Last week Nexo (NEXO) announced a MasterCard-branded credit card to let hodlers spend their borrowed crypto, bringing virtual assets forty million steps closer to mass adoption.

Today’s Litecoin halving met with a muted market response, which could be a sign that the cryptocurrency market is beginning to mature.

Like Bitcoin (BTC),  Litecoin’s block rewards fall by 50% approximately every four years, thereby increasing the importance of transaction fees as a network incentive. The reduced supply increases scarcity for the token as the network matures.

Today, IBM and Chainyard announced Trust Your Supplier (TYS), a blockchain-based platform for simplifying supply chain management and supplier verification and onboarding. Within the coming months, IBM plans to bring 4,000 of its North American suppliers onto the new network, potentially gaining an edge in the world of supply chain management.

Rising tensions between the U.S. and China are damaging global markets as well as investor confidence. But while sabers rattle, cryptocurrency markets are booming.

Bitcoin prices are at the highest levels in more than three weeks, rising over 8% in the past twenty-four hours. That’s a gain of approximately $1,000. The rise has also lifted the rest of the digital asset market, which had a total value of $310bn at the time of writing.

• Ren has a bullish short-term bias against Bitcoin, with the cryptocurrency trading well above its 200-period moving average on the four-hour time frame
• The four-hour time frame shows that bulls are working hard to invalidate a bearish head and shoulders pattern
• The daily time frame continues to show that a major technical breakout is underway

Ren has a bullish short-term trading bias against Bitcoin, with the REN / BTC pair bouncing from its 200-period moving average on the four-hour time frame.

• Waves has a bearish short-term outlook, with the cryptocurrency trading at its lowest level since December 2018
• The four-hour time frame shows that a bearish head and shoulders pattern has been triggered into action
• The daily time frame shows that the WAVES / USD pair has slipped under a falling wedge pattern

Waves has a bearish short-term trading outlook, with the cryptocurrency now trading at its lowest level since December 2018.

• Ethereum has a bearish short-term bias, with the ETH / USD pair still trading below its 200 period moving average on the four-hour time frame
• The four-hour time frame shows that a bullish breakout has taken place from a triangle pattern
• The daily time frame shows that the ETH / USD pair is now against the neckline of a large head and shoulders pattern

Ethereum has a bearish short-term trading bias, with the cryptocurrency still trading below its 200-period moving average on the four-hour time frame.

Coinmarketcap observers may have noticed a newcomer in the top 30 list recently. V-Systems, the latest project by Sunny King, has risen to a cap of over $400 million.

V Systems (VSYS) is currently sitting at 28th spot by market capitalization, after rising eightfold since March. That’s an impressive gain for a project that only launched late last year.

If you’re trying to launder money, don’t use Bitcoin. Elliptic, a British company providing blockchain monitoring solutions for regulatory compliance, has teamed up with researchers from the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab to create a public dataset of legal and illegal Bitcoin transactions. Because each bitcoin fragment can be tracked through the blockchain, the new dataset will allow almost anyone to identify coins which came from illicit sources.

One of the largest providers of global money transfers is ready for cryptocurrency. MoneyGram, which ranks just behind Western Union in cross-border transfers, is now ready to use Ripple’s xRapid network, which uses the XRP currency.