Current Bitcoin Price: $8318 (as of 8:25 AM PST)

We’ve seen slow and steady growth across the market over the last 24 hours, with most major coins up at least 1% (although that seems like extremely slow growth for investors in this space). Big movers are EOS (#5 by market cap), which is up 9.37%, and Bytecoin (#18 by market cap), which is down 7.10%.

The focus for today’s news is on Europe, with supportive words from France’s finance minister as well as stock exchange trading of cryptos in Germany, and also features an interesting experiment from the SEC.

Top Bitcoin & Crypto News Stories for 17th May 2018

French finance minister wants France to take the lead in Europe

France’s finance minister Bruno Le Maire has publicly voiced his support for the crypto world, claiming that he was just a “rookie” a year ago and that now he has been “seized by a sudden passion.”

At a recent business breakfast, Bruno discussed a number of topics from taxation to regulation, but mostly notably shared words of encouragement to “make France the first place for blockchain & crypto innovation in Europe”.

German stock exchange launches crypto trading

Germany’s second biggest stock exchange — one of the biggest in Europe — has began work on a crypto trading facility called Bison. The exchange, Borse Stuttgart, says the facility is the  the world’s first crypto app behind which stands a traditional stock exchange”.

Bison is set to go live by September and promises completely free trading.

SEC launches a fake ICO “HoweyCoin”

The SEC has been surprisingly considerate of the crypto world — in yesterday’s newsletter we noted how an official openly said he didn’t want to “hinder” blockchain innovation.

In this recent move by the SEC, they chose to protect the public from fraudulent ICOs through education — not regulation — by creating a fake ICO called HoweyCoin. Attempting to invest simply redirects the user to the SEC’s education tools, where they’re taught how to identify fraudulent ICOs!