Main cryptonews for the past 7 days

The ups, the downs, pressures from regulators, the doubts of top managers and hacking attempts to mine one of the most popular cryptocurrencies through browsers of unaware users – all this had a major influence on cryptos last week.

Bitcoin has marked the 9th anniversary since its creation. The first block of the blockchain beyond Bitcoin ecosystem was created 9 years ago. Since then, the history of the most famous cryptocurrency begins. The value of Bitcoin today is more than 10 times bigger in price, than it is used to be at the beginning of 2017.

Ethereum founder Vitaliy Butorin has announced that there will be grants specifically allocated to those developers who would help making ethereum blockchain network more efficient and stable. The demand for optimization of ethereum network has increased due to the rise of the popularity of ether cryptocurrency. The volume of transactions is approaching 1 mln/day which slows down the operations of the network substantially. Grants will be awarded to projects that aim to solve this issue.

During the March 2018 Belarus will launch first ever Bitcoin and Blockchain education program in one of its Universities. All related topics and science behind blockchain technology will be studied. 4 specialisation will be offered within the program.

From 4th of January 2018 Ukrainian cryptocurrency exchange Kuna started the trading of BCH/UAH crypto-pair. Crypto-exchange offers traders to buy Bitcoin Cash with Ukrainian Hryvnia. Ripple and Stellar altcoins are yet to come next.

The European Central Bank board member Ivald Novotny which leads also a Central Bank of Austria has stated that any operations with cryptocurrencies should be also eligible for taxation. He stated as well that there are concerns regarding crypto transactions that might be used for money laundering, for terrorism-related transactions and for tax avoidance schemes. Many his colleagues agree that some Russian oligarchs and sanctioned individuals and corporations might be using cryptos and tokens to avoid economic sanctions and foreign financial monitoring.

Bank of England is considering the launch of its own cryptocurrency from the beginning of 2018. Subsequently, part of the media denied this information. Meanwhile American bank Merrill Lynch forbade its clients from investing in cryptocurrencies and related funds, especially to those created by ex-Wall Street traders. This decision came shortly after the launch of Bitcoin futures trading by CME Group exchange.