This week… Bitcoin headed back to levels not seen since February, touching a $6,120 low. The price has since risen to around $6,600.

There are various reasons for the crash and recovery, though the idea of ‘news’ driving the markets always has to be taken with a pinch of salt. (Bad news has a habit of being ignored in a bull market and good news in a downtrend.)

Firstly, there was the study that shows evidence that the price of BTC was manipulated by Tether creation in the run-up of 2017. This will come as no surprise to anyone in the crypto world, but was heavily featured in the mainstream news. See Inferno’s post, http://telegra.ph/The-University-of-Texass-Tether-study-is-a-lot-like-watching-The-Force-Awakens-06-14.

The immediate catalyst for the move upwards appears to have been the news that the SEC has finally decided bitcoin and Ether are not securities: https://www.wired.com/story/sec-ether-bitcoin-not-securities/. Most ICOs do qualify as securities, however. This situation is, again, much as the majority of the crypto world expected.

In ‘offbeat’ news, Star Trek’s William Shatner has joined forces with the Solar Alliance to promote sun-powered bitcoin mining: https://news.bitcoin.com/william-shatner-joins-bitcoin-mining-project-admits-he-doesnt-quite-get-it/.

Steve Bannon, Breitbart co-founder and former chief strategist to Donald J. Trump, has also gone on the record as being in favour of bitcoin: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/14/technology/steve-bannon-bitcoin.html. Bannon owns a significant amount of bitcoin, and is considering creating his own cryptocurrency, liking the disruption the concept poses to the banking system.

Finally, someone has been trolling Craig ‘Satoshi’ Wright: https://twitter.com/kanzure/status/1007441372209655808?s=21. The Bitcoin Alert Key is a key used to notify all clients about critical network problems, though it was retired some time ago and is no longer used. In his tweet, Brian Bishop is making the point that although numerous people share the Alert key, it is not publicly known. If Craig Wright was Satoshi, or closely involved at the early stages of bitcoin, he would have it. He does not.

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