Jack Dorsey, founder and CEO of social media giant Twitter and mobile payments company Square, announced that he is hiring a handful of full-time employees for the latter who will work on open-source contributions to the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency ecosystem. He added that the work done by this team, made up of three or four engineers and one designer, will be independent of Square's business objectives and all resulting work will be open and free.

The Singapore-based cryptocurrency exchange Huobi has announce that "Huobi Prime," a coin launch platform, will go live on March 26. The service will allow professional and retail investors to purchase new cryptocurrencies before they are listed more broadly and potentially at lower costs. The announcement appears to compete with Binance's Launchpad service.

Japanese financial authorities have approved draft amendments to the country's financial and payment services law that will cap leverage in cryptocurrency margin trading at two to four times the initial deposits. Cryptocurrency exchanges that allow for margin trading — including BitMEX and Bitfinex — will have to obtain new government registration to operate in the country.