Weekly CryptoReport 19-23 February

This week was uncertain for Bitcoin. Starting with the growth, it came with the fall to the end of the week. Let’s look if other crypto market members were luckier.

On Tuesday Bitcoin could break the level of $11,500, however, it could not rise further. Since Wednesday the cryptocurrency is moving near $10,000.
Just recently we got news that Telegram, ruled by Durov brothers, had raised $850 million in pre-ICO. (It is worth to say that it is the biggest pre-ICO and ICO in the history). However, talks about the second round of pre-ICO have already appeared. During this round, the company is planning to raise additional $850 million. So if it happens, Telegram will get $1.7 billion just during pre-ICO.
The President of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro declared that the national cryptocurrency El Petro was sold on $735 million on the first trading day, but there is no evidence. Moreover, some oil companies are obliged to partially use the cryptocurrency. After such a successful sale, Mr. Maduro said that he is going to launch one more national token secured by gold.
The world precedent. The Senate of the state Wyoming (the USA) is going to consider a bill that abolishes a cryptocurrency taxation. If the bill is enacted, it will be the precedent not only for the USA but for the whole world.
Poland is against cryptocurrencies. The national bank allocated $27,000 to create a negative content on YouTube, so videos have already started appearing on different Poland web channels.
10,000 people became victims of Austrian financial pyramid Optioment, the loss is 80 million euros. Interpol is investigating the case.
Ripple increases the number of new partners. So the company got 5 new bank partners: two from Brazil, and three from India, Canada, and Singapore.
Bitcoin Core 0.16.0 with default SegWit-addresses was released. The more SegWit, the cheaper transactions. The average commission is already below $3.

So SegWit has already found support. Bitfinex claimed that it supports the protocol. Coinbase is planning to implement it to the end of February.

816 nodes and 1610 payment channels are already registered in the main network of Lightning Network. (Lightning Network is also a payment network, but focused on conducting microtransactions, which will not be recorded in the blockchain. Such technology will help to shorten time and price of transactions).
Lenovo is patenting a blockchain technology of a digital signature for document verification.
Vitalik Buterin has been actively engaged in charity. He and the charitable cryptocurrency fund “Pineapple Fund” donated $187,000 to a nonprofit organization “Internet Archive” that collects and stores information from the Internet with a free access to it for everyone.

More donations. Mr. Buterin donated $763,000 to an organization “Machine Intelligence Research Institute”. It develops a safe artificial intelligence.

Bitcoin $10,103 (-1.10%)

DASH $632 (-0.26%)

Ethereum $858.10 (4.28%)

LiteCoin $206.26 (-1.16%)