PRICE CHANGE: WTD/YTD

- BTC ($9,758): +12% / +35%
- ETH ($208): +10% / +59%
- LTC ($44): +5% / +6%
- XRP ($0.20): +2% / +6%
- Crypto Market Cap ($266B): +11% / +39% 
- BTC Dominance: 67%

THIS WEEK IN CRYPTO

- Bitcoin experienced it's third-ever block reward halving, dropping the per-block subsidy from 12.5 BTC to 6.25 BTC. The halving takes place roughly ever four years, and is a key part of bitcoin's digital scarcity model where only 21 million BTC will ever be produced. The halvening could wipe out smaller mining operations that won't be able to survive the 50% reduction in revenue and hstorically it has also been followed by significant increases in BTC prices. Link. 

- Telegram is no longer pursuing a crypto strategy after running into regulatory hurdles from the SEC. Telegram had raised $1.8B ICO in 2018 to create the Telegram Open Network (TON) backed by its cryptocurrency GRAMs, and late last year the SEC filed a lawsuit alleging the ICO was an illegal sale of unregistered securities. Since then the US courts blocked Telegram from issuing GRAM tokens to any US investors, and just last week a judge ruled that US citizens might find some way of accessing the TON platform after it launched, so the platform couldn't be allowed either. TON Labs, a startup running a test network, launched its own version of the network last week, but Telegram itself is not involved. Link.

- Redditors will now earn rewards in the form of ERC-20 tokens for creating engaging content on two subreddits: r/Cryptocurrency and r/FortniteBR. Reddit community members can use tokens to vote, tip content creators, and transfer funds. Users can access their tokens through Vault, a wallet that shows their community points and allows them to buy premium community features such as badges, custom emojis, and GIFs. Reddit's reward system is currently being beta tested and is expected to move to the Ethereum mainnet in summer 2020. Link. 

- The Libra Association added 3 new members this week: $300 billion Singapore investment giant Temasek along with venture firms Slow Ventures and Paradigm. The organization now has 24 members. Link. 

- Bitcoin's hash rate dropped 16% and miner revenue declined by 44% after the third halving. Most of the older ASIC mining equipment is now unprofitable. Link. 

- Dapper Labs, the company behind CryptoKitties, is launching an NBA crypto collectibles game called NBA Top Shot. NBA Top Shot will be built on Dapper Labs' Flow blockchain, a new Ethereum competitor. The game allows NBA fans to collect and trade "moment tokens" that include things like high-lights and live on-court play and game stats. The NBA is looking for blockchain tools that can create new and stronger relationships with fans. Link. 

- Ripple is hiring a "Director of Product Management, Loans" indicating the startup behind the XRP cryptocurrency may be moving into the lending space. Ripple's new loan product would help its customers with working capital loans, which would potentially reduce paperwork, improve transparency, and help companies with short-term cash flow needs. Link. 

- Total AUM of crypto hedge funds doubled to over $2 billion in 2019. Quant funds make up over half of the crypto hedge funds in the market, but long-only strategies had the best performance. The median long-only fund was +40% in 2019, compared to quant strategies which were up +30%. It is mostly family offices and HNW individuals who invested in crypto hedge funds; only a handful of funds had foundations, endowments, and VC funds as investors. No pension funds were cited as investors. Link. 

- A special collection of CryptoKitties debuted on Nifty Gateway, a fine-art marketplace backed by the Winklevoss twins. Chinese artist Momo Wang created a Crypto Kitty called "Catterina" and is selling 100 images on Nifty Gateway, at $100 a piece. Nifty Gateway is a marketplace for digital artists to sell limited editions of their artwork; because transactions are logged on the blockchain artists can also take a cut of sales from the secondary market. Link. 

- Coinbase is adding support for OmiseGo (OMG) on Coinbase Pro. The announcement led to a 25% surge in the price of OMG. OMG was created by payment services company Omise, and it's goal is to help the unbanked manage their capital using a decentralized wallet and near-instant transfer speeds. Coinbase Pro currently supports 27 cryptocurrencies. Link. 

- Coinbase research shows that 60% of users buy Bitcoin as their first cryptocurrency, and this is a gateway into buying altcoins over time. 36% of users eventually purchase other altcoins, while only 24% remain BTC only. Link. 

- Blockdaemon, a blockchain node provider, raised $5.5 million from investors like Hashkey, Coinshares, Blockchain.com, and Fenbushi Capital.  Blockdaemon offers a set of tools to help exchanges, custodians, financial institutions, and developers deploy and manage nodes on over 30 blockchain protocols, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Tezos, and Polkadot. Users can launch the nodes either on their own infrastructure or with cloud providers like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Platform. Link.