In recent weeks, discussions around commissions for Bitcoin transactions and the time of their confirmation have become increasingly tense. Many community members complained about unconfirmed transactions and high cost for medium-sized transactions, which often cost more than $ 30, and a transaction with a large number of inputs can cost more than $ 50.

Such large handlers of Bitcoin payments like Coinbase, Bitpay and Shapeshift warn their users about delays. Bitpay even issued a special application and notified customers that it would no longer process payments in Bitcoins for less than $ 100 due to rapidly growing commissions. However, the next day the platform changed its decision and returned to processing payments of $ 5, but noted that it still recommends making larger payments. This was achieved by sending group transactions for small payments.

According to the statement of the member of the Board of Directors of the Bundesbank (the central bank of Germany), Carl-Ludwig Thiele, the issue of digital currencies by the central banks of the Eurozone and their equating to the fiat in the near future is excluded.

Goldman Sachs, one of the largest banks on Wall Street, plans to launch its own platform for trading cryptocurrencies. This became known to the agency Bloomberg from sources who are familiar with the strategic plans of the banking group. As it became known to the agency, the bank plans to launch a new business unit in July 2018, but it may happen earlier. Sources say that Goldman Sachs is currently collecting a team in New York, trying to solve security problems, and how the assets will be stored.

The creator of VKontakte and Telegram Pavel Durov is preparing to release his own cryptocurrency under the name Gram, said a former employee of VKontakte and subordinate Durov Anton Rosenberg. 

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.

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.

An anonymous holder of Bitcoins created an investment Cryptocurrency fund in the amount of $ 85 million for charitable purposes. This person has invested in the investment fund with 5 057 BTC to support any charitable purposes around the world.

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.