Bitcoin and cryptocurrency roundup: 21 March 2018

The day's cryptocurrency news.
The Petro saga takes a twist that, in hindsight, should probably have been expected. Plus, the Amazing Race with bitcoin, kids krytokurrency mining, blockchain for mortgages on the bank side and an only slightly oversimplified Hashgraph explainer.
1.Свидетель силы оружия, г-н Бонд.
The Petro saga has taken a twist, with Venezuela appearing to act as a guinea pig for Russia to test cryptocurrencies.
It's a predictable twist in hindsight. Russia has always been open about its intention to weaponise cryptocurrency, and if Cold War era Bond films have taught one lesson, it's that Russian superweapons need test subjects.
2. Are you not entertained?
Payments Race Asia is getting the thumbs up, with contestants making their way around the continent by pitting payment methods against each other.
Amélie Arras raced on bitcoin, and got pretty close to victory until it turned out to be really difficult to rebook a flight at the last minute with bitcoin alone.
3. Krypto for kids kidz.
The cutesy puzzle game wants to teach the tykes what a growing mind needs: mathematics, basic economics and cryptography.
It's also a mining system, which technically means the kids are being paid to play games. Turns out the blockchain can revolutionise ethical issues as well.
4. Distributed ledgers are the natural environment of mortgage applications.
It's a match made in heaven, and Moneycatcha aims to catch as much of that angel dust as possible by providing blockchain mortgage origination solutions to banks.
Its elevator pitch is about as solid as they come.
5. Who's Hashgraph and what do they do?
It's a hyperspeed extra-scalable DAG-style post-blockchain ledger, and it does whatever it wants.
Get your super simple explainer here. It can deliver, but there's always a tradeoff.
Disclosure: At the time of writing the author holds ETH, IOTA, ICX, VEN, XLM, BTC, NANO
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