The second week of March has been exciting for the cryptocurrency markets. Perhaps the biggest news is that Kevin McCarthy of California, Republican House Minority Leader, called for exploring blockchain technology to help make the US government more transparent and efficient. He said blockchain is revolutionizing the financial industry and can bring benefits to government operations. Then he touted three related bills where the government embraced new tech: a bug bounty program, a cybersecurity enhancement, and a technology education bill for veterans. In calling for a blockchain experiment with governance, McCarthy asked Congress to adopt new technology that could make it more accountable to citizens.
Here is the rest of the week in review:
Coinbase revised its trading fee schedule and angered some active trading customers. The professional trading platform Coinbase Pro hiked maker fees from zero to 0.15% for the lowest tier of volume. It also slightly cut taker fees from 0.3% to 0.25%. Coinbase also changed its tiered schedule of trading volume and removed the option of stop market orders, turning them into stop limit orders. The exchange said it believes the changes will help boost liquidity. But many crypto users online expressed disappointment at the loss of zero fee trading, saying they will switch to Binance, Kraken, and other low-cost exchanges. Coinbase also added support for Stellar lumens (XLM) earlier in the week.
Tendermint, a blockchain interoperability project, has raised $9 million in a Series A funding round led by Paradigm, a technology-based venture capital firm. Other fundraising participants included Bain Capital and 1confirmation. Tendermint will use the funds raised to further develop Cosmos Hub, a blockchain project that aims to allow blockchains to interoperate among other blockchains. Cosmos Hub was recently launched after 3 years of research and development. Tendermint has also released a software development kit. The firm's mission is to provide sustainable interoperability solutions that spark an increase in useful real-world blockchain applications.
Crypto prices rose again this week, moving sharply up to a market cap of almost $140 billion, with Bitcoin (BTC) finally breaking $4,000. The majors all entered the green, and Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Stellar, and Cardano (ADA) led the strong surge. In the top 100, the biggest losers are ABBC Coin (ABBC), down 32%, Bitcoiin (B2G), down 24%, and Blocknet (BLOCK), down 13%. The biggest gainers are MetaHash (MHC), up a whopping 84%, TokenPay (TPAY), up 67%, and Groestlcoin (GRS), up 67%. Next week's events include the Blockchain & Bitcoin Conference in Prague and Money20/20 Asia in Singapore.
The author owns a small amount of BTC.