Decred Team Announces Future Cross-chain Atomic Swaps With Litecoin
It is only a matter of time until we see the first cross-chain atomic swaps take place. By the look of things, these first trades may very well include Litecoin and Decred. It is evident the desired team is very excited to work together with Charlie Lee in this regard. Multi-chain atomic swaps will be implemented in the very near future. Good things continue to happen for Litecoin, although it will take some time until these creations come to fruition. This is also positive news for Decred supporters, as the currency can become a part of cryptocurrency history. More on  NewsBTC

Venezuelan Central Bank convened a symposium in which foreign exchange representatives, known as DICOM, and blockchain private sector experts took part. The discussions covered a wide range of topics ranging from the technical aspects of blockchain to practical guidance on the implementation of tokens.
One of the speakers was Ángel Salazar, CEO of the Venezuelan blockchain- OnixCoin company. He explained that the motive behind organising the meeting was to find a way of using the technical capabilities cryptocurrencies in order to strengthen the state economy. He suggested that the bank should issue cryptocurrencies as a strategy to alleviate the fiscal difficulties affecting society.
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The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has released nine more blockchain-related patent applications filed by Bank of America.

Data collected shows that the applications – which relate to conducting and settling transactions within a payment network – were all filed February 22. To date, Bank of America has filed more than 30 known patent applications related to the technology, including as many as 18 during 2016 alone.

Combined, the breadth of the applications suggests that work is being done on blockchain-based payment systems within Bank of America. At the same time, the bank has issued no definitive statements on the subject to date, and it's not clear whether any of the proposed inventions will see the light of day.

The mining process forms the most crucial part of the cryptocurrency ecosystem, as it is necessary to maintain the network and process transactions over it. However, profitable mining requires specialized hardware, loads of hashing power and electricity which is not affordable to everyone.
While setting up a mining farm, two critical things should be considered –the hash rate and cost of electricity. These two have continued to weigh down on investors and miners who would want to make profitable returns.
Mining using hydroelectric power seems to be the most efficient way to not only keep the electricity costs low but also to ensure impressive returns on the equipment used. In addition, hydroelectric power is considered to be one of the cleanest sources of energy which helps the mining operation reduce its carbon footprint, particularly in the time when people are concerned about the impact of cryptocurrency mining on the environment.

One of the biggest asset managers in the United States and major investor in the gold market, VanEck, is now entering the Bitcoin.The investment giant is currently managing an estimated amount of $38 billion in assets. The firm which was founded in 1955, has offices in the United States, Germany, and Australia, which in recent years has focused on precious metals like gold, silver, and platinum.

The market capitalization of Gold is about $7 Trillion, compared to the market cap of Bitcoin which is a little over $71 billion, Bitcoin appears relatively small. But VanEck believes that there still a lot of potential in the Bitcoin market.

Ethereum's Raiden Scaling Solution Just Passed Another Milestone

A test network has been deployed for the Raiden project, a proposed scaling solution for ethereum designed to allow faster payments and lower fees.

Revealed on the Raiden GitHub page yesterday, the testnet is a major milestone for the project, one that will lead to the next phase of development before the code is ready to launch on the live ethereum network.

As with bitcoin, scaling is becoming an issue for the number two cryptocurrency by market capitalization. As more users make more transactions, the amount of traffic has the potential to slow up the network. Compounding the issue is that many ICO tokens are being launched on top of ethereum, bringing in sudden floods of traffic as sales take place.

Great news! Swarm City is now on blockchain. After a recent hack where over 30 million in ETH were stolen from multiple blockchain projects, one project called Swarm City has started to get some recognition for having its wallet drained of 44k ETH. Mainstream media and lots of other press outlets have now shared the project’s name all over the place. I’d like to take the opportunity to provide more information that I’ve gathered about the project and its path forward and why I am excited to use its technology for our company Chasyr.