Cryptocurrency Daily News Bulletin: March 22, 2019

General News

Alibaba and Aerospace Information Co., a major software developer and provider, have signed a strategic cooperation to provide cloud solutions for the blockchain industry.

AriseBank founder Jared Rice Sr. has pleaded guilty to one count of securities fraud, facing a maximum sentence of 20 years, a $5 million fine and three years’ supervised release.

Bitmain is planning to deploy 200,000 units of its own mining equipment in China to take advantage of cheap hydroelectric power this summer – estimated to cost $80 million.

Intercontinental Exchange’s to-be-launched institutional trading platform Bakkt has earned a $740 million valuation after raising $180 million in funding. However, Bakkt’s failure to launch yet is concerning some investors as the exchange continues to liaise with regulators. 

Overstock’s security token platform tZERO is now expanding to launch its own mobile trading app for trading BTC and possibly ETH, CEO Saum Noursalehi revealed. The app is scheduled to launch in June and is being developed by Bitsy, a startup Overstock acquired. 

SBI Holdings, the Japanese financial services giant, has established a new subsidiary to manufacture cryptocurrency mining chips and systems. The new venture, SBI Mining Chip Co. (SBIMC), is a partnership with an unnamed “large” semiconductor enterprise in the U.S.

UPS, the major U.S. postal carrier, and e-commerce technology company Inxeption have jointly rolled out a blockchain-powered platform to improve merchant supply chains. Dubbed Inxeption Zippy, the platform will help companies list, market and distribute their products.

Cryptocurrencies

Bitcoin Cash $155.37 USD (-3.23 percent) is gaining support from Roger Ver’s Bitcoin.com as they announced the launch of a new privacy-focussed P2P crypto exchange called Local Bitcoin Cash – designed to give users an easy way to swap fiat for BCH.

Huobi Token $0.103152 USD (33.66%): Binance has led a new wave of optimism for exchange tokens this year after surging 200 percent this year following the launch of Binance Launchpad – the token sale platform that has hosted successful initial exchange offerings for blockchain startups such as Fetch.AI, BitTorrent and Celer Network. Now Huobi Token is up more 30 percent today and more than 130 percent in 2019 as they announced plans to develop a similar platform called Huobi Prime – set to launch on March 26th.

Numerai $6.96 USD (27.19 percent), the U.S. prediction market startup and hedge fund, has seen strong gains after raising $11 million in an ICO to launch its project Erasure. While Numerai-based prediction models are mostly focused on traditional assets at the current stage, the launch of Erasure will enable predictions on any asset. 

Ripple’s $0.312697 USD (-1.72 percent) XRP presence as a base pair is expanding on the Canadian crypto exchange CoinField. The exchange says it plans to pair 130 new coins with the digital asset soon. Meanwhile, Ripple just released a new report highlighting the company’s collaboration with Professor Perry Alexander at the University of Kansas – part of Ripple’s University Blockchain Research Initiative (UBRI). They seek to explore the university’s deployment of an XRP Ledger validator. 

Tron’s $0.022703 USD (-1.25 percent) new partnership with Tether has gained support from OKEx and Huobi Global for Tether’s new USDT stablecoin on the Tron network. 

– WN.com, Jamie Saarloos