Cryptocurrency news - March 15, 2018

📉 The price of bitcoin fell below $ 8,000. Decrease in value theoretically could contribute to hearings about the ICO in the US, the sale of Mt. Gox, the overall low market performance over the past month and negative media coverage.

🏛 The Congress's opinion on crypto-currencies and ICO after the meeting is very ambiguous. Some members of the chamber called for urgent regulation of the industry, another part expressed interest in it and advocated a balanced approach to regulation, and the third group showed frank misunderstanding of the subject of discussion. One thing is clear - to regulate crypto-currencies and ICO will be exactly. But how - it is not yet clear.

🤝 BitPay announced a partnership with Bithumb. The largest provider of crypto-currency payments BitPay and the well-known South Korean exchange will jointly launch a payment service on the basis of a blockbuster for international money transfers.

💼 Bitfinex entered into cooperation with Irisium. The developer of analytical software for financial organizations will work to prevent, detect and manage the risk of market manipulation on Bitfinex. Probably, such actions the stock exchange undertook to restore the reputation, after a court call and a scandal with the blogger Bitfinex'ed.

⛏ Bitmain began selling equipment for the coin mining of the CryptoNight algorithm. Another wall fell under the pressure of the Chinese developers - the ASIC-miner Antminer X3, intended for mining Monero and other coins on the algorithm CryptoNight with a maximum hashtreit of 220 KH / s, appeared on sale. Now we are waiting for a response from the developers of Monero - they oppose the use of asiks and can easily change the algorithm of hashing of their coins.

⚡️ The Lightning Network enters the beta test phase. California start-up Lightning Labs officially launched a beta version of its software (LND). This means that now all users can use the Lightning network to instantly send bitcoin and litecoin with the minimum possible commission.

👥 Telegram can limit the circle of people to participate in its ICO. RBC's media network reported that the crypto currency project TON of the Telegram messenger will deny participation to residents of the Crimea, Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Syria. Also, restrictions apply to all persons subject to the sanctions of the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom and the UN Security Council.

📊 The British exchange Coinfloor will launch bitcoin futures. All payments on futures will be made in BTC, not in fiat. As the director of Coinfloor, Obi Nwosu, stated, the main task of the organization is to build a bridge between fiat money and crypto currency.

👱🏻♀️ Playboy launches its own token. Video network Playboy TV, owned by a well-known magazine, will release VIT-Vice Industry Token, intended for payment of content. Also for payment will be available and "classic" crypto-currencies - bitcoin and etherium.