Weekly Crypto Recap 21 April 2018

$6.3 Billion: 2018 ICO Funding Has Passed 2017's Total
The size of the average funding round and the rate of project funding are higher than ever for ICOs. Initial coin offerings raised $6.3 Billion in the first three months of 2018, which is more than the whole of 2017.

Barclays To Join Crypto Trading?
International investment bank Barclays has been reviewing the possibility of opening a cryptocurrencies trading desk. For now, they have conducted a preliminary assessment of client interest. Opening a crypto trading desk would be a pioneering move by a traditional financial institution toward mainstream crypto adoption.

Amazon May Soon Accept Bitcoin
Amazon Technologies, a subsidiary of Amazon.com, has won a patent for a marketplace that offers data feeds, which include bitcoin transactions. Those data feeds could also be used by government agencies to correlate tax transaction data to help identify transaction participants.

Germany's No. 2 Stock Exchange Unveils Crypto Trading App
Sowa Labs, a subsidiary of Börse Stuttgart, unveiled an app which will initially offer trading support for bitcoin, ether, XRP, and litecoin. This is the latest instance of a traditional stock exchange getting into the cryptocurrency trading game through a subsidiary. The app is said to be available for use in September.