Crypto weekly is authored by maaria

PRICE CHANGE: WTD/YTD
- BTC ($7,010): -14% / -47%
- ETH ($405): -13% / -44%
- LTC ($74): -12% / -66%
- XRP ($0.43): -4% / - 78%

THIS WEEK IN CRYPTO
- Cannabis brand High Times announced that it would accept cryptocurrencies in its IPO, becoming the first traditional stock offering ever to accept investments in crypto. According to High Times CEO Adam Levin, the addition of cryptocurrencies as an options is to enable a much broader group of investors worldwide. Investors can purchase shares in High Times for $11, a price that is a 10 percent discount on the strike price when it lists on Nasdaq later this year. Link. Link.

- Starbucks, the Intercontinental Exchange, Microsoft, and BCG announced they are working to launch a new company called Bakkt that will enable consumers to use bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies at Starbucks. Bakkt will leverage Microsoft cloud to create and open and regulated digital asset ecosystem. Link.

- Radar Relay, a wallet-to-wallet decentralized exchange built on the 0x protocol, raised $10 million for its Series A. Blockchain Capital led the round, and was joined by investors including Tusk Ventures, Distributed Global, Reciprocal Ventures, and Collaborative Fund. Link.

- Northern Trust, the financial services with almost $10.7 trillion in assets under custody and administration, has opened its fund administration services to a select group of hedge funds betting on bitcoin and Ethereum. The firm also rolled out new blockchain-based features for private equity workflows, including automation of asset exchanges between GP’s and LP’s and reducing friction around capital calls. Link.

- Coinbase Commerce announced a new plugin to give millions of merchants the option to accept and send cryptocurrencies. The WooCommerce plugin, a WordPress e-commerce platform, currently supports more than 28 percent of all online stores. Link.

- Sagewise, a new Los Angeles-based startup, has raised $1.25 million to bring to market a service that helps arbitrate disputes over blockchain transactions. Sagewise works with both Ethereum and the Hedera Hashgraph (a newer distributed ledger that has higher transaction speeds than Ethereum). The tech works as a middleware and is hoping to beat back the tide of bad contracts, bad code, and bad actors. Link.

- dYdX, a decentralized financial derivatives platform, plans to launch a protocol for creating short and leveraged positions for Ethereum and other ERC20 tokens. The startup previously raised a $2 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz and Polychain Capital. Link.

- A futures trader on Hong Kong-based exchange OKEx placed a long bet on Bitcoin worth about $416 million and was unable to cover the the loss as the price of bitcoin fell. As a result, the exchange has implemented a clawback policy and is requiring counterparties with a net profit to pay a portion of their earnings to cover the losses. All in, the real amount customers will have to pay out is close to $15 million. Link.

- Coinbase hires Jeff Horowitz as its first-ever chief compliance officer. Horowitz was previously managing director and global head of compliance at Pershing, a subsidiary of BNY Mellon specializing in brokerage custody, clearing and settlement. Link.

- Cryptocurrency-focused merchant bank Galaxy Digital started trading on a Canadian stock exchange despite cooling investor interest and falling prices this year. Former hedge fund manager Michael Novogratz launched Galaxy Digital in November, a month before bitcoin hit its all-time high near $20,000. According to financial disclosures the firm took a $134 million hit in the first quarter. Link.

- Trading volume at South Korea’s Bithumb exchange, one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges, plummeted by 40 percent in three days after it temporarily stopped opening new user accounts. Bithumb suffered a $31 million hack in June, and was forced into suspension because its banking partner had yet to renew their contract following the hack. Link.

- Argo Mining, a UK-based crypto mining company, has raised $32.5 million through an IPO on the London Stock Exchange. Argo offers “accessible” crypto mining via a subscription service, and is the first crypto company to be listed on the LSE. Market leader Bitmain is rumored to be conduction a pre-IPO funding round and to be considering going public. Link.

- Canaan Creative, the world’s second largest bitcoin mining hardware manufacturer, has launched a BTC mining television set. The device allows users to purchase entertainment content or other products on Canaan’s platform using the crypto they have mined. The device is reportedly the first in a series of blockchain-related home appliances slated to be released by the firm. Link.

- Handshake, the long-secret cryptocurrency projected backed by top VC’s and blockchain developers, was released Thursday. Handshake aims to be a wholly democratic and decentralized certificate authority and naming system, though it does not replace the DNS. It provides an alternative to today’s certificate authorities and uses a decentralized trust anchor to prove domain ownership. The primary goal is to simplify and secure top-level domain registration. The project and protocol has been led by Joseph Poon (creator of Bitcoin’s Lightning Network) and has support from individuals from top venture funds. Link.

- Coinbase Custody announced it was exploring the addition of 40 new assets to its custodial service, including Ripple (XRP), EOS, Monero (XMR), VeChain (VEN), Cardano (ADA), Bitcoin Gold (BTG), and Telegram. The crypto assets would be added for storage only, and are not being added to the trading platform. Link.