More cryptocurrency exchanges are going live. ErisX announced the launch of its spot market, saying it will immediately support dollar trading pairs with tokens such as bitcoin, bitcoin cash, litecoin and ether. The announcement comes on the heels of a recent $20 million capital raise – the company's third. It will focus next on derivatives offerings. The Beaxy Exchange says it will be fully operational by mid-May, offering a comprehensive exchange platform that will support traders of every experience level. Beaxy is partnering with OneMarketData, a market data management and analytics company that provides OneTick, a software aimed at accelerating transaction times, facilitating fund management, and increasing security features. Bakkt, the emerging bitcoin futures exchange platform, announced its purchase of the Digital Asset Custody Company and a partnership with a major New York-based bank. Bakkt says these changes will allow it to hold assets in cold storage and ultimately set up geographically distributed private key storage. Some speculate these changes will also enable Bakkt to add other cryptocurrencies besides bitcoin. And reports indicate that a major electronic brokerage firm may soon launch cryptocurrency trading on its platform. If so, it would be one of the largest securities brokerages to allow cryptocurrency trading.

More stablecoins (coins backed by fiat currency) are coming to market. Ontology announced it will launch the Paxos Standard (PAX) stablecoin on the Ontology blockchain. PAX, which is backed 1-to-1 by U.S. dollars, launched last September, but had been available only on the ethereum blockchain. Ontology said PAX ensures open auditing and that all U.S. dollar deposits are kept in individual accounts at FDIC-insured banks. Separately, TrustToken released its latest stablecoin, TrueCAD, which is linked to the Canadian dollar. TrustToken has already issued stablecoins backed by the U.S. dollar (TrueUSD), the British pound (TrueGBP) and the Australian dollar (TrueAUD). Stablecoins backed by the Euro and the Hong Kong dollar are set to release later this year.

A recent report by Datalight, a crypto-research firm, tracks where cryptocurrency trading is happening. The report follows trading on 100 platforms and concludes that most visitors are American – an average of 22.2 million site visits per month were by U.S.-based users. Japan was second, with 6.1 million visits. Perhaps most striking is that nearly every other country in the world had some platform activity as well, with the exception of Greenland and parts of central Africa. Even India placed 11th on the rating – despite its central bank's almost yearlong ban on exchange financing.

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