Bitcoin trades have plummeted in China amid the crackdown of the country’s central bank, The Next Web reported. While renminbi-to-bitcoin currency trades comprised more than 90 percent of global bitcoin trades in December, the trades involving the Chinese currency now only make up 1 percent of all bitcoin trades.
In other news from China, authorities have arrested 20 people in an alleged cryptojacking scheme, according to Cryptovest. Through a plug-in that infected computers, the individuals may have earned about $2.26 million or 15 million Chinese yuan.
The U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has given 11 blockchain and distributed ledger companies access to its regulatory sandbox with its fourth cohort, CoinDesk said. The authority had received 69 applicants, and 40 had not made the cut.
On another note, Malta may become the first so-called “blockchain island” in the world, Business Review reported. The designation comes as the archipelago’s government passed a comprehensive distributed ledger technology (DTL) law.
A floating city, complete with its own government and crypto, is said to be ready by 2022, said Cryptovest. The project has gone into an active construction phase following an agreement with Polynesia’s government.
Bulgaria reportedly has a ton of bitcoins — the second-biggest cache, according to Cryptovest. In 2017, multiple arrests brought in 213,519 BTC and, while it is not known if the country’s government used the coins, they could possibly pay a quarter of the country’s national debt.
YouTube has reportedly been named in a lawsuit involving crypto lending platform BitConnect, CoinDesk wrote. The suit claims that YouTube was negligent in not policing its site’s content, such as BitConnect’s promotional videos.
Token platform Bancor is apparently offline, moving to maintenance after a “security breach,” CoinDesk reported. However, the company said that “no user wallets were compromised” in the incident.
In other news, Google Co-founder Sergey Brin has taken to cryptomining with his son, according to CNET. Brin is reportedly mining Ethereum, per a tweet from a Forbes reporter.
And token startups that fundraise through token sales can be rather ephemeral, Bloomberg reported. According to a Boston College, 56 percent of crypto startups that use token sales are gone within four months after their offerings.
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