Last week there was a major hacking of the Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck, as a result of which 523 million NEM coins were stolen. This forced the site to stop operations to withdraw all funds except Bitcoin. The total value of the stolen coins was about $ 534 million at the time of the theft. Although the cryptocurrency market stabilized quite quickly, experts believe that this break-in is just the beginning. In an interview with CNBC, analyst Nicholas Colas said that in the near future, we expect more attacks on cryptocurrency exchanges.

The company CashBet is trying to raise the value of its ICO by signing a sponsorship agreement with Arsenal - the top football club of the English Premier League. This week, the UK press reported the news that the football club Arsenal signed an agreement with a technological blockchain company. The company CashBet, which is preparing for the initial placement of coins (ICO), created to raise funds necessary for the company to develop "a unified mobile platform for real money, social and professional skills based on interactive games."

A new research by Ernst & Young argues that more than 10% of funds received during the initial placement of coins were stolen or lost. The results and conclusions are combined with a report detailing what Ernst & Young considers a risk of investing in such a little regulated market. In conducting its research, Ernst & Young cooperated with the iB group to analyze 372 ICOs in the cryptocurrency area, but the professional service company did not determine the time frame in its conclusions. According to the report, the research groups received data from "public sources through exchanges, data aggregators, ICO reports, ICO trackers, news sites, blockchains of network scanners / platforms and specialized social networks."

As the Japanese source MineCC reports, the management of the crypto exchange Coincheck officially announced the breaking and stealing of NEM tokens for $532 million. While it remains unclear, whether other cryptocurrencies were stolen. NEM developers and the community of open source developers have confirmed that there will not be a hardfire for the restoration of lost funds. NEM Foundation President Lon Wong said that there should be no complaints against NEM, and laid overall responsibility for the incident at Coincheck.

The preliminary primary location of the tokens of the TON blockchain-platform has been completed

January 27, World Trade Center in Moscow will host the World Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Summit (#WBCSummit). The organizer of the event is the International Decentralized Association of Cryptocurrency and Blockchain (IDACB). The summit will bring together more than 400 world-class professionals - participants in the market for block-technologies, representatives of crypto-associations - IDACB partners, authorities, funds, investment companies and banks.

The general director of the InfoWatch group of companies and the co-founder of Kaspersky Lab, Natalya Kaspersky, considers Bitcoin the development of a group of American cryptographers who worked on behalf of the special services. She said this, speaking at the St. Petersburg University ITMO, where Kaspersky presented a presentation on "Modern technologies - the basics of information and cyber-wars." In her opinion, the group of American cryptographers is hiding under the name of Satoshi Nakamoto, the Bitcoin creator, but did not name any concrete people and evidence of their involvement in the development of Bitcoin.

Revenues from commissions of South Korean banks that provide accounts to clients of crypto-exchanges increased 36 times compared to the previous year. Such data was obtained by the Financial Services Commission of South Korea (FSS) as a result of verification of six banks - Woori Bank, KB Kookmin Bank, Shinhan Bank, Nonghyup Bank, Korea Development Bank and Industrial Bank.

Expert Bitcoin lawyer Trace Mayer suggested that the price of the first cryptocurrency could reach $ 115,000 in 2018 after the correction phase ends. However, he stresses that such a figure of $ 115,000 - despite the theoretical possibility based on previous cycles, will be "much overstated". Now Bitcoin is recovering after the fall, the largest since 2013.

Japanese financial group Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG) is launching a program to open a new exchange and issue its own virtual currency MUFG coin. Controlling the exchanges, MUFG plans to restrain the price fluctuations of the MUFG Coin cryptocurrency, so that it can be used consistently for calculations. Thanks to a centralized distribution, MUFG coin will be directly controlled by the bank. Additionally, the bank will be able to control the coin value, which will be about 1 yen. Users will be able to use coins with the help of smartphones to pay for goods and services.