Yesterday the Bitcoin network marked another "anniversary" figure. This time it was not the value of the course or any important date. On December 18, a block numbered 500,000 appeared in the blockchain. This event does not bear any technical or fundamental consequences. However, this coincided with the fact that the capitalization of the cryptocurrency market increased by another $ 100 billion and now amounts to more than $ 600 billion.

2017 became a wonderful year for Bitcoins. Bitcoin not only increased tenfold in price, but also spread more widely among ordinary people. However, lawmakers do not slumber. In addition to the planned reform of the US Tax Code, which indirectly affects Bitcoin, a bill was introduced to the US Congress, which could allegedly burden the Cryptocurrency industry with unnecessary, entangled and redundant regulatory obligations.

On the eve of Christmas, the authors of the Blockchain for Change start-up decided to donate three thousand homeless New York smartphones with cryptowallet for dollars and Change Coin cryptocurrency. At the very beginning, each will have 30 coins, which can be spent on calls and Internet traffic. Only in New York more than 60 thousand people sleep in doss houses and on the street, and most of them have no means of communication. The project initiators plan to distribute about 200,000 gadgets by mid-2018.

The pineapple fund has already donated 163 BTC to the Watsi platform, intended to provide medical assistance to people in a desperate situation, the Water Project water purification project, the BitGive charity foundation and one of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) activists. In total, it amounted to $ 3.5 million.

The last days were relatively calm for Bitcoins. Cryptocurrency is traded in a range of 16 000 - 17 000 thousand dollars and almost does not make sharp movements in one direction or another. However, many wonder: what exactly pushed him to such levels, unthinkable a few months ago? In addition to such obvious reasons, as the launch of Bitcoin futures in the US, there are less obvious. According to the report of the Wall Street Journal, the last few months Bitcoin has become extremely popular among traders and the population of East Asian countries, and not only Japan and China. CryptoCompare states that Japan, South Korea and Vietnam last month provided more than 80% of the total trading volume.

Two exchanges from Chicago, CBOE and CME, which are the first in the world of regulated areas to start working with Bitcoin derivatives, are also considering the possibility of launching futures for Ethereum and Litecoin. This information, while not officially confirmed, appeared last night in the US media. The launch of the Bitcoin futures theoretically should consolidate the value of the cryptocurrencies as a new asset class. Successful trading in futures and options for Bitcoin virtually makes the emergence of similar contracts for other major cryptocurrencies, and primarily on the air and Litecoin.

Bitcoin is considered a haven for hyperinflation for Latin Americans - at least two new Cryptocurrency funds were opened in 2017 to meet the needs of wealthy Latin Americans, according to a local report. While both funds are located overseas, most of their clients are family offices from Argentina, Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean. "Latin America is very unstable," said Carlos Mosquera, founder of the Italian hedge fund Solidus Capital. "Cryptocurrencies turn into a new shelter for her."

According to anonymous source from Bloomberg, Goldman Sachs will clear the futures contracts for Bitcoins for its customers, when the futures markets will be launched on December 10 at the CBOE and on December 18 at the CME. This is an important stage for the Cryptocurrency industry, as the futures markets will provide access to the cryptocurrency-loans to customers of large banks and brokerage firms. If this information is confirmed, the pessimistic attitude of traditional market players to cryptocurrency-derivatives will begin to change, and their support will become a competitive advantage.

The Cryptocurrency company Coinbase announced the integration with the financial portal Yahoo Finance. Now Coinbase users will be able to view their balances in Yahoo Finance applications for iOS and Android. Perhaps it is thanks to this, as well as against the background of the rapid growth of Bitcoins and cryptocurrencies in general, the application of the Coinbase cryptocurrency wallet for iOS has become the most downloaded in the American App Store, even ahead of YouTube, Facebook Messenger and Instagram in the rating of applications. Just one month ago, the application took about 400th position.