This month we saw Microsoft, Starbucks and NYSE parent company ICE announce their development of a cryptocurrency payment platform. The total mining power on the Bitcoin network exceeded 50 Exahashes per second, a 45% increase in Lightning Network channels, 45% SegWit adoption, extensive Bitmain analysis after their announcement to plan to ICO and much more!

What the monthly news is about:

For those unfamiliar, each day I pick out the most popular/relevant/interesting stories in r/Bitcoin and save them. At the end of the month I release them in one batch, to give you a quick (but not necessarily the best) overview of what happened in bitcoin over the past month.

A recap of Bitcoin in August 2018

01: The Queensland government is funding a bitcoin point-of-sale system roll-out & Someone makes their first Lightning purchase in a restaurant in Oslo & Bitcoin is erasing 300 years of monetary evolution
02: An interview with SEC commissioner Hester Peirce about a Bitcoin ETF
03: Microsoft, Starbucks the NYSE parent company ICE, BCG and others are developing a payment platform so they can accept cryptocurrency payments & Mt. Gox will no longer need to liquidate any bitcoin
04: The ICE founder says they’re trying to help Bitcoin become the first worldwide currency & btcinformation.org is launched as a community-maintained fork of Bitcoin.org without ads and trackers & 5% of Square’s revenue comes from Bitcoin today
05: The mining power on the Bitcoin network has reached 50 Exahashes per second
06: The total number of bitcoin ATMs surpasses 3.5k & According to a report, Goldman Sachs is planning to offer custody services for cryptocurrency funds
07: Swapping one cryptocurrency for another on the Lightning Network & A reminder that Bitcoin doesn’t need banks, ETFs or commissions & Hal Finney on each day Bitcoin doesn’t collapse & The DEA admits bitcoin speculators, not drug dealers, dominate cryptocurrency now
08: A hardware wallet pencil cup holder & A Yale study says every portfolio should include at least 6% bitcoin
09: From the year 2100 to 2140 one bitcoin will be mined in total & Another bitcoin street art piece in Paris receives $1k in donations
10: Bitcoin core developer Cory Fields helps avoid a chain-split in another cryptocurrency & 3265 days of Bitcoin development visualised in 7 minutes & A presidential candidate of Brazil wants to make bitcoin a legal currency & bitcoin.de activates SegWit late, but still before blockchain.com
11: Bitcoin passes 50% market cap dominance again
12: Bitmain recently sold most of their bitcoin
13: Bitcoin is in the National Museum of American History in Washington D.C. & Advice for people returning to Bitcoin from altcoins
14: Square Cash opens bitcoin trading in 50 US states & Lightning Makers is a community of Lightning Network applications
15: Progress on Bitcoin Core 0.17 & The Coinbase CEO thinks more countries will get economic crises leading to cryptocurrency adoption
16: USAA bank sends out an informational article on cryptocurrencies to its 12 million customers & Zap’s 0.2.1 Lightning Network Desktop beta app is released & A new version of Eclair’s Lightning testnet wallet for Android is released
17: The Bitcoin network is supported by 3x the mining power it had at the start of the year
18: The Federal Court in the United States now collects cryptocurrency for bail
19: A large amount of currently unidentified miners emerge & How struggling fiat currencies lead to bitcoin adoption in the long term
20: A bunch of people have been unable to get their bitcoins back from localbitcoins after being scammed with bank transfers
21: SegWit adoption is now at 45% of all bitcoin transactions & The amount of channels on the Lightning Network grows by 45% in 1 month
22: A company does catering for Coinbase and receives Coinbases’ first ever cryptocurrency payment for a service & A Bitcoin app receives 47% of all its traffic from Venezuela
23: The SEC disapproved Bitcoin ETFs because unidentifiable participants can influence the market
24: Everyone who lost money in the MtGox hack has to file their claims again
25: A discussion about bitcoin with a smart kid & Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian on why he is betting on bitcoin
26: A deep-dive into Bitmain’s mining chip business & A taxi in Tallinn accepting bitcoin & Bitcoin is both a payment network and a currency & BIP158 gets merged which allows the Lightning network to support light clients like mobile phones
27: A summary of what happened in the Lightning Network space
28: The hashrate on the Bitcoin network increases by 35% in 2 days
29: Bitmain-owned mining pool BTC.com is celebrating SegWit and the Lightning Network as scaling solutions
30: Venezuelans keep increasingly using localbitcoins as the government forces banks to use their national cryptocurrency and people who leave the country get their accounts frozen
31: An investigation on the moving of ~$1B worth of bitcoins related to a Silk Road wallet