A group of investors and lawyers, assembled by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, has recently met with the SEC and proposed a ”safe harbor” for some virtual currencies; this comes as regulators are reportedly considering whether virtual currencies, such as Ether, should be categorized as a security - Link
Coinbase blocks payments to the WikiLeaks shop; as a response to the block, WikiLeaks is planning to boycott Coinbase next week, and champion the view that Coinbase is ”an unfit member of the crypto community” - Link
Russian Supreme Court ruling orders the St. Petersburg City Court to consider an appeal to the ban of RAPSI; RAPSI, or the Russian Legal Information Agency, is a cryptocurrency information website; in July of 2017, a St. Petersburg court moved to block 40 websites ”aiding the growth of the shadow economy” - Link
Co-founder of crypto financial services startup Centra Tech has been arrested; the man, Raymond Trapani, is charged with securities fraud of more than $25M, together with the two other co-founders; Centra Tech’s main product was the ”Centra Card”, a debit card that allowed users to convert crypto to fiat currency - Link
South Korea’s largest cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb to conduct ICO in Switzerland; according to an interview with News1, the ”Bithumb Coin” would be released in two parts or types; also, the ICO would not be public; rather, it will supposedly be a token sale targeted at investment firms - Link
Belgium donates $2.4M to a project by the World Food Programme; the contribution will be used to expand research on the use of blockchain solutions; this comes as the UN already was exploring the Ethereum blockchain technology last year - Link
New data on the Bitcoin Cash network prior to the fork scheduled for May 15th has surfaced; it is due to an overnight software update of the crawler cashnodes.io uses to provide more accurate results; so far, 54% of Bitcoin ABS nodes are running software compatible with the May 15th Network Upgrade - Link