Digital Currency Group (DCG) revealed it expanded into the Bitcoin (BTC) mining industry last week. The New York-based blockchain investment firm DCG announced Thursday it is operating a subsidiary called Foundry, which it created in 2019. DCG explained that Foundry provides cryptocurrency miners and equipment makers with "institutional expertise, capital, and market intelligence." Foundry was revealed as one of the largest Bitcoin miners in North America and has provided tens of millions of dollars to finance mining operations. DCG also announced it plans to invest over $100 million in Foundry through 2021, as well as give miners and manufacturers access to its network of companies. DCG added Foundry aims to partner with major entities involved in mining and staking coins and work with energy firms and governments to help crypto companies execute their mining strategies.

Here is the rest of last week in review:

Line Corporation (LN  ) on Wednesday launched a wallet for users to manage digital assets and also a blockchain platform where developers can issue their own tokens, tokenize digital assets, and experiment with decentralized applications. LINE wants its development platform to spur firms to easily introduce blockchain technology. The wallet services are only available in Japan currently. LINE, which boasts more than 84 million users on its messaging app, aims to leverage its existing network to spark the development of token economies and encourage adoption of the dapps that will be built on its proprietary blockchain platform. The Korean-Japanese firm has been developing the proprietary LINE Blockchain and issued its own LINK token for trading in 2018. LINE is one of several messaging apps that have tried to develop blockchain technology and issue tokens, but it stands out for progress made so far.

SBI Holdings (SBHGF  ) debuted trading of a type of cryptocurrency derivative called contracts for difference (CFDs). On the Japanese financial giant's foreign exchange trading platform SBI FX Trade, the contracts can be denominated in Bitcoin, Ethereum (ETH), and Ripple (XRP). SBI announced Friday that traders can pair the crypto assets with both the US dollar (USD) and the yen (JPY), providing traders 6 CFD choices in total. For the BTC/JPY pair, the maximum allowable position is 500 BTC, around $5.73 million. SBI Holdings added it offers a mobile app for CFD trading and orders can be placed 24 hours on any weekday. As CFDs are ultra-short-term contracts that pay the difference in price between the open and closing trades, users can borrow on margin to boost leverage and trade larger positions. Though CFDs are considered risky, SBI specifically noted it is catering the new product to beginner and expert traders.

The Winklevoss brothers made the case that weakness in the U.S. financial system and other factors could help Bitcoin attain $500,000 someday. Crypto prices rose to $371 billion this week. For the majors, EOS and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) slipped into the red, while Chainlink (LINK), Binance Coin (BNB), and Ethereum posted outsized gains. In the top 100, the biggest losers were OMG Network (OMG), down 20%, HedgeTrade (HEDG), down 17%, and Qtum (QTUM), down 14%. The biggest gainers were DFI.Money (YFII), up a whopping 262%, UMA, up 143%, and yearn.finance (YFI), up 140%. Next week traders will watch if Bitcoin breaks $12,000 convincingly.

The author owns a small amount of BTC.