“Bitcoin (BTC) chalked up its longest monthly losing streak in seven years in December. The leading cryptocurrency by market value closed at $3,689 on Dec. 31, representing a 13 percent drop from the monthly opening price of $4,241. That was the fifth straight monthly loss – its worst period since November 2011 – according to CoinDesk’s Bitcoin Price Index (BPI).”

“UK-based TotalCrypto has created this cool and concise infographic to explain Bitcoin trading volume by country.”

“Intercontinental Exchange (NYSE:ICE), a leading operator of global exchanges, clearing houses, data and listings services, announced today that it plans to form a new company, Bakkt, which intends to leverage Microsoft cloud solutions to create an open and regulated, global ecosystem for digital assets. The new company is working with a marquee group of organizations including BCG, Microsoft, Starbucks, and others, to create an integrated platform that enables consumers and institutions to buy, sell, store and spend digital assets on a seamless global network.”

“A lot fewer people than you probably would have guessed. After peaking at $411 million in September, the amount of money the largest 17 crypto merchant-processing services received in the best-known cryptocurrency has been on a steady decline, hitting a recent low of $60 million in May, according to research that startup Chainalysis Inc. conducted for Bloomberg News. While the amount merchant services such as BitPay, Coinify and GoCoin received increased slightly in June to $69 million, it was still a far cry from the $270 million received a year ago, Chainalysis found.”

“The sudden rise in the bitcoin price, which climbed from around $1,000 at the beginning of last year to almost $20,000 by December, led to a huge influx of new miners adding their computing power to the bitcoin network. However, despite bitcoin’s price stumble in 2018, the hash rate has continued to grow — increasing over 100 percent over the last four months, CoinJournal spotted. Over the same period the bitcoin price has slumped by a third.”

“BitPay introduced its Checkout app, which works on Android and iOS smart phones and is aimed specifically at physical retailers, in November 2014. Now, the update introduces a redesign of the app and includes a feature called Payment Protocol, which the company says can reduce user errors, such as over- or under-payments, payments sent to the wrong address, or payments sent with an insufficient miner’s fee. The feature works by automatically locking in the correct information for the transaction.”

“Apparently, Bitcoin’s (BTC) distributed ledger is being used, besides storing monetary information, to store hideous links and data connected to some hundreds of files with illegal pornographic content of underaged children. Over 1600 files found in 1.4% of the blockchain, with a couple of them containing links to the sexually abusive imagery of young children, mostly stored on the dark web.”

“In an interview with the British newspaper The Times of London, Dorsey shared his belief of the single global currency that may happen “probably over ten years, but it could go faster…The world ultimately will have a single currency, the internet will have a single currency,” said Dorsey. “I personally believe that it will be bitcoin.”

“The possibility to store non-financial data on cryptocurrency blockchains is both beneficial and threatening for its users. Although controlled channels to insert nonfinancial data at small rates opens up a field of new applications such as digital notary services, rights management, or non-equivocation systems, objectionable or even illegal content has the potential to jeopardize a whole cryptocurrency.”

“Bitcoin is currently worth more than some of the most successful companies in the world, and not only companies, but also countries! It is worth more than some countries, based on their GDP. CoinList looks at how competitive Bitcoin would be on the world stage, as a country, in this infographic:”

“Bitcoin-mining operations are set to overtake domestic residential energy consumption in Iceland later this year, according to a local energy company. As a result, one lawmaker is considering what could or should happen if Iceland continues to expand its role as a major bitcoin-mining hub. Iceland, the North Atlantic island nation with a population of just 340,000, is powered almost entirely by renewable energy, mostly geothermal, hydroelectric, and wind.”

“Nouriel Roubini, Roubini Macro Associates chairman, discusses the downsides to cryptocurrencies and calls Bitcoin the “mother of all bubbles.” He speaks on “Bloomberg Surveillance.”

“India will move to stamp out use of cryptocurrencies, which it considers illegal, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on Thursday, launching a no-holds-barred attack on virtual currencies such as Bitcoin.”

“The first freight deal settled in Bitcoin was executed last month on a vessel carrying wheat from top shipper Russia to Turkey, according to Prime Shipping Foundation, the venture behind the transaction.”

“Some banks and credit-card companies have begun restricting customers’ purchases of bitcoin, shutting down a popular way to buy the volatile digital currency.”

“Stripe is one of the most popular ways for small online organizations to accept credit card payments. And in 2014 it became one of the first major payment processors to support bitcoin payments. But a lot has changed in the last four years. The bitcoin network has become a lot more widely used, and with popularity comes congestion and high fees. Last month the median daily transaction fee—which had been just pennies prior to 2017—peaked at $34. This figure has declined substantially this month, but is still around $5. That’s a lot if you’re just trying to buy a cup of coffee.”

“One popular workaround involves exchanges and wallet providers such as Coinbase and Xapo, which hold Bitcoin on behalf of millions of individual customers. Coinbase last year estimated that they were storing about 10 percent of all bitcoin in circulation, and others have similarly large balances. People who use the same provider can make Bitcoin payments to one another instantly, through the provider’s own books, without the cost or delay of broadcasting to the blockchain.”

“Solving bitcoin’s scaling problem has become a principal concern of developers. But the problem has proved intractable. Now, making a virtue out of necessity, the buzz is that bitcoin is “digital gold.” Its built-in limit of 21 million bitcoins makes it an ideal anchor for a hard-money financial system similar to a strict gold standard. A new payment system could be built on top of it. The problem is, it isn’t possible to have full decentralization, a fixed money supply and sufficient liquidity for an efficient payments system. This is bitcoin’s “trilemma.””