Crypto weekly is authored by maaria

PRICE CHANGE: WTD/YTD
- BTC ($8,300): +19% / -38%
- ETH ($528): +33% / -27%
- LTC ($131): +12% / -40%
- XRP ($0.68): +39% / -65%

THIS WEEK IN CRYPTO
- BitGo Co-Founder Ben Davenport announced in a Medium post that he is stepping down as CTO. Starting next week Ben will work part-time as an advisor and Ben Chan, who has been with the team since the beginning, will take over as CTO. Ben said he will be spending time with his family and reconnecting with the Bitcoin community in order to figure out what he will do next. Link.

- Yahoo Japan buys a 40 percent stake in a Tokyo cryptocurrency exchange that is set to launch in fall. Sources say that the deal went for about 2-3 billion yen, or around $18-28 million. Yahoo Japan reportedly plans to use its investment in the BitARG exchange to launch its own cryptocurrency exchange in 2019. Link.

- China’s crypto mining giant, Bitmain, received approval to lease 10 acres in Washington State to build a new crypto mining facility. The deal is reportedly being signed by Bitmain subsidiary, Ant Creek, though Bitmain has yet to publicly acknowledge Ant Creek as a subsidiary. However, publicly available information lists Bitmain CEO Jihan Wu as Ant Creek’s sole governing person. Link.

- Privacy-centric cryptocurrency Monero has a hard fork that upgrades its proof-of-work algorithm to resist specialized ASIC miners, in an effort to ensure the cryptocurrency does not become centralized. Bitmain had recently announced it had developed ASICs that would be able to mine Monero much more efficiently. As a result of the algorithm change the Monero hash rate dropped around 80 percent, suggesting that ASICs are no longer mining on the Monero network. Link.

- Fewer than 100 of 250,000 federal tax returns filed using Credit Karma’s tax preparation software reported cryptocurrency gains or losses. This comes despite 5 percent of Americans reporting owning cryptocurrencies in a recent survey according to TechCrunch. Link.

- Gemini introduces block trading for Bitcoin and Ether, allowing customers to make high-volume trades that won’t appear in the exchange’s order book until they’ve been filled. Block trading allows larger traders, such as hedge funds, to buy or sell large quantities without moving pricing (used as alternative to over-the-counter trading). Block trading on Gemini will require minimum threshold of 10 bitcoin or 100 ether. Link.

- Mastercard plans to hire 175 new technology developers in its R&D arm, including blockchain specialists. The company is working on expanding access to financial services through blockchain technologies. Last September MasterCard filed patents describing a blockchain system that records "purchase orders, invoices [and] transaction data." Two months, later Mastercard filed another application that described blockchain-based solutions aimed at speeding up transaction settlement times. Link.

- Germany’s second largest stock exchange is set to launch a cryptocurrency trading app later this year. The app, called Bison, is not expected to charge trading fees at launch and will initially offer trading support for BTC, ETH, XRP, and LTC. Link.

- A Russian court rules that messaging app Telegram must be blocked in the country. The ruling follows months of battles over Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) request to access user data from Telegram through the sharing of encryption keys, which Telegram has refused to do despite receiving court orders. Telegram most recently raised $1.7 billion through an initial coin offering to continue developing privacy services and tools. Link.

- After raising $660 million from 32,000 people in an initial coin offering for Pincoin and Ifan tokens, team members of the Vietnamese cryptocurrency company Modern Tech have apparently taken the money and left the country. This scam could be one of the largest in the ICO space. Link.

- Coinbase acquires decentralized app browser and wallet Cipher Browser for the Ethereum blockchain. This comes after Coinbase recently announced its plans to support ERC20 tokens on its platform. Coinbase announced its own decentralized mobile browser last year, called Toshi, which can be used as an Ethereum wallet or to browse Ethereum apps. Coinbase will be combining the two teams. One of the first new features coming to the browser will be Testnets, which allow developers to test and experiment with their apps without having to use real cryptocurrency. Link.

- Bitfinex introduces trading for 12 altcoins. The coins have a combined market capitalization of over $1 billion and can be traded against BTC, ETH, and USD. In a press release Bitfinex said that the new coins are ‘a curated selection of high-quality projects, each pioneering research within various sectors of blockchain development’. Link.

- Venrock, a venture capital firm created by John D. Rockefeller’s family, partners with CoinFund to invest in blockchain-based businesses. Venrock and CoinFund first met through their mutual investment in YouNow, a live video-streaming app maker that pivoted to crypto last year and raised an Initial Coin Offering to form the basis of its business model. CoinFund was founded three years ago and has backed a number of prominent blockchain projects including CoinList, Kik, and YouNow. Link.

- A $1.6 billion blockchain fund launches with Chinese government backing. The Xiong-‘An Global Blockchain Innovation fund will invest in Chinese blockchain startups and reports that ‘government-guided funds’ accounted for 30 percent of capital raised. Link.

- BitFinex introduces Hive, a distributed, multi-threaded and multi-process matching engine built for speed, stability, and scalability. Through this distributed process, Bitfinex can scale the number of orders handled as well as the velocity by which it can react to market price changes. The system is intended to drive down transaction fees while lowering spreads. Hive also lays down the groundwork for launching a non-custodial API and decentralized trading platform. Link.

- Joel Robideaux, the mayor-president of the cash-strapped Louisiana city and parish of Lafayette, urged local residents on Thursday to consider launching an initial coin offering. The mayor-president did not explain what function this cryptocurrency would serve besides raising funds. He said the goal was to "develop solutions targeting government inefficiencies, and, more importantly, alternatives for financing public infrastructure.” Link.

- Bank of America filed a patent application that outlines a permissioned blockchain which would securely record and authenticate personal and business data, ensuring only authorized parties can access it. The system would also keep a log of everyone who accesses the data. The document proposes using such a blockchain as a way to combine existing data storage platforms into a single secure network, increasing efficiency by reducing the number of storage locations for a user’s data. Link.