Current Bitcoin Price: $8118 (as of 9:30 AM PST)

All round, the market has dropped about a percent today. Since this time yesterday we saw a slow rise for most coins up until about 12 hours ago, but that trend has since reversed.

Admittedly, three of the top-10 coins are up: Ripple, EOS, and Stellar have all appreciated by one to two percent. Looking more broadly, Binance Coin (#18) is up by almost 7%, while Tezos is down just as much.

Featured Coin: Litecoin

The coin of the week is Litecoin. Like Stellar, which we featured last Wednesday, Litecoin is a plain-and-simple currency coin that’s trying to improve upon Bitcoin with fast and low-cost payments. You can read more at http://www.bitcoinprice.com/ltc/.

Top Bitcoin & Crypto News Stories for 25th July 2018

Coinbase announces Uber payment with crypto

Coinbase is the crypto space’s biggest fiat-coin exchange; Uber is the world’s biggest ride-sharing app. Now imagine the outreach for cryptocurrency when you combine the two.

That’s exactly what’s happening, as Coinbase has announced a new deal that will allow its customers to pay for their Uber rides with cryptocurrencies.

European Union: cryptocurrency an “alternative to money”

Everyone wants to get the regulatory take on cryptocurrencies — and that’s finally starting to happen. While the SEC has been clearing up their stance on what’s crypto-assets are considered securities, the EU has been analyzing things wholistically.

Analysis from the European Parliament Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs has amounted in a large amount of valuable information — including the tidbit that digital currencies “can be used [in some circumstances] as an alternative to money].”

Iranian hotels bypassing US sanctions with crypto

The US dollar has previously held a huge role in Iran’s economic dealings — it was previously the currency of choice when it came to their accounting books. However, US sanctions on the country have made that increasingly difficult.

Iranian hotels are turning to cryptocurrencies as a solution to this. As pointed out on LiveBitcoinNews, “cryptocurrencies, unlike fiat, are immune to centralized, one-sided sanctions.”