Сurrent Market state Bitcoin and the aggregated crypto market are trading up, with BTC climbing just under 3% to its current price of $8,600. Thus, total market cap has gained $2B more and reached the level of $238B.

The coin has been moving within a strong bullish trend amid low volatility. A sustainable move above $8,450 improved the short-term technical picture

The Ethereum retreated from the intraday high of $169.39; now, it is moving within a short-term bearish trend amid shrinking volatility

The third-largest crypto settled at $0.2306 after a spike to $0.2495 during early Asian hours. The coin has gained 3.5% in recent 24 hours.

World Economic Forum debuts framework for central bank digital currency The framework, created in tandem with central banks, is designed to help policymakers understand whether deploying a CBDC would be advantageous. In other developments, a global consortium has been formed to focus on developing interoperable, transparent and inclusive policy approaches to regulating digital currencies. At the start of the week, the European Union and five major central banks — the United Kingdom, Japan, Canada, Sweden and Switzerland — announced they were planning to team up on their research for CBDCs.

Ripple CEO hints at IPO, says more crypto firms will go public in 2020 Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has predicted that initial public offerings will become more prevalent in the cryptocurrency and blockchain space in 2020 — and he hinted his company would be among those seeking a public flotation. “We’re not going to be the first and we’re not going to be the last, but I expect us to be on the leading side,” he said. Such a move could be instrumental in building confidence with mainstream investors and secure a pivot away from controversial initial coin offerings, which have seen young startups suffer often expensive run-ins with regulators such as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission

Greece extradites alleged launderer of $4 billion in BTC, Alexander Vinnik, to France A Russian national accused of heading a group that laundered $4 billion in Bitcoin has been extradited from Greece to France. Alexander Vinnik formerly operated the now-shuttered exchange BTC-e and is believed to have a direct relationship to the infamous hack of Mt. Gox. The case has risked triggering a diplomatic row, with Russia filing several requests to bring him under its jurisdiction. Lawyers writing on behalf of Vinnik’s young children had submitted a complaint to a Greek court at the start of the week in an attempt to prevent the extradition. Reports now suggest that Vinnik is being held at a hospital in Paris.

Elon Musk reveals his true opinion on Bitcoin and crypto Tesla’s CEO may be constantly cryptic on his attitudes toward crypto. On a podcast, the billionaire said he’s “neither here nor there on Bitcoin,” acknowledged Satoshi’s white paper was “pretty clever,” and warned his stance on cryptocurrencies often “gets the crypto people angry.” Musk added: “You must have a legal to illegal bridge. So, where I see crypto is effectively as a replacement for cash. I do not see crypto being the primary database [for transactions].” Musk has been known to write short tweets about crypto that were widely interpreted as jokes. Last year, he unexpectedly declared himself as the new CEO of Dogecoin — a gesture that helped the joke coin clock short-lived gains of 35%

Laws & Compliance custody

Crypto and Blockchain firms pitch in to help coronavirus-victims Some blockchain and cryptocurrency firms have pledged to help victims of the coronavirus in Wuhan, China. Cryptocurrency exchange Binance pledged to donate 10 million Chinese yuan ($1.44 million) to the effort. eChat post by blockchain marketing service firm Krypital, the firm also launched a charity donation effort to acquire medical supplies for Wuhan coronavirus victims. Krypital also announced that it will create a blockchain-based donation system that allows for greater transparency and efficiency. The firm accepts Tether (USDT) on the Ethereum blockchain.

Ex Employees sue Tron’s Justin Sun for $15M over alleged harassment Two former employees at BitTorrent, the peer-to-peer torrent client acquired by Tron in 2018, have sued Tron founder and CEO Justin Sun for alleged labor violations and harassment. The plantiffs’ complaint for damages rests on claims of wrongful termination, racial discrimination, a hostile work environment, fraud and whistleblower retaliation, harassment and unfair employment practices, including labor code violations and unfair business practices.

Telegram CEO: Apple’s iCloud is “now officially a surveillance tool” Pavel Durov, the founder and CEO of Telegram, has claimed that Apple’s cloud service iCloud is “now officially a surveillance tool.” His stinging rebuke followed reports that the tech giant dropped plans for end-to-end encryption on iCloud two years ago — apparently following complaints from the FBI. This ultimately means that backed-up texts from iMessage, WhatsApp and other encrypted services remain available to Apple employees and authorities.

India’s central bank says it hasn’t banned crypto The Reserve Bank of India has said restrictions on regulated entities offering crypto assets do not equate to an overall ban. In a document submitted to the country’s supreme court back in September, which has now been made public, the institution said: “The RBI has not prohibited VCs (virtual currencies) in the country. The RBI has directed the entities regulated by it to not provide services to those persons or entities dealing in or settling VCs.” All of this comes as a landmark case against the RBI concludes its second week.

Peter Schiff bungled wallet password, solving “Bitcoin mystery” Long-running crypto skeptic and gold bug Peter Schiff is likely to be even more skeptical after losing access to his funds. At first, he believed his wallet was corrupted — but he later found out that he mistook his PIN for his password, and he was unable to log in after an app update because he had never taken a copy of his seed phrase. Many in the crypto community have criticized Schiff for making a rookie mistake, with Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao quipping: “I can’t believe I am about to say this, but maybe ‘stay in fiat?’”.

Crypto community’s interest The section below presents the most searched terms in google about recent crypto industry news for the last week. The graphs below show the percentage ratio between requests and their historical maximum. Crypto Topics & Events Google Trends Bitcoin Bitcoin had an interesting end of the week following the bearish action witnessed across the cryptocurrency landscape. Bitcoin price break above the wedge pattern resistance renews the trajectory towards $9,200.

Ripple Ripple says cryptocurrency-based lending represents a powerful, early use case in the emerging world of digital assets. Ripple is also working in order to expand the XRP derivatives in 2020 considering there is a general crypto derivative boom in the market.

IEO It remains to be seen which acronym replaces the ICO and IEO, and becomes the preeminent fundraising mechanism for crypto startups. There are signs that in 2020 it’s possible to hold an ethical token generation event (TGE)

Telegram Telegram's latest update adds new poll features and other improvements. Polls aside, there are a couple of minor tweaks to the apps. For starters, users can customize the message bubble corners

Mt GOX The previous CEO of the now-dead Bitcoin trade Mt Gox, Mark Karpeles, could look up to 10 years in jail if investigators have their direction. Per the investigators, Karpeles stole 340 million yen (roughly US$3 million) of customer finances

Volatility extremums This section presents three of each of the best performed tokens and the worst performed tokens during the last week. Their volatility is presented in the table below.

Token Greatest volatility

Centrality +14.06%

Bytom +4.54%

0x +3.84%

Status -5.41%

Komodo -4.35% Lisk -4.25%

Citation of the week

“iCloud is now officially a surveillance tool. Apps that are relying on it to store your private messages (such as WhatsApp) are part of the problem.” —Pavel Durov, Telegram founder and CEO

@durov

“So then there is the new technology, the digital, the blockchain. [...] The Libra episode is just evoking a future digital currency.” —Paulo Guedes, Brazil’s economy minister

“Given the critical roles central banks play in the global economy, any central bank digital currency implementation, including potentially with blockchain technology, will have a profound impact domestically and internationally.” —Sheila Warren, World Economic Forum head of blockchain

@sheila_warren