Institutional investors seemingly bought the dip as Grayscale Investments saw record inflows of over $500 million in the first quarter of the year, with 88% of the funds coming from institutions. It now controls 1.7% of BTC’s circulating supply.

The Libra Association is scaling back its plans to launch a single cryptocurrency backed by a basket of fiat currencies and short-term U.S. Treasury bonds, and is instead launching tokens pegged to the fiat currencies of each country.

Bitcoin Startup Purse.io, which allowed users to buy at a discount on Amazon using bitcoin or bitcoin cash, and allowed users to sell gift cards for crypto, is shutting down.

Top stories in the Crypto Roundup today:

• Grayscale Now Holds 1.7% of Bitcoin’s Supply After $500 Million Inflows
• Libra Association Revamps Project to Only Support Fiat-Pegged Tokens
• Bitcoin Startup Purse.io Shuts Down After Six Years

At the time of writing, bitcoin (BTC) is trading at $7,074.65 (0.23%) with a daily Top Tier volume of $2.90 bn. As for ether (ETH), it is trading at $170.67 (-0.03%) with a daily Top Tier volume of $1.34 bn. The MVIS CryptoCompare Digital Assets 10 Index is currently tracking at 2,571.75 (0.33%).

Grayscale Now Holds 1.7% of Bitcoin’s Supply After $500 Million Inflows

Crypto asset manager Grayscale Investments has seen inflows of $503.7 million in the first quarter of this year, nearly doubling its previous record high of $254.8 million in Q3 2019. The inflows helped it achieve its first billion-dollar year, as in the last 12 months it has seen over $1 billion in investments.

In its latest quarterly report, Grayscale revealed that last month’s market crash largely contributed to its record inflows as institutional investors bought the crypto market’s dip, betting on Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) Ether Trust (ETHE) and other products to gain exposure to the cryptocurrency space.

In comparison, the unit of the New York-based Digital Currency Group, raised a total of $600 million in 2019, the year that had its previous record quarter. Institutional investors made up 88% of the investments in Q1 of this year, with the majority of them being hedge funds.

Notably, the report details GBTC now accounts for 1.7% of bitcoin’s circulating supply, with the firm now managing 1.2% of the world’s circulating cryptoassets with $2.2 billion worth of assets under management.

Libra Association Revamps Project to Only Support Fiat-Pegged Tokens

The Facebook-backed Libra Association, the governing body behind the Libra cryptocurrency project, is revamping to support fiat-pegged cryptocurrencies on its blockchain, while dropping its plans for a single cryptocurrency backed by a basket of fiat currencies and short-term U.S. Treasury bonds.

According to Bloomberg, each fiat-pegged cryptocurrency will work as a digital version of a country’s existing currency, and the Association has started talking with Swiss regulators, and hopes to register with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network in the U.S. as a “money services business.”

Christian Catalini, head economist for Facebook’s Calibra, noted that which currency will be used according to its need, as when sending money across borders the “multicurrency Libra could be a better option, whereas the single-currency stablecoins would make more sense for everyday purchases in a consumer’s home country.”

Dante Disparte, the Libra Association’s head of policy, was quoted as saying:

“We’re working toward a late 2020 readiness timeline.”

The original Libra project faced criticism from regulators, who worries it could usurp central banks’ financial sovereignty, to the point several founding members – including PayPal, Visa, and MasterCard – left the Association.

Disparte noted that the Association’s members have contributed financially to the Association’s operations, with Facebook providing less than 10% of the total.

Bitcoin Startup Purse.io Shuts Down After Six Years

Purse.io, a bitcoin startup that helped users shop on Amazon with bitcoin (BTC) and bitcoin cash (BCH) by connecting those looking to sell Amazon gift cards with those looking to buy at a discount using crypto, has announced it’s shutting down after six years in the space.

The email reads:

"We’ve made the very difficult decision to dissolve the company. We’re grateful for the opportunity afforded by our supporters to build products and infrastructure for the cryptocurrency community."

Speaking to CoinDesk, Purse support manager Eduardo Gómez noted it was a “business decision, nothing funky going on.” The startup will continue to facilitate services until June 26, but new signups are now disabled and its “shop” and “earn” functionalities will be disabled on April 23.

Purse will cease operations on June 26, 2020.

Flipside Friday

The Flipside Crypto Disparity Ratio is a tool helping you find out which cryptoassets are under and overvalued. The crypto disparity ratio scores cryptoassets based on market capitalization and FCAS ratings, with a score over 1 showing it’s undervalued, and under 1 showing it’s overvalued.

XYO, an ERC-20 token used for a decentralized network of devices that anonymously collects geospatial data, tops the undervalued list with a score of 1.47. It’s followed by the Raiden Network (RDN), an off-chain scaling payment solution to perform ERC20 compliant token transactions, at 1.42.

Next comes SingularityNET (AGI), a protocol for coordinating, discovering, and transacting AI algorithms at scale. The undervalued list has at Storj, a decentralized cloud storage platform letting users earn tokens by renting idle hard drive space.

On the overvalued side we have Qubitica (QBIT), a community of over 1,000 developers, IT companies and investors working to advance blockchain technology. Its community is working on blockchain and AI projects, and the QBIT token represents participation shared in Qubitica and related projects. Qubitica’s value ratio is 0.34.

It’s followed by Crypterium (CRPT), a cryptobank platform leveraging the Ethereum blockchain to provide an instant processing engine for both fiat and crypto transactions at 0.35, and next to it is Monacoin, the once-popular cat meme cryptocurrency which has even been used to buy land in 2014, at 0.36.

It’s followed by THETA, a decentralized video delivery network powered by

State of the Crypto by Top Tier Exchange Volume

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