BRAVE MOVE: Brave’s promise to compensate you for viewing online ads is finally coming to fruition. The privacy-minded web browser is debuting small opt-in notifications that feature promotional offers from different brands, promising that 70 percent of the income from the ads will go to users. The rewards will be paid out in Brave’s Basic Attention Token (BAT). Full Story
SAMSUNG SPLURGE: South Korean technology giant Samsung has invested 2.6 million euros ($2.9 million) into crypto hardware wallet maker Ledger. The investment reportedly gives the startup a valuation of roughly $290 million. The news comes a day after a CoinDesk Korea source said Samsung is working on its own unique blockchain based on ethereum and could eventually launch a “Samsung Coin” token, too. Full Story
XRP SALES: Blockchain payments startup Ripple has reported a 31 percent quarter-on-quarter increase in sales of XRP for the first three months of the year. The San Francisco-based firm sold a total of $169.42 million in XRP in Q1, compared with $129.03 million in Q4 2018. Direct institutional sales of XRP are also up 54 percent, while programmatic sales grew by 21 percent. It’s not all positive news, though. The total volume of XRP traded globally decreased by about 2 percent in Q1. Full Story
LENDING GROWTH: Genesis Global Trading's crypto lending arm continues to grow. Announced Thursday, Genesis Global Capital wrote $425 million of crypto loans in Q1, bringing its total originations since the business launched in March 2018 to $1.53 billion. Notably, short sellers now account for only 3 to 5 percent of Genesis' bitcoin loans, down from about half in early 2018. Full Story
DEEPER DROP: Bitcoin has pulled back 3.5 percent from the five-month high seen earlier this week and could drop even further to levels below $5,000 in the short-term. That’s because the 14-day relative strength index (RSI) has diverged in favor of the bears – a pattern that has historically yielded notable price drops. That said, the longer-run outlook would remain bullish as long as the price is holding above the former resistance-turned-support of $4,236. Full Story
BEST OF THE BEST
SURPRISE SURPRISE: Another dark web market looks likely to have pulled an exit scam, leaving users at least $14.2 million in crypto out of pocket. ZDNet reports that admins of the Wall Street Market made their move last week when they moved bitcoin funds being held in escrow to another wallet, citing server issues. Users are now seeking new sites to carry out their illicit trades, the report says, though few such markets are left.
THE REST
TURNING POINT? In the depths of the crypto winter in December 2018, a Standard Chartered veteran called a meeting of top traders to hammer out a way to take crypto into mainstream finance, according to Bloomberg. The 24 or so attendees met in a Singapore resort in January and set about designing a framework for an “orderly” crypto derivatives market. The results of the discussions will soon take real form with the launch of “the first clearinghouse for crypto derivatives,” which will be a regulated Singapore entity and could launch as soon as July.
CRIMINALS’ CHOICE: Even though there now exist over 2,000 cryptocurrencies, there’s one that rules them all when it comes to popularity with criminals. “Bitcoin is by far the favorite,” said Jonathan Levin, co-founder and COO of Chainalysis, speaking to Fortune. The number one crypto by market cap is involved in 95 percent of crypto cases investigated by law enforcement due to its high value and ease of trading, he added.
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