China’s Center for Information and Industry Development has released its latest crypto project ranking. Tron and EOS top the list out of the 35 crypto projects evaluated while Bitcoin has been downgraded slightly. The center also evaluated the projects independently based on basic technology, applicability, and creativity. (Bitcoin.com)

Ethereum mastermind Vitalik Buterin, who holds 350,000 ETH in his main wallet address, allegedly cashed out $40 million worth of ETH between June 2017 and February 2018. The findings came to light by Alex Sunnarborg, a founding partner of the crypto hedge fund Tetra Capital, who dug into Vitalik’s historical account data. (CCN)

American prediction market startup and hedge fund Numerai (NMR) has raised $11 million in an initial coin offering (ICO) to launch its project Erasure, Numerai tweeted on March 21. Introduced in late 2016, Numeraire network provides a blockchain and cryptographic token-based ecosystem for incentivizing anonymous data scientists to create predictive models. Based on the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain, Numeraire tokens are used in trading market predictions on the startup’s platform. (Cointelegraph)

Overstock’s security token platform tZERO is going full crypto. Until now, security tokens had been the startup’s priority, but this summer, tZERO plans to launch its own mobile trading app for buying and selling bitcoin and, possibly, ether, CEO Saum Noursalehi told CoinDesk Thursday. The app for IOS and Android devices is scheduled to launch in June and is being developed by Bitsy — a crypto startup in the portfolio of Overstock’s venture arm Medici Ventures. (CoinDesk)

U.S. CFTC commissioner Dan Berkovitz says the futures and options markets regulator is working hard on the Bakkt proposal. While he’s refused to provide an approval deadline, he did say that the agency is not anti-crypto or anti-blockchain. (CCN)

Ripple price declined heavily and turned bearish against the US Dollar and bitcoin. XRP/USD may consolidate in the short term and upsides are likely to remain capped near $0.3100 and $0.3120. (NewsBTC)

ConsenSys spin-out BlockApps is working with Bayer Crop Science, the controversial agricultural giant formerly known as Monsanto. The multinational corporation is collaborating on several BlockApps pilot projects, CoinDesk has learned, although the firm declined to specify how many. The projects began as proof-of-concept implementations in 2018. (CoinDesk)

The hype surrounding the US presidential election in 2020 is growing palpable, and one candidate, Andrew Yang, is getting significant attention from the cryptocurrency community. Yang, of the Democratic Party, is absolutely the favorite of internet memelords, but he isn’t the only one appealing to the blockchain crowd. Hard Fork investigated the Twitter feeds of every confirmed presidential candidate (as well as a few rumored ones) to figure out who the cryptocurrency community prefers most. (The Next Web)

Major American postal carrier UPS and e-commerce technology company Inxeption have jointly rolled out a blockchain-powered platform to improve merchant supply chains. The development was announced in a press release published on March 21. The new blockchain platform dubbed Inxeption Zippy is designed to help companies list, market and distribute their products to customers. The platform purportedly enables merchants to monitor the entire supply chain from product listing to delivery, ensuring that sensitive data like contract-specific pricing and rates are only accessible to the buyer and seller. (Cointelegraph)

Japanese financial services company SBI Group announced the launch of SBIMC on March 22. SBIMC will engage in the manufacture of chips and mining business.

According to a recent report released by Abacus Journal, the number of licenses issued will increase over the next 12-24 months. In the past, it was very difficult to obtain the license, but things seem to be moving faster than before. The New York Attorney General (“NYAG) released a report that concluded that crypto trading platforms have different risk management strategies. The NYAG has identified three main concerns: potential conflicts of interest, lack of serious efforts to avoid abusive trading, and limited protection for investors. This report shows that there are some exchanges such as Kraken, Binance and also Gate.io that could be performing price manipulation and other fraudulent activities. It is worth mentioning that there have been introduced several virtual currency bills in the State Assembly. However, New York will not be amending the current rules or improve its legislation until 2020. (Bitcoin Exchange Guide)

Law firm Stewart McKelvey had a conflict of interest because it represented both QuadrigaCX and Jennifer Robertson, the widow of the failed cryptocurrency exchange’s founder Gerald Cotten. That’s according to a letter sent to creditors Wednesday from Miller Thomson, one of two law firms appointed as representative counsel for Quadriga customers by the Nova Scotia Supreme Court. (CoinDesk)

Facebook is developing its own cryptocurrency for payments, according to at least two reports, a move that has the potential to make the social network billions of dollars while also helping to eliminate fake news and bots. (Computerworld)

Africa continues to dominate Google Trends search interest for “bitcoin,” but that has not translated into widespread adoption of cryptocurrency by users and businesses. Apart from opaque regulation and a lack of awareness, one of the major reasons for this failure has been the expansive use of mobile money on the continent. (Bitcoin.com)

The volatile price action in the crypto markets over the past year and a half has proved to investors that despite each major altcoin having (mostly) unique features and use-cases, their prices are still extremely influenced by the overall market price action, and especially that of Bitcoin. Now, a recent research report conducted and published by cryptocurrency exchange Binance gives a significant amount of insight into how correlated various cryptocurrencies are with Bitcoin, other altcoins, and the US Dollar, and highlights an interesting trend developing in the first few months of 2019 and over the past year. (NewsBTC)

Jared Rice Sr., founder of crypto bank AriseBank, pleaded guilty to one count of securities fraud Wednesday in federal court. The Dallas News reported Thursday that Rice, who was arrested last year, admitted to scamming investors out of $4.2 million by selling AriseCoin tokens and promising that customers would receive Visa credit cards and accounts insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). (CoinDesk)

Bakkt, ICE’s yet-to-launch crypto exchange, is being valued at around $740 million following its Series A funding round, sources close to the project tell The Block. The exchange raised $182.5 million last year, pitching a futures trading platform geared at institutions. Its approximate $740 million post-money valuation means ICE may have sold up to 25% of shares to external investors like Galaxy, Pantera, Microsoft and Starbucks – the latter having contributed no capital in return. (The Block)