Crypto Week in Brief: A round-up of the week's biggest cryptocurrency stories from around the Internet. This week's edition includes Japan's ICO regulation plans, a $5m Bitmain lawsuit and news that over half a million miners have ceased mining in the last two weeks

Perennial Bitcoin bull Mike Novogratz believes that 2019 will be the year that financial institutions enter the market. (Ethereum World News)

Bitmain faces a $5m USD lawsuit over claims that it used clients' computers without authorisation to mine cryptocurrency for its own benefit. (Coin Telegraph)

A report in Bloomberg makes the point that in financial markets in general, investors have become used to low volatility as the status quo and are therefore being affected by swings more than they ordinarily would (Bloomberg)

The United Kingdom's financial regulator, the FCA is set to investigate 50 UK cryptocurrency businesses in relation to unlicensed financial activities .(The Telegraph)

In a more positive step, Japan's financial regulator, the Financial Services Authority, have announced plans to regulate ICOs (The Coin Radar)

Mao Shixing, the head of F2pool, the world's third-largest mining company, claims that between 600,000 and 800,000 Bitcoin miners have shutdown in the last two weeks as a result of the drop in both Bitcoin's price and hashrate. (Coindesk)

Meanwhile, Ohio now officially allows businesses in the state to settle tax payments using Bitcoin, will this lead to an increase in the legitimacy of cryptos as a whole? (CCN)

However CNBC believe that Ohio's recent acceptance of Bitcoin for taxes is instead a naked play by the state to attract cryptocurrency startups. The idea being that new laws will encourage investment and create a pool of skilled software engineers and other tech professionals (CNBC)

The 37% by which Bitcoin fell in November 2018 is the worst drop in a month in more than in seven years, since the price fell by 39% back in April 2011 (NewsBTC)

Craig Wright believes that Bitcoin SV will be processing 1 TB blocks by 2020 (Ethereum World News)

Following on from Satoshi Nakamoto's supposed reappearance on Twitter last week, the enigmatic crypto Godfather's P2P profile has been reactivated, posting the four-letter word "Nour" and befriending a Brazilian (CoinTelegraph)

NYSE Chairman Jeff Sprecher believes that Bitcoin has 'lived in a swamp and survived' and is therefore here to stay (Ethereum World News)

The SEC is now putting social media influencers in their cross-hairs, warning that customers should 'be sceptical of advice posting to social media platforms' as they are paid promoters and the tokens they are touting 'could be frauds' (SEC)