Corporate bailouts
"Corporate America has embraced fragility," writes CoinDesk columnist Nic Carter in his latest op-ed. Over the past decade corporations have made strategic, tax-advantaged decisions to appreciate their stock, while neglecting their overall business. In the event of an inevitable downturn, they reasoned the government would bail them out. “And this was a good bet, because our society is allergic to failure, choosing instead to stifle all trouble with the opiate of easy money.”

Price logistics
Crypto miners are being sold at as much of a 20 percent discount, following last month's market crash. Manufacturers began adjusting their pricing strategies last year to incorporate bitcoin’s price swings and the impending “halving” reward, which would essentially cut miner's incomes in half. Generally, machines are priced assuming it would take the buyer 15 months to make back their investment, a model that is

UAE appeal
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) digital asset legislation introduced in 2018 has piqued the interest of a number of crypto firms. Major exchanges like Kraken and Huobi are reportedly in conversations to set up offices in the desert nation. The fact that no business has been given a full license yet, which may be part of the appeal, Paddy Baker explains why. 

Watchdog warns 
The National Internet Finance Association of China (NIFA), a major Chinese financial watchdog, warned investors of rising risks in crypto investments. Top of their list are trading platforms who inflate trading volume or misguiding investors by claiming virtual currencies are safer than gold and silver to mitigate the volatility in the international financial market. 

Databases
Brazil’s financial regulators launched an information-sharing blockchain platform called PIER on Wednesday. The platform is essentially a database of databases, pulling data from the nation’s four major financial institutions, the private insurance superintendent (SUSEP), the Banco Central do Brasil (BCB) and securities regulator (CVM). The project is expected to reduce the time it takes to conduct cross-regulator investigations as well as the cost. 

Thesis investment
Thesis has closed a $7.7 million deal by selling its Keep tokens, ahead of the debut TBTC, a trustless platform for making bitcoin-backed tokens on Ethereum. TBTC aims to be a gateway to bring bitcoin into the decentralized finance (DeFi) fold. That said, a vocal cohort of bitcoin partisans has been very publicly skeptical of DeFi. "The silent majority of most bitcoin and ETH people aren't maximalists," Matt Luongo, Thesis CEO, said. 

Rapper arrested
The FBI used bitcoin wallet activity and an old exchange account as key evidence to arrest a Russian rapper on charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering.


FROM AROUND THE WEB

• Spanish tax authority to send more letters to crypto traders this year, despite coronavirus (The Block) 
• Brave attracts one million new users in March (Modern Consensus)
• Nicolas Maduro is airdropping one Petro to every doctor in Venezuela (Decrypt)
• India’s crypto investors feel virtual coins are key to more jobs and economic revival (Quartz)
• Mobile payments firms in India are now scrambling to make money (TechCrunch)
• Google uses location data to show which places are complying with stay-at-home orders — and which aren’t (The Verge)
• The Big Unanswered Questions about the Federal Reserve's Coronavirus Response (Substack)