin future contracts, providing retail investors with the ability to directly or indirectly invest in the flagship cryptocurrency. ProShares had previously proposed these funds in September.

- Google removes crypto-mining add-ons from the Chrome store, doubling down on its stance regarding cryptocurrencies. The move comes after a rise in malicious extensions that appear to provide useful functionality on the surface, while embedding hidden mining scripts that run in the background without the user’s consent. These mining scripts often consume significant CPU resources and severely impact system performance.

- Bloomberg reported that Ripple offered financial incentives to Gemini and Coinbase last year in order to get either exchange to list XRP. The report says that Ripple offered $1 million in cash to Gemini and more than $100 million worth of XRP to Coinbase.

- Arizona Governor Doug Ducey signed the Corporations/Blockchain Technology bill, bringing corporations one step closer to submitting all their data on distributed ledgers. The bills validates data and records corporations submit on the blockchain. The move makes Arizona one of the most blockchain-friendly states.

- The SEC filed a lawsuit against Longfin Corp, a company that saw its price jump more than 2,000 percent late last year after it announced the acquisition of a blockchain startup. The SEC alleges that the company’s CEO and three others illegally sold large blocks of restricted shares of the company while the stock price was elevated. In December, Longfin’s stock price exceeded $70 and as of today, the stock price is around $28. Nasdaq has since halted trading of Longfin’s stock.

- Shinhan, South Korea’s second largest bank, announced a partnership with OmiseGo (OMG), the Ethereum-based (ERC20) banking and payments platform. The OMG platform uses Plasma architecture to make online asset exchanges easier and faster. Shinhan plans to integrate OMG’s blockchain technology in various areas of the bank’s operations, including the credit card department, making it the first major credit card company in Asia to apply blockchain technology.

- Vitalik Buterin took the microphone at a Q&A session at the Economy conference in Seoul and attacked Craig Wright, who was speaking on stage. “Given that he makes so many nonsensical claims, why is this fraud allowed to speak at this conference?” Buterin told the crowd to tumultuous applause. Craig Wright rose to notoriety in 2016 by claiming he was Satoshi Nakamoto, despite not offering any evidence to prove his claim.

- Bloomberg reports that Adam Fisher, who runs macro investing for Soros, has secured internal approval to being trading crypto assets. George Soros recently said that Bitcoin was in a bubble but that he was ready to start trading cryptocurrencies

- Pakistan’s central bank issued a statement barring financial companies in the country from working with cryptocurrency firms, becoming the latest institution of its kind to bar the activity.

- The U.K.'s financial watchdog has warned that companies offering services around cryptocurrency derivatives, like token issuances, "likely" need to be authorized by the agency. However, the agency also said that an ICO may or may not fall under its regulatory purview depending on the nature of the tokens issued.

- Coinbase has approached US regulators about registering as a licensed brokerage firm, in a move that would allow it to expand the group of assets it offers to include digital tokens that the SEC has argued are securities. As a broker, Coinbase’s platform would only be allowed to offer tokens that comply with securities laws, meaning token issuers would have to register their sale with the SEC and provide investors with extensive financial disclosures.