Dan Morehead, a Cryptocurrency investor, president and founder of Pantera Capital, told CNBC that next week, that is, the last week before the New Year, the price of Bitcoin could drop 50% to its lowest level since early November. This statement looks a bit strange on the background of the recent news that the company's hedge fund, Pantera Bitcoin, owns a record profit of 25,004%! Perhaps, after fixing such an excellent result, the company wants to repeat the success, for which it would be extremely useful for a temporary collapse of the Cryptocurrency? Later Morehead added that eventually Bitcoin would far exceed its current value.

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.

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."

The world's largest payment system Visa was constantly opposed to Bitcoin from the very first steps of the Cryptocurrency. First, this, of course, concerned turnover and throughput of the network. By these parameters, Bitcoin is hopelessly losing. However, he was able to strike (albeit formal) on the other side. Since the beginning of December, the Bitcoin rate has been growing rapidly: only for one day on December 6 the price increased by 2 thousand dollars, and for December 7 - by 3 thousand (excluding peaks on individual exchanges, where there was an increase and $ 5,000 during the day)! On some Korean exchanges, the price in terms of the official won rate reached 20 thousand dollars!

The suppression of the activities of an organized criminal group by Bulgarian law enforcement agencies in May led to the seizure of more than 200,000 Bitcoins - more than $ 3 billion at today's prices. According to a press release from the Center for the Rule of Law of South Eastern Europe (SELEC) of May 19, a regional organization consisting of 12 member states, including Bulgaria seized 213,519 BTC.

London financial expert, CEO of NEX Group, Michael Spencer, was among those financiers who consider Bitcoin a bubble. Nevertheless, he believes that the price of Bitcoin will reach $ 20,000, and only after that, it will sharply go down. In an interview with Guy Johnson on Bloomberg TV in London, Spencer said he had no idea if the Bitcoin price would double before it halved, but noted that the $ 20,000 level could be reached "damn fast." Johnson called the growth of Bitcoin, which exceeded the $ 11,000 mark last Wednesday, "irrational."

Despite the expectations of the "collapse of the bubble," which is intensified due to the fact that Bitcoin with whistling passes all the new frontiers, every new level is given to it more easily and almost without serious corrections. On the morning of December 6, another price level of $ 12,000 was passed, at which the price did not stop and moved on, approaching $ 12,500, and the GDAX exchange went up to $ 12,540.

Western Union (WU), which is one of the largest operators of international transfers, launched a campaign against remittances involving cryptocurrency exchanges. The decision, which also complies with the Company's internal regulations, is an attempt to impede the provision of services and transactions related to cryptocurrencies. At Reddit in early December, a post appeared, the author of which asserts that the company advised the Kraken crypto exchange to not process transactions related to digital currencies, as this contradicts its internal rules.

Yicai Global reports that Pan Gongsheng, Vice Chairman of the People's Bank of China (PBoC), speaking at the annual event dedicated to financial literature organized by China Business News and JPMorgan Chase, said that the regulator made the right decisions about restrictions on the country's Cryptocurrency market and the prohibition of ICO.