Current Bitcoin Price: $6466 (as of 7:55 AM PST)

Most major cryptocurrencies are down a percent or two today, following on from a quiet weekend; that leaves Bitcoin sitting around the $6500 mark and Ethereum around the $500 mark.

Both IOTA (#9) and Bytecoin (BCN, #24) have taken significant hits — down by 6.7% and 6.1% respectively, while lesser known Docademic (MTC, #86) has skyrocketed up 35% over the last 24 hours.

Top Bitcoin & Crypto News Stories for 18th June 2018

Skycoin CEO involved in insider trading

Skycoin (SKY, #115) claims to be “the most advanced blockchain platform in the world”. Their ambitious plans involve providing users with private VPN hardware (“Skyminers”) to circumvent ISP usage, among other things!

Skycoin’s CEO, who goes by the pseudonym of “Synth”, has been recorded acknowledging insider trading within his team. A copy of the audio recording is available online.

Final Bitconnect trading pair closes

Bitconnect (BCC) was outed as a Ponzi scheme earlier this year, which had previously been offering high-yield investments to users who staked the token.

Bitconnect’s final exchange, TradeSatoshi, has just shut down the last of Bitconnect’s trading pairs, making the coin effectively worthless — down from a significant $512 peak price in December of last year.

Brave rolls out trial ad platform

Brave Software Inc. is building a browser (“Brave”) that automatically blocks ads and protects user privacy, instead rewarding them with a utility token (BAT, #51), for voluntarily watching ads.

The Brave browser has just rolled out its trial ad program to the public, where users will see a “few relevant ads” everyday. Until now, Brave has been nothing more and nothing less than a fast, ad-free browser.