Current Bitcoin Price: $3864 (as of 9:00 AM PST)

Since our last newsletter, the market has tossed and turned quite a bit. After following an upwards trend for several days last week, the cryptocurrency market dumped several percent over the weekend to undo all of its upwards progress.

Over the last 24 hours, the cryptocurrency market is mostly upwards. Bitcoin is up more than 1% — with Ethereum down about 0.5% — while other major currencies like XRP, EOS, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, and TRON have all risen in the 2% to 5% range.

Top Bitcoin & Crypto News Stories for 25th February 2018

Nasdaq to launch BTC, ETH indices today

Earlier on in this month, we announced Nasdaq’s plans to roll out Bitcoin and Ethereum indices on their price quoting platform. For those of who you don’t know, Nasdaq is the world’s second largest stock exchange and provides market data to a whole host of financial institutions.

Well, today — the 25th of February 2019 — was the planned launch date for Nasdaq’s two cryptocurrency indices: BLX and ELX. Let’s see how they do!

US government aids in retrieving stolen Bitfinex funds

In 2016, Bitcoin exchange Bitfinex was hacked, leading to the loss of more than 100,000 Bitcoin. Today, those Bitcoin would be worth over 400 million dollars.

The US government has been able to recover a whopping 27.7 Bitcoin associated with the hack, which will be returned to the users who lost funds. Although the amount is nominal, it’s heartwarming to see cooperation between government bodies and the cryptocurrency industry.

South Korean regulator awaits SEC ETF decision

Just like in the US, South Korea also has outstanding Bitcoin and cryptocurrency related ETF applications. And — again, just like the US — South Korea’s regulatory bodies have been slow in issuing a decision.

Korea Exchange, in charge of handling the Korean ETF application, has announced that it is paying close attention to the moves of the SEC; this shows that South Korea could be planning to follow in the footsteps of American cryptocurrency regulation.