The cryptocurrency market never closes, and the industry itself is growing faster than ever. This means there’s more breaking news, and more vital information emerging than ever before. This Week in Crypto is Covesting’s weekly news recap aimed at providing the most complete coverage across the cryptosphere.

Trump Appoints Bitcoin Support to US Chief of Staff

United States President Donald Trump has appointed a Bitcoin supporter to become the White House Chief of Staff. Starting in 2019, Mick Mulvaney will take over from John F. Kelly.

Mulvaney has publicly praised Bitcoin’s design, applauding the fact that it is “not manipulable by any government.” His support could open doors for positive crypto-related policy change within the US government.

Coinbase Rolls Out Crypto-to-Crypto Trading for Retail Investors

Coinbase has opened up one of the features uniquely available on its Coinbase Pro platform on its Coinbase retail trading app. The San Francisco-based crypto giant is now allowing the trading of crypto assets directly with other crypto assets, and not just USD as was the case up until now.

The new feature will be called Coinbase Convert, and it will allow retail investors to trade other cryptocurrencies against Bitcoin as new trading pairs.

Bitcoin’s All-Time High Anniversary

This past week marked the one-year anniversary of Bitcoin reaching its all-time high price of $20,000 last December 17th.

Since then, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have been stuck in an ongoing downtrend, following the speculative bubble pop. Bitcoin is currently trading at around $3,500, down as much as 80% from its all-time high it set a year prior.

Bitpay CEO Says Mass Adoption of Crypto Is 5 Years Away

The CEO of BitPay, Stephan Pair, had considered cryptocurrencies becoming adopted by the mainstream in a decade, but now believes it’ll be much sooner than that, as soon as 3-5 years.

“I used to say 10 years, but now I think it’s more like 3-5 years until you can go into a restaurant, a retail establishment, and just everybody’s going to expect that that store will be able to accept a blockchain payment,” Pair said.

Kaspersky Lab: Cryptojacking Cases Nearly Quadruple in 2018

As 2018 comes to a close, researchers can finally compare last year’s bull run against this year’s bear market and gauge the differences across the market and industry trends. One trend that has grown substantially is cryptojacking, which is nearly quadrupled over 2017.

In a report by cyber security firm Kaspersky Lab, the company reveals that over 13 million cases of cryptojacking were discovered in 2018, up over 370% from 2017’s 3.5 million cases.

Japan May Classify Crypto as ‘Crypto Assets’ To Clear Up Confusion

To avoid and alleviate confusion over its citizens incorrectly believing cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum being considered legal tender, Japan’s Financial Services Agency is mulling over a plan to begin classifying cryptocurrencies as “crypto assets,” effectively dropping the term “currency,” from their name.

The FSA says that traders often purchase cryptocurrencies believing they are legal tender recognized by the Japanese government, but is clearly not the case. The FSA hopes the new classification will help to better educate investors on the assets they are investing in.