Until Next Year…

Every week can’t be a good week. After showing early signs of a rally over the middle/end of December, the market’s been tumbling since Christmas Eve. Since reaching a weekly high of about $146.5B on Monday, the total market cap has dropped 17 percent and currently rests at just over $121.5B.

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Cryptocurrency Market Stats (12/28/2018)

Several altcoins took a hammering this week including Bitcoin Cash (-26.61%), Bitcoin SV (-27.88%), Dash (-14.83%), and EOS (-12.40%). Ethereum Classic (6.20%) and Decred (11.66%) were part of a handful of coins posting positive movements. Let’s check in on our top three coins:

Bitcoin shed 9.15% off its price, narrowing in on $3,600.

XRP fell by 6.76%, now sporting a $0.345 price tag.

Ethereum is this week’s winner. The crypto bucked its falling trend actually rising 2.86% over the last seven days. It’s not much, but with the rest of the market in red, it signifies a respectable week.

Domestic Cryptocurrency News

Litecoin Enters the Ring: This Saturday, Litecoin will be featured front and center at the UFC light heavyweight fight between Jon Jones and Alexander Gustafsson. This event marks the first occurrence of an official cryptocurrency partner for the UFC.

The fight should reach millions of viewers which, in turn, means that over a million sets of eyeballs should take notice of Litecoin as well. Reading through the Litecoin Foundation’s statement on the matter, it looks as if this awareness campaign will be the first step in a more in-depth partnership with the MMA organization.

Excited to announce that the Litecoin logo will be on the canvas as the Official Cryptocurrency Partner of @UFC 232 on 12/29 in Inglewood CA! Read more: https://t.co/y4yvPWb6rj pic.twitter.com/ddML54j5GH

— Charlie Lee [LTC⚡] (@SatoshiLite) December 26, 2018

DoD Considers Blockchain for Disaster Relief: The Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), a subset of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), released a statement last Friday explaining the agency’s interest in utilizing blockchain technology for disaster relief. Members of the DLA discussed the topic during a two-day presentation hosted by the Continuous Process Improvement (CPI) office earlier in the month.

They cite several potential uses for the new technology “such as transaction processing and in-transit visibility of shipments to evaluate the process improvements.” Although the DLA hasn’t implemented any blockchain solutions yet, those actions appear to be on the horizon. CPI management analyst Elijah Londo emphasized, “[We’re] getting as smart as we can about what it is, what industry is saying about it, what the future might look like, how it applies to supply chains and how other industries are using it. We’re doing our due diligence”.

Cryptocurrency News from Around the World

Crypto on Path to Legalization in India: As it stands currently, possessing cryptocurrency in India could land you behind bars. However, according to a report by The New Indian Express, this may change soon. A senior official told the paper that a government committee has met twice to discuss the legality of digital currency, coming to a different conclusion than they have previously.

“There is a general consensus that cryptocurrency cannot be dismissed as completely illegal. It needs to be legalised with strong riders. Deliberations are on. We will have more clarity soon,” the official stated. It’s been over a year since the Indian government declared cryptocurrency illegal. We may finally see that decision reversed after the next committee meeting in January 2019.

Taiwanese Man Steals Electricity Worth Millions: A man with the surname Yang was arrested this week in Thailand on accusations that he stole over three million dollars worth of electricity to mine over $14 million dollars of cryptocurrency. Yang allegedly opened 17 storefronts, disguising them as doll shops and Internet cafes, for the purpose of circumventing power meters to mine cryptocurrency for free.

Yang used his illegal mining operations to obtain Bitcoin and Ethereum.