Wow! I've only been awake for 2 hours, it is 10am Central time and the amount and quality of news and stories is invigorating! I've included some links to articles at the bottom of this feed where you can read more about each story. I'd like to touch upon them generally here and you can dig further with links below as your heart desires...
Interesting upcoming event is the G20 Summit in Buenos Aires 3/19-3/20. An article below highlights Japan's vocal intention for there to be increased AML (Anti Money Laundering) regulation. In my opinion regulation is an absolute necessity in cryptocurrency and blockchain to usher in far greater adoption and institutional investors. For more info https://cointelegraph.com/news/g20-to-focus-on-crypto-aml-too-stringent-regulations-not-good-says-japanese-govt-official
There are also a ton of cryptocurrency and/or blockchain conferences going on this week. The most intriguing one to me is Token Fest going on in San Francisco 3/15-3/16. Check out the list here: https://btcmanager.com/blockchain-cryptocurrency-conferences-taking-place-mar-12-19/
I didn't realize until this morning that Monero (XMR), a privacy currency, has delayed their hard fork until April 30, 2018. This explains the big price drop beyond just the general market lag the past week or so with BTC leading the way. The MoneroV coin will be issued to existing Monero holders once the hard fork occurs at a rate of 10 MoneroV for each Monero. Check out this link for more technicals on Monero, one worth adding to your holdings in my opinion.
https://www.coindesk.com/monero-eyes-200-reversal-target-hard-fork-delay/
Decentralized exchanges (DEX) are the next step in this blockchain and cryptocurrency evolution. The whole space is moving at lightening speed and it is hard to keep up. Today Binance (BNB) announced its DEX, Binance Chain. This is a very interesting development and short, quick, helpful read. I suggest you add BNB to your telegram/twitter feeds to keep up to date with them. https://support.binance.com/hc/en-us/articles/360001668872-Binance-Chain
Lastly, the other big direction cryptocurrency seems to be heading this year is with the security token. I am utterly fascinated and intrigued by this as the inherent notion of a token or coin being back by a bonafide security (aka an item of value such as stocks, real estate, goods, raw materials, etc) seems to be promising. PolyMath is a strong platform that is laying the initial foundation in this space https://www.polymath.network. Recently a few projects were highlighted including DataBrokerDAO - A decentralized marketplace for IoT Sensor data. https://databrokerdao.com and https://oneledger.io/#home , a gateway platform that seeks to allow businesses to assimilate data effortlessly on different blockchains.