Saturday, September 22: crypto markets have seen a mix of red and green, with Ethereum (ETH) having passed Ripple (XRP) to come back to be ranked the second top cryptocurrency by market cap, according to CoinMarketCap. Market visualization from Coin360 After surging up to $6,809 earlier today, Bitcoin (BTC) is slightly down over the past 24 hours, having traded below $6,700 over the past few hours. The leading cryptocurrency is down around 0.5 percent and trading at $6,667 at press time, seeing around 3 percent gains over the week. Bitcoin weekly price chart. Source: Cointelegraph Bitcoin Price Index Ethereum (ETH) …

Coming every Sunday, the Hodler’s Digest will help you to track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions, and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link. Top Stories This Week New York Judges Rules Securities Laws Be “Flexible” And Apply To Cryptocurrencies In an apparent first, a New York federal judge has ruled that U.S. securities laws are applicable for prosecuting crypto fraud allegations. During the fraud case against Brooklyn resident Maksim Zaslavskiy — who allegedly defrauded investors by promoting two cryptocurrencies reportedly …

There is no chance that the cryptocurrency and blockchain space will see “1,000-times growth” again, Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin stated in an interview with Bloomberg September 8. At an Ethereum and blockchain conference in Hong Kong, Buterin told Bloomberg that the rapid growth of crypto and blockchain industry is now reaching a “ceiling,” and is moving from “just people being interested” to the stage of “real applications of real economic activity.” Buterin explained that the period of explosive growth in the sphere is likely coming to an end because the level of superficial awareness about the industry has significantly …

A recent study by the U.S. crypto exchange Coinbase has shown that 42 percent of the world’s top 50 universities have at least one class on cryptocurrencies or blockchain. The results of the study were published on Coinbase’s official blog Tuesday, August 28. The research was jointly conducted by Coinbase and survey company Qriously. Together they interviewed 675 U.S. college students and reviewed courses at 50 international universities. Of the 172 classes reviewed in the study, 15 percent were offered by economics, finance, law and business departments, while 4 percent were in social science departments. The study has found out …

Fundstrat’s Bitcoin (BTC) analyst Tom Lee has claimed that the cryptocurrency “could end the year explosively higher,” citing a correlation between it and emerging markets. Lee has made his new prediction in an interview during CNBC's "Trading Nation” show August 25. The Head of Research at Fundstrat Global Advisors has said that he “still think[s] it’s possible” that Bitcoin’s price could surge to as high as $25,000 this year. Lee has based this assumption on the relationship between the price of BTC and BlackRock’s iShares MSCI Emerging Markets exchange-traded fund (ETF), which tracks large and mid-sized companies in emerging markets. …

Yale University financial experts have suggested a system of factors to predict price trends in major cryptocurrencies, according to an official statement by YaleNews Aug. 6. The new study was conducted by Yale economist Aleh Tsyvinski and Yukun Liu, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Economics, and is reportedly the “first-ever comprehensive economic analysis of cryptocurrency and the blockchain technology.” In the paper, the authors intend to provide a “risk-return tradeoff” of major cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Ripple (XRP), according to its historical performance data. The experts reportedly analyzed the behavior of Bitcoin between 2011 …

Goldman Sachs plans to “offer [clients] custody for crypto funds,” insider sources told Bloomberg August 6, as the investment bank says it remains “undecided” on its cryptocurrency plans. As the publication reports, Goldman, which in May first hinted it would trade Bitcoin futures, now aims to offer various products linked to digital assets “in response to client interest.” “In response to client interest in various digital products we are exploring how best to serve them in this space,” a spokesman said, adding: “At this point we have not reached a conclusion on the scope of our digital asset offering.” Unofficial …

Fundstrat Global Advisors, market strategy and research provider, announced the firm will start accepting Bitcoin (BTC) for content via Bitpay, according to a press release shared with Cointelegraph July 31. In what the company claims is a first for research firms, Fundstrat has added Bitcoin payments to its platform via payment operator BitPay, which processed more than $1 bln in Bitcoin payments in 2017. According to the press release, the new feature will allow institutional investors, as well as financial advisors, high net worth individuals and other entities to use Bitcoin to purchase access to Fundstrat’s reports on different financial …

About 90 percent of currently active U.S. companies’ blockchain initiatives will ultimately be abandoned. This statistic comes from a study by Forrester Research, cited by Bloomberg in an article July 31. The U.S. market research firm Forrester Research predicts that most of blockchain-powered projects initiated by American companies will be put on hold in 2018. Specifically, Forrester Research estimates that in a whopping 90 percent of cases, the projects will “never become part of a company’s operations.” The researcher also claims that “some companies,” which have been striving to incorporate the widely touted distributed ledger technology (DLT) in their businesses, …

Alexis Ohanian, a co-founder of both Reddit and VC firm Initialized Capital, upheld his $20,000 Bitcoin (BTC) and $1,500 Ethereum (ETH) forecasts for 2018 in an interview with CNBC on July 24. Speaking of the “battle-tested” Bitcoin, Ohanian said the asset is “certainly the most robust” and “one of the best proofs” of crypto being a possible store of value — something he underscored as increasingly important in a global context of fiscal and political “uncertainty.” Ohanian noted that “as volatile as it’s been, we see [Bitcoin] continuing to go up over the long term,” adding that his belief in …

Julian Hosp, co-founder and president of crypto startup TenX, says he’s still “quite confident” that Bitcoin (BTC) can hit $60,000 in 2018, CNBC reports Wednesday, July 11. During an interview at the Rise conference in Hong Kong, Hosp told Squawk Box co-host Akiko Fujita that he still stands by the initial 2018 forecast he made in December for the leading cryptocurrency: "Back then, December, price was at a $20,000 all-time high. I predicted for 2018, we're going to see $5,000 and $60,000. So $5,000, we’ve pretty much hit it, so let's see if we can do the $60,000. I'm still …

Financial market research firm Fundstrat’s Tom Lee defended his position that Bitcoin (BTC) could trade at anywhere from $22,000 to $25,000 by the year’s end, in two CNBC interviews Thursday, July 5. Lee made sure to clarify to reporters that his most recent $22,000 price prediction is emphatically not a bearish retreat from his previous forecasts of $25,000. Lee, a notorious Bitcoin bull, is famous for his prediction in January that Bitcoin would hit $25,000 by the end of 2018, later saying in March it would reach a staggering $91,000 by 2020. Speaking on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” segment Thursday morning, …