Billionaire Peter Thiel’s venture capital firm "Founders Fund" is looking to back a cryptocurrency trading startup; the startup, Tagomi Systems, intends to bring expertise in electronic trading from Wall Street to the bitcoin market; this comes as more are considering the notion of Bitcoin gaining more widespread adoption - Link
Vitalik releases partial proof-of-concept for Ethereum 'Sharding' tech ; sharding means that Ethereum can be scaled more efficiently; this means each node does not need to process every transaction - Link
Cryptocurrency tracker CoinMarketCap releases the company’s first mobile app for tracking cryptocurrency prices; the service rose to fame during last year’s meteoric rise of cryptocurrencies; CoinMarketCap’s website now attracts more traffic than Bloomberg or the Wall Street Journal - Link
AirSwap trading platform goes live with promise to power a ”new system of trade”, with decentralized token trading, cross-device functionality, available in 8 languages, featuring 24 tokens and able to embed on any website; AirSwap uses a peer-to-peer trading system when used in a browser - Link
Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase hires Hunter Meghart, former director of equity trades at Barclays investment bank; this comes as Coinbase’s valuation recently reached $8B after the acquisition of earn.com; moreover, it follows efforts by Coinbase to ramp up the recruitment of skilled employees - Link
The decentralized cryptocurrency market OpenBazaar is gearing up for a ”radical redesign”; this redesign is reportedly seeing OpenBazaar shift its efforts from almost solely Bitcoin, which was the case int he past, to more coins like Zcash and Bitcoin Cash; furthermore, OpenBazaar is looking to revamp its desktop website and launch mobile apps (one from iOS and one for Android) - Link
Coinbase releases open-source Bitcoin Cash ”CashAddr” library for Ruby; this came in the form of a GitHub post; it provides a utility for converting between base58 and CashAddr Bitcoin Cash addresses - Link
Some cryptocurrency exchanges will be required to provide Belarusian authorities with customer data, according to an upcoming cryptocurrency decree; this comes as part of a revision to the nation’s Decree on the Development of Digital Economy; however, it appears only companies in the country’s High-Tech Park will be affected - Link
Iran bans Telegram after claiming the application has been used to encourage ”armed uprisings”; this follows a similar ban in Russia; instead, domestic alternatives to Telegram such as ”Soroush” are being promoted by Iranian officials; this comes as Telegram recently closed a second funding round for its ICO - Link
Barclays’ CEO Jes Staley says that the company does not have any immediate plans to move into cryptocurrency trading; this came at the company’s annual general meeting; moreover, the statement comes at a time when more investment banks are beginning to explore the potential of cryptocurrency trading - Link
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