Current Bitcoin Price: $3827 (as of 8:00 AM PST)

The market is still churning sideways as we enter the New Year; as it stands, Bitcoin and most other cryptocurrencies are down a percent or two on the daily charts, but similar progress has been undone and redone for the entire month.

Most cryptocurrencies in the top-20 are indeed following the rule, down by a few percent, but there are two exceptions. IOTA, for example, is up more than 2%, while Binance Coin is up just under 4%. The latter coin shows an impressive history of going against the general market direction.

Top Bitcoin & Crypto News Stories for 31st December 2018

900+ projects die in crypto winter

For more than a year now, the cryptocurrency market has been trading bearish. This market winter of sorts has obviously taken its toll on the blockchain space, having scared away greedy businessman and bled out smaller projects.

A shocking report concludes that over 900 cryptocurrency projects can now be declared “dead”, at the end of this long, downwards market year. While other projects press on, development and usage of these unfortunate few (well, more than a few) has completely halted.

Time: Bitcoin matters for freedom

Anyone who’s been in the cryptocurrency space for more than a few years will know the original purpose of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies — to get away from the control of governments, middlemen, and other centralized authorities.

TIME newspaper is finally acknowledging this. In their recent article “Why Bitcoin Matters for Freedom”, author Alex Gladstein tells the story of Bitcoin’s power in an authoritarian state under a currency crisis — Venezuela — adding that “[Bitcoin] has the potential to make a real difference for the 4 billion people who can’t trust their rulers.”

Reviewing 2018 price predictions

A great number of price predictions are made on yearly scales, and several price predictions which were made for the year of 2018 will be decided tomorrow… unfortunately, it’s not looking good for the five end-of-year predictions included in this Reddit post.

Predictions from Pantera Capital and Tom Lee of Fundstrat, among others, had put the end-of-year price for Bitcoin between $20,000 and $100,000. With the current price sitting just over $3,800, it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen!