Since Bitcoin became mainstream on the market, there have been numerous talks regarding whether it would be wise for governments to implement a set of regulation, meant to protect both the public, but also companies from abuse, and possible market manipulation.

While the market is divided into two sides, with one side believing that regulation will spell the end of the bitcoin haven, whereas the other thinks that some form of regulation is wise, this is indeed a sensible topic.

The influence of the fall of the Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange are still felt on the market today, regardless of over 3 years having passed since its collapse.

For those who do not know, Mt. Gox was once the biggest bitcoin exchange on the market, handling over 70% of all transactions back in 2014. However, in February that year, the exchange decided to suspend trading, while also closing both its exchange service and the actual website, shortly after filing for bankruptcy, after over 850,000 bitcoin, valued at over $450 million were stolen.

The last year has brought bitcoin an interesting evolution, considering the fact that the price has tripled in a couple of months, and has reached the sum of $3,000 not long ago. This massive growth has brought about massive amounts of speculation on the market, with economic analysts from all around the world thinking that the increasing price is simply a bubble that will break soon enough.

It seems like the chief technician behind Goldman Sachs’ shares the same idea in this case, yet with a little twist. With this factor in mind, Sheba Jafari, in a recent report stated that in the near future, the price will likely break and decrease for a while, only to then proceed to climb even higher, possibly hitting the sum of $4,000 per unit of currency.

During the last couple of months, Bitcoin has been rapidly growing in terms of its popularity, which, in turn, also has had numerous effects on the way that governments perceive and regulate the cryptocurrency. While numerous countries have shown their support for Bitcoin, and begun measures such as eliminating taxation, or giving incentives to blockchain-based businesses, there are still regions which take the currency with a grain of salt.

With this aspect in mind, recent reports indicate that the Colombia Tax and Customs Office, recently announced that Bitcoin is taxable, regardless of the fact that not long ago, the Colombian Government has declared that Bitcoin isn’t even legal in their area of jurisdiction.

During the last couple of months, numerous advancements have been made in terms of blockchain technology, and this is quite understandable given its rising popularity. Not long ago, a platform known by the name of BankChain, which is basically meant to help banks implement blockchain-based solutions, has announced that they have partnered up with Microsoft.

Thanks to this partnership, the members of the BankChain consortium will now be able to use Microsoft Azure as their main cloud partner. In a recent press statement, the general manager of Microsoft’s Partner and Enterprise Group mentioned that: “The partnership with BankChain underscores our commitment to enable the digital transformation of the BFSI [banking, financial services, and insurance] sector in India. Blockchain is one of the most exciting innovations in this sector and we at Microsoft are leading this trend by offering the best-in-class Azure Blockchain offering. We look forward to working with stakeholders like Primechain to make this partnership a success.”

During the last couple of months, China has been showcasing an interesting approach towards Bitcoin and the other digital currencies available on the market, but also towards the blockchain network which is basically the system that powers everything up.

With this in mind, recent reports indicate that the People’s Bank of China, also known as the PBoC, is preparing to start up a development plan that will continue over the period of five years, meant to bring in improvements, upgrades and advancements in the country’s financial market. For long, China has been seen as one of the world’s most promising economies, given their huge market infrastructure, the billions of dollars-worth of investments being made in areas from all around the world, and their attitude towards small and big businesses. However, they’ve been fairly close-minded to the idea of digital currencies for a while now, due to the possible risks they may pose to the country’s own financial system. However, the Beijing Government will finally take the example of other countries and likely become a bit more open to digital currencies.

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The second half of 2016, along with the entire year of 2017, brought along great developments in the blockchain industry, a major increase in the value of bitcoin, Ethereum and other digital currencies, and will likely be remembered as the year when this technology started to become mainstream.

Following long years of development and research, alongside with an increase in social acceptance, blockchain-based projects are rapidly growing in popularity, and this is also showing in the increasing value of digital currencies, and other tokens of this type. According to recent reports, it seems like the Blockchain Consortium R3 has managed to raise a total of $107 million in investments, which is a new record.

If you’ve been following recent digital currency news, then chances are that you have heard about Bitcoin’s truly massive value increase, during the last couple of days. In fact, the digital currency has managed to hit a new record high, on Wednesday, with trading prices situated over $2,400.

The reasons behind this massive growth are numerous indeed, yet there are some which can be directly linked to bitcoin’s new staggering value. With this in mind, not long ago, the Digital Currency Group announced that they have reached consensus with 50 other companies, and have support from 83% of the miners on the network, to lower the barrier meant for the activation of the Segregated Witness project, but also that a hard fork will finally take place, meant to increase the bitcoin block size to a total of 2MB, from the current 1MB. In the long run, this will likely lead to numerous benefits.

Bitcoin extortionists have been around for a while, and have managed to become a constant threat to the market during the last couple of months. So far, hundreds of extortion attempts have been reported, where hackers infected the computers of individuals and companies, blocked access to their data, and then asked for a certain amount of money to be paid in bitcoin, to regain access to the PCs in question.

However, most of the attacks that took place until now, weren’t handled by the same author, and did not infect too many computers. Until a few days ago, when a new ransomware attack known by the name of WannaCry managed to infect hundreds of thousands of computers from all around the world.