The first week of May has been exciting for the blockchain and cryptocurrency world. Perhaps the biggest news is that iFinex is considering a token sale to help raise money and shore up its troubled finances. The controversial parent company of Bitfinex, Ethfinex, and Tether released a short marketing document detailing how the sale could proceed. Ifinex wants to sell 1 billion LEO tokens for 1 USDT each. The tokens would allow users to trade with discounted fees on Bitfinex and Ethfinex. The firm intends to buy back its LEO tokens over time until only 100 million remain in circulation. It is unclear if iFinex's potential crowdsale will be satisfied by market demand, and the company with a shady reputation has yet to release a white paper.

Here is the rest of the week in review:

Grayscale Investments began airing new ads advocating for Bitcoin (BTC) as a superior alternative investment. The ad initiative, dubbed "Drop Gold," is meant to promote investment in the Grayscale Bitcoin Investment Trust (GBTC  ). The first ad shows the disadvantages of gold compared to Bitcoin and touts Bitcoin as the future of alternative assets. The suite of ads is slated to run on broadcast television and social media in order to reach both young and old demographics. Grayscale's parent company Digital Currency Group believes that investments in gold will be moved into Bitcoin and crypto as baby boomers worldwide retire and pass down wealth to younger investors.

Microsoft (MSFT  ) announced on Thursday it will promote JPMorgan Chase's (JPM  ) Quorum blockchain as Azure Cloud's preferred blockchain to the firm's enterprise customers. Quorum will become the first distributed ledger platform available through the Azure Blockchain Service, enabling JP Morgan and Microsoft customers to build and scale blockchain networks in the cloud. JP Morgan will also build its own first-party applications for the service. Microsoft and JPMorgan believe the partnership will help expand access to Quorum for enterprise clients.

Crypto prices jumped to $182 billion this week on rather bullish momentum. For the majors, Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Bitcoin, and Litecoin (LTC) led the gains, while Cardano (ADA) and Stellar (XLM) slipped into the red. In the top 100, the biggest losers are Maximine Coin (MXM), down a whopping 30%, ODEM (ODE), down 22%, and Populous (PPT), down 17%. The biggest gainers are Horizen (ZEN), up 26%, ABBC Coin (ABBC), up 24%, and Santiment Network (SAN), up 15%. Next week traders will watch if Bitcoin can top $6,000 and lift up altcoins together.

The author owns a small amount of BTC and LTC.