8-Hour Trading Halt on World's Leading Bitcoin and Crypto Exchange – Plus Ripple and XRP, Ethereum, Tron, Litecoin, Stellar and Cardano

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From an impending system upgrade at Binance to new adoption for XRP, here’s a look at some of the stories breaking in the world of crypto.

Binance Upgrade

Binance, one of the world’s largest Bitcoin and crypto exchanges by volume, is planning big upgrade that will bring trading to a halt for hours. According to the announcement, the exchange will suspend deposits, withdrawals and trading on March 12 starting at 2:00 am (UTC). The upgrade is projected to last eight hours.

“Deposits that are not completed before the start of the upgrade will be processed after the upgrade is complete. Please allow some time for deposits to be reflected in your account following the system upgrade.”

Binance has handled roughly $853 million in crypto trades in the past 24 hours, according to data compiled by CoinGecko. The most active trading pair is Bitcoin-to-USD at $91.3 million in volume.

Cryptocurrency Exchanges by Trading Volume

Ethereum

The latest ConsenSys-sponsored Week in Ethereum blog post is out.

The week’s edition highlights the success of the Ethereum upgrade Constantinople, and covers the latest on a number of Ethereum-based platforms including Brave Attention Token, EthMail and Maker.

Ripple and XRP

Ripple’s global head of banking Marjan Delatinne has joined the British Blockchain Association’s advisory board, and will work alongside leaders from IBM, Microsoft, KPMG, R3 and Circle.

The Association promotes the education and adoption of blockchain technology and cryptocurrency across both public and private sectors in the UK.

Meanwhile, XRP is now supported on CredoEx, a Silicon Valley-based crypto exchange backed by venture capitalist and crypto bull Tim Draper.

After digging in, we are thrilled to now support #XRP on CredoEx. XRP is a digital asset underpinned by excellent distributed ledger technology & an important use case, that we believe is suitable for users looking for more exposure to varied digital assets. #ripple #XRPcommunity pic.twitter.com/c6we3vvNYQ

— bitbounce (@bitbounceio) March 7, 2019

Litecoin

The Litecoin Foundation has just released a new e-book focused on all things LTC.

The book is designed for newbies and “seasoned hodlers”, covering what Litecoin is, how it works, how merchants can integrate LTC, and more.

Bootstrap your cryptoeducation into #Litecoin and #Cryptocurrency with this easy to read eBook at the @LTCFoundation!https://t.co/fA48e2x86n pic.twitter.com/N4QeeBX5Sb

— The Lite School ⚡️ (@theliteschool) March 10, 2019

Stellar

The Stellar Development Foundation says it still plans to implement Lightning with XLM. In a recent AMA, the team confirms Lightning is a high priority, and says it hopes to launch support for the scaling solution in the third quarter of this year.

Tron

Tron’s BitTorrent Token (BTT) just completed its latest airdrop. A total of 990,000,000 BTT was distributed to users who hold Tron (TRX), with .009976 BTT handed out per 1 TRX.

✅ $BTT airdrop completed! It's now processing through the exchanges & wallets, please be patient and thank you all for supporting it! Next one will be on April 11 ✌️

— Justin Sun (@justinsuntron) March 11, 2019

Cardano

Version 1.5 of Cardano’s testnet is now available, hailed as a crucial step toward the official launch of smart contracts on the platform.

“Cardano 1.5 is important in preparation for moving to the Shelley development phase. This update brings a new consensus protocol, Ouroboros BFT, which is a key step in the transition from Ouroboros Classic, the current consensus protocol running the Cardano network, to Ouroboros Genesis, the protocol for the Shelley era. Ouroboros Genesis is a major upgrade to the protocol that underpins Cardano because it is first proof-of-stake protocol that matches the security guarantees of proof-of-work protocols such as Bitcoin.”