Last week, U.S. Representative Maxine Waters, chair of the House Financial Services Committee, asked President-elect Joe Biden to rescind or monitor all of the cryptocurrency-related guidance issued by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) under the Trump administration. Waters wrote a letter Friday, along with 3 other members of Congress, calling on Biden to rescind OCC guidance that permitted national banks to hold stablecoin reserves as a service for customers, as well as scrap guidance that allowed federally chartered banks and federal savings associations to provide cryptocurrency custody services.

The letter came days after the same members introduced a bill to require stablecoin issuers to obtain bank charters and secure regulatory approval before releasing tokens. Waters' actions can be seen as an effort to add strict regulatory oversight of stablecoins and undo Trump administration rules in the process.

Here is the rest of the week in review:

Circle on Thursday announced a partnership with Visa (V  ) that will allow global businesses to leverage the combined advantages of USD Coin (USDC), the fully-reserved dollar stablecoin supported across many public blockchains, and Visa's global payments platform and network. Circle said it joined the Visa Fintech Fast Track program, representing a powerful new opportunity for the fintech space. Circle unveiled the upcoming Circle Visa Corporate Card, a first ever card that will enable Circle business account holders to spend USDC at over 60 million merchants who accept Visa. Circle also promised to create a seamless digital dollar stablecoin payout experience to a fast-growing network of Visa partner wallets by early 2021, accelerating funds flows with near-instant settlement and lower transactions fees for all parties. Finally, Circle noted it will work with Visa to education Visa's hundreds of fintech partners in its Fintech Fast Track Program and choose partners seeking to use the power of stablecoins for global payouts, giving partners access to Circle's suite of services via a joint sales and marketing program.

S&P Dow Jones Indices, a unit of financial data provider S&P Global (SPGI  ), announced on Thursday it will launch cryptocurrency indices in 2021, becoming the latest big financial player to enter the alternative asset class. The S&P DJI-branded indices will use data from New York-based virtual currency firm Lukka to track over 550 of the top traded coins. S&P's clients will be able to create customized indices and other benchmarking tools on cryptocurrencies. S&P and Lukka said they hope more reliable pricing data will make it easier for investors to access the new asset class and lessen some of the speculative risks. Peter Roffman, global head of innovation and strategy at S&P Dow Jones Indices, said: "With digital assets such as cryptocurrencies becoming a rapidly emerging asset class, the time is right for independent, reliable and user-friendly benchmarks." The move by the world's most renowned index provider could help cryptocurrency further enter the mainstream.

Crypto prices rose to $569 billion in another volatile week. For the majors, all ended in the green except Cardano (ADA), with Litecoin (LTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Bitcoin (BTC) gaining the most. In the top 100, the biggest losers were Horizen (ZEN), down 18%, Status, (SNT), down 10%, and Stellar (XLM), down 10%. The biggest gainers were MaidSafeCoin (MAID), up 60%, SushiSwap (SUSHI), up 54%, and Elrond (EGLD), up 51%. Next week traders will keep watching Bitcoin and the $20,000 level.

The author owns a small amount of BTC and LTC.