This is a guest post from Voyager, a crypto brokerage firm with a commission-free trading app.
Market Snapshot
As global markets reacted to the spread of the Corona Virus, Bitcoin (BTC) experienced a sharp sell-off, dropping to a 1-month low of $8,438.
Nearly every other crypto asset listed on Voyager ended the week in the red. The biggest losers;
ICON (ICX) – 29%
Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (BSV) -25%
OmiseGO (OMG) -21%
The sole gainer of the week;
Voyager Token (VGX) +24%
Amid the market crash, more than $190 million worth of Bitcoin longs and shorts were liquidated on derivatives exchange BitMEX.
Libra Lives on
Thought Libra died on the Senate floor? Think again.
Despite intense scrutiny from regulators and companies like Mastercard and Paypal jumping ship last year, Libra is showing signs of life. E-commerce giant Shopify, which services nearly 1 million businesses around the globe, has just announced that it’s joining the Libra Association.
“Our mission is to make commerce better for everyone and to do that, we spend a lot of our time thinking about how to make commerce better in parts of the world where money and banking could be far better. That’s why we decided to become a member of the Libra Association,” Shopify said in a blog post.
Shopify becomes the 21st member of the Libra Association, joining the likes of Spotify, Lyft, Uber, Union Square Ventures, and more. According to the organization, it’s still on track to launch this June.
Crypto for Good
UNICEF is single-handedly proving that crypto is not “only used by criminals.” The international charity recently launched a crypto fund to receive and distribute donations of Bitcoin and Ethereum. The Ethereum Foundation made the first donation to the fund totaling $150,000. Since then, UNICEF’s Kazakhstan office has developed an ethereum-based system for processing internal payments.
UNICEF is also working with SoftBank Investment Advisers (SBIA) to build a structure for distributing cryptocurrencies. Together, the two organizations are funding several crypto startups, including Coinsense, a Tunisian token project building ERC-20 tokens to power communities struggling with unemployment and poverty.
A New Kind of Bank
Caitlin Long is building a bank to provide regulated services for digital assets. The bank is based in the crypto-friendly state of Wyoming and is called Avanti, which means “forward” in Italian.
According to CoinDesk, the company has raised $1 million in seed funding and has plans to launch eight products that aren’t currently available in the U.S. markets. So far, Long has revealed only one service – custody for security tokens.
Avanti is still in the process of applying for a Special Purpose Depository Institution (SPDI) charter with the state of Wyoming, but the bank plans to launch in early 2021.
Read this…
CNBC: Warren Buffet is “Completely wrong and outdated” on bitcoin, Chamath Palihapitiya says
CoinTelegraph: Are Miners Prepared for the Halving of Bitcoin?
Decrypt: Ethereum art made at TikTok’s HQ selling for $54,000
Forbes: How Blockchain Will Transform Media & Entertainment
The original Voyager post can be found here. You can earn $25 in BTC by signing up for the Voyager app and trading $100 (or use code SLUDGE25).
