Current Market state The Christmas rally ends and makes the total market cap to lose over $15 billion bringing it to the $130 billion mark. However, most of investors are optimistic about the crypto in 2019 especially considering highest-ranking crypto currencies’ have major updates and a lot of innovative projects that are currently being worked on in the blockchain world. Bitcoin again slides down below USD 4000. This puts Bitcoin back into a range between USD 3600 to USD 4200. The prices hit the high point of USD 4,271.79 and the lowest point of USD 3,642.63 during the week. Ethereum is outperforming all top altcoins as it inches closer to take its No.2 spot. Ethereum on the top, this week was at USD 140.67 and were at lows of USD 116.65. XRP still is at second place but Ethereum continues to get close to regain its spot. On the top, this week the prices of XRP were at USD 0.408477 and towards the bottom, it quoted USD 0.340282. Past week, the cryptocurrency markets have experienced ending of the Christmas rally that put the crypto market at the spot right before bloody November has happened. Along with this news, the community discusses Mt.Gox bankruptcy, Bitmain and Huobi employees’ layoffs and South Korea Rules in Favor of Bithumb. South Korean court has ruled in favor of crypto exchange Bithumb in a lawsuit in which an investor had sued the exchange for his loss of around $355,000 in an alleged hack. Ahn Park alleged that he had been the victim of a hack of his Bithumb account on Nov. 20, 2017, which resulted in the aforementioned loss, and cited Bithumb’s lack of security safeguards as befit a financial services firm. However, the court did not find Park’s claims that Bithumb’s activities were similar to that of services offered in the financial sector to be true, and ruled against him. In the ongoing Mt. Gox bankruptcy case, the former CEO claimed he was innocent While the claim proceedings are still in process, in Tokyo court, former CEO of Mt Gox, Mark Krapeles has pleaded innocence for the exchange going bankrupt and customers losing their money. Karpeles is also facing charges for embezzling $3 million from the exchange and also manipulating exchanges data Bitmain, Consensys, and Huobi to layoff employees All has not been at best for the crypto industry over the past two months since the market nosedived. This has led to a lot of businesses especially in the crypto mining realign their business resulting a lot of layoffs. It all started with Consensys and now it’s Bitmain and Huobi that are laying off a lot of their staff members. While Huobi is letting of worst performers from its team if sources are to be believed Bitmain is laying off close to 80% of its staff. 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 The search of any information about Bitcoin, its price volatility and possible future predictions was in trends from week to week. Crypto predictions 2019 Since the New Year 2019 is about to hit the world next week, the crypto community is widely curious about possible predictions and crypto potential for the 2019. The users are searching for some opportunities and investment hints Mt.Gox The community is tracking on the progress with Mt.Gox exchange that was the number one cryptocurrency exchange with 70% market share. However, the exchanges fame dint last too long as it filed bankruptcy in 2014 and closed its operations. IOTA IOTA has been attempting to climb back into the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization but has not been successful. Last week, it was the fourth best performer. Jihan Wu The community followed up with the rumours of Chinese Media reports that Jihan Wu and Jenke Group to sit down as Bitmain CEOs. Bitmain is currently in a transition period, and employees are allegedly unhappy with the outcomes of the double-CEO system Laws & Compliance Hong Kong-based winemaker Madison plans to buy a Japanese crypto platform Madison Holdings Group a Hong Kong-based wine company, this week announced that it has plans to buy a 67.2% stake of the Japanese crypto platform BitOcean. The platform which recently crypto license from Japan’s Financial Services Agency is still to begin its operations. Madison Labs, a subsidiary of the Madison Group will supposedly pay $15.12 Bn for the buyout. Litecoin enters the ring as it sponsors a UFC fight Litecoin has signed a sponsorship deal with UFC. This would be the first time an official cryptocurrency has partnered UFC. The fight which Litecoin is sponsoring is the UFC light heavyweight fight between Jon Jones and Alexander Gustafsson which is expected to grab over a million eyeballs. This sponsorship looks like a Litecoin awareness campaign and may be considered the first step towards a more elaborate partnership with the UFC. India hints of legalizing cryptos The second largest country by population is considered to be a big market for cryptocurrency and according to a local media outlet, the committee assessing cryptos feels that altogether banning cryptocurrencies may not be a really good idea. An undisclosed source that was a participant in the meetings has told the local media that, while debates are still being made, after two meetings it was very clear that completely banning cryptos may not be a really good idea and that the best way to deal with these new age “money” is by having a strong hold on their legalization within India. Altcoin Bitcoin Private Team Confirms 2 mln Additional Coins Were Secretly Premined The development team for altcoin Bitcoin Private (BTCP) has confirmed this week that 2.04 million units of BTCP were created that were never intended to exist on the altcoin’s blockchain. Following a report in late December from a digital asset analytics website that revealed the discrepancy, the BTCP team launched an investigation that eventually found that the extra coins had been mined, but they do not yet know who created the coins and for what reason. Major US Magazine Time Column Reports on the Freeing Potential of Bitcoin Time magazine published a column this week that praised the liberating potential of Bitcoin, mentioning Venezuela as an example of a country where the citizens can benefit from the cryptocurrency. According to the article, Bitcoin is a valuable financial tool for avoiding censorship, specifically noting that Bitcoin can help Venezuelans avoid inflation, as a government cannot simply print more Bitcoin. The currency can also be used to bypass mass surveillance in places like China. Nvidia Faces Class Action Lawsuit Over Losses After Lower GPU Mining Demand Graphics processing unit (GPU) producer Nvidia is currently facing a class action lawsuit over losses that the company reported when lower crypto prices lowered demand for GPUs by miners. The Schall law firm announced the lawsuit this week, with the complaint alleging that Nvidia made false and misleading statements to the market. 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. Greatest Token Comment volatility MobileGo +16.07 % No information provided that explains such token volatility Pundi X +5.86% Pundi X-Force competition was announced Dentacoin +3.51% The new version of #Dentacoin Trusted Reviews was released Aurora -5.15% BRN (BrainMab) token was de-listed from the platform Bancor -3.77% The reason for the token’s price drop is not defined Revain -3.50% Token price’s decline is unusual due to latest news and updates within the Waves’s project Citation of the week “Once there are new issues, then Ether will rebound aggressively. When the ICO market returns, Ether will quickly test $200. The timing of the ICO rebirth is 12 to 18 months out,” — Arthur Hayes, BitMEX CEO. “Yeah no, I have my disagreements with the bitcoin roadmap, PoW, etc but they're trying to do something that's genuinely cool tech. BSV is a pure dumpster fire,” — Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum (ETH) co- founder "At some point, yes, it will drive a profound shift in how we communicate and collaborate, but we’re not there yet,” — Lance Braunstein, E*Trade Financial Corp. CIO, speaking about “blockchain” as a buzzword .