Current Bitcoin Price: $4050 (as of 11:00 AM PST)

Since our last newsletter, the prices of most cryptocurrencies have climbed a fair 5 to 10 percent. This includes Bitcoin, which is currently valued just over $4050 after an 0.25% drop on the daily, as well as Ethereum and XRP, which have budged similar amounts.

TRON is the top-20 asset making headlines today, as it clears through another 13% of bullish, upwards price action. DASH is also performing well today, up more than 6%.

Top Bitcoin & Crypto News Stories for 9th January 2018

$1+ million of ETC double spent

With any forked coin, there’s a major concern that mining power from the primary chain could be redirected to the smaller chains in order to secure a majority vote in the network — in other words, to conduct a 51% attack.

This is a problem that Ethereum Classic, the hard forked alternative to Ethereum, has seen increasingly over recent months. Just in the last few days, more than $1 million ETC tokens were double spent on cryptocurrency exchanges, which allowed the hackers to secure other tokens for, in effect, free.

$10 million ransom in Monero

Monero is a cryptocurrency famed for its anonymity and other privacy features, which allow users to conduct untraceable transactions without any fear of them being traced back to the source.

It’s no surprise, then, that the kidnappers of a Norwegian billionaire’s (worth an equivalent over $200 million) wife are asking for a ransom in XMR. The ransom amounts to over $10 million.

Substratum ICO funds go missing

Substratum is a cryptocurrency project that gained plenty of fame during its ICO in September 2017. The goal was to build a blockchain-based product that would allow users to serve content with spare computing power.

Unfortunately, it’s been revealed that some of Substratum’s ICO funds have gone missing. As a curious side note, the CEO of the project purchase a $400,000 house, and “several other toys”, shortly after the token sale.