Perhaps the biggest news of the third week of March is that Square (NYSE: SQ) chief executive Jack Dorsey announced Square is now hiring cryptocurrency engineers, despite the prolonged bear market that has seen many crypto firms lay off thousands of employees. Dorsey, a longtime crypto fan, said Square wants to hire three or four full-time engineers and one designer to work on open source contributions to the Bitcoin (BTC) and crypto ecosystems. He even added the new employees can choose to be paid in BTC. Square is experimenting with cryptocurrency technology to build an accessible Internet-based global financial system.
Here is the rest of the week in review:
Kakao fintech affiliate Dunamu launched its own blockchain service platform. Backed by a $1.7 million Series A funding round led by South Korea's largest Internet firm Kakao, Dunamu debuted a platform called Luniverse designed to help tech startups build blockchain services. Kakao also announced it will integrate its cryptocurrency wallet into the KakaoTalk messaging app, allowing 44 million South Korean users to transfer coins in peer-to-peer transactions. Kakao also said it plans to raise another $90 million through an initial coin offering (ICO) this year, with a goal of $300 million total to help create its own cryptocurrency.
United Parcel Service (NYSE: UPS) announced on Friday that it signed a deal with e-commerce firm Inxeption to develop a blockchain technology platform to facilitate business-to-business (B2B) sales. Named Inxeption Zippy, the platform will serve as an online catalogue for businesses selling to other businesses. Zippy will help merchants with website setup, product listing and pricing, order and financing tracking, and marketing analytics services. Merchants will pay with credit card, not cryptocurrency. UPS aims to bring the speed and convenience enjoyed by consumers to businesses. UPS believes the B2B e-commerce market will reach $1.8 trillion by 2023.
Crypto prices rose slightly this week to $140 billion. For the majors, Bitcoin clung above $4,000, and Cardano (ADA) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) led the gains while EOS (EOS) slipped. In the top 100, the biggest losers are ABBC Coin (ABBC), down 44%, Neblio (NEBL), down 12%, and Hycon (HYC), down 10%. The biggest gainers are Ravencoin (RVN), up a whopping 109%, Asch (XAS), up 92%, and MetaHash (MHC), up 38%. Next week's events include blockchain summits in Frankfurt, Zug, Seattle, and Dubai. Traders will watch if Bitcoin and crypto can hold $4,000 and $140 billion and turn resistance into support.
The author owns a small amount of BTC.