Disclaimer: I am in no way qualified to give financial advice. I just find articles about crypto in the media or blogs and comment on them, do your research. This is NOT financial advice

Steem 3.05 and SBD 3.22

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Before I start with the articles I want to say that Steem is awesome, I am hoping for great things from Steem this year. SBD are almost getting to a point I may sell a few. High Steem makes your vote bigger. Write more blogs, make more comments, upvote more, resteem more get those curation steem. Take advantage of it.

Crypto is back, put your FUD back in the closet it's time to take the FOMO back out

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I'm regretting being ultra conservative in 2018, everything I even thought about buying recently is up. All the top 10 are up with Bitcoin Cash and IOTA up the most. I just wrote about both those coins recently, regretting not buying now. Bitcoin hovering around 9000.
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Coinbase shuts down Wikileaks account

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They cite a violation of their Terms Of Service. Coinbase wants to be the Google of exchanges and comply with all regulations. Allowing money to be sent to a group who have exposed state secrets is probably going to run afoul of those regulations. They have a bunch of hacking skills right? I am sure hackers can find another way to cash out crypto donations.

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Ethereum more decentralized than Bitcoin

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More nodes in the Ethereum network are registered to individuals (rather than companies) versus Bitcoin. They are also more geographically spread out. Bitcoin seems to be headed for control by very small numbers of people, I don't know if Etherum is the answer but I know I like things more decentralized, I don't want to see Bitcoin turn into just another bank or government mint.

Also Vitalik Buterin says it will take 3-5 years to scale his coin it so it can be used widespread by everyone...
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Crypto-Rap is a thing

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A hip hop artist named Coindaddy (of course) is rapping about crypto. I haven't listened to him yet

Arya Bahmanyar is a 28-year-old former commercial real estate broker turned hip-hop artist

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Yeah I am probably not going to be listening to this any time soon, or ever. I hate novelty rap and this kind of reminds me of commercials in the 80s where they rapped because "the kids like that rap stuff". But check it out and let me know.

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Bitpay adds Bitcoincash support to it's check out app

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It seems like Bitcoin cash is more interested in legitimate internet transactions than the traditional drugs/porn/guns that made cryptocurrency famous.

Still though it would be nice to just scan a QR code at the point of sale and spend crypto. Getting in early in this game is an advantage for sure. While I still think Bitcoin Cash should have just used a name that didn't have bitcoin in it, I am still willing to give them a chance. After reading about Lightning Network I thinking the idea of a new coin is better than trying to save the OG bitcoin with a network that sounds like it will be hard to use. I want things getting easier taking a picture of a QR code to buy something is so easy my grandmother could do it.

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Article on the next coins to watch

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I always read stuff like this to laugh and disagree, but I actually liked this list.

You'll have to click it as I am not copying a writers whole list, I hope people click these articles. I had never heard of Peercoins, its not even in the top 100 coins. It's supposedly eco friendly coin. At some point the world is going to get sick of bitcoin sucking all of the limited energy resources for pointless computer computations. One day mining regulations will come and if not regulation then utility companies will just not be able to meet the need. I always think that eco coins have a future and should be something to consider.

Writer of article also Mentions a well known privacy coin. It's not just drug dealers who could benefit with tax authorities world wide snooping around. He then counters with a compliancy friendly coin that may have a bright future in Asia. Good guy coins and bad guy coins I don't know, I liked the list
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Kraken exchange says it will not comply with NY inquiry

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Eric Schneiderman New York AG

They are based in California and are refusing to comply. They say the manpower required to comply would devastate their small business. The New York "Bitlicense" the state requires is notoriously difficult to obtain and hence many companies just wont do business in New York. There is a lot of old banking money in New York so it makes sense they would crack down on crypto. It's all to protect you, the consumer though, really (ya right)
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/19/kraken-cryptocurrency-exchange-says-it-will-not-comply-with-new-york-inquiry.html