December was a very positive month for Bitcoin with exciting news all over.

What the monthly news is about:
Each day, usually around the same time, I pick out the most popular/relevant/interesting stories in r/bitcoin and save them, after which I release them in one batch after the month ended. This gives you a quick (but not necessarily the best) overview of what happened in bitcoin over the past month.

A recap of Bitcoin in December 2016

01: Huiyin Group launches a $20M Bitcoin fund
02: National currencies with a smaller market cap than Bitcoin
03: Venezuela’s cash issues are leading to Bitcoin adoption
04: Vietnam to legitimise and regulate Bitcoin businesses & ViaBTC’s transaction accelerator test results & The Bitcoin Lightning spec part 1/8
05: Discussions on CPU backdoors and security & How scaling might work if the 1MB blocksize never changed
06: Coinbase hits 5 million accounts & A German university accepts bitcoin for tuition
07: Circle stops buying and selling bitcoin & Peter Todd’s research on securing fintech with Bitcoin
08: Satoshi invented the Lightning Network for Bitcoin as a feature from the start & Blockchain.info allows you to buy bitcoin from your wallet in 34 European countries
09: Andreessen Horowitz and Union Square Ventures invest $10M in new digital assets hedge fund
10: Bitcoin usage in India rises by 240% on BitGo
11: Not all post-2011 Satoshi appearance has been debunked
12: The bitcoin price is at its highest in 1040 days & New Bitcoin users should learn about security and backups & Venezuela takes its smallest cash bills out of circulation
13: Former Barclays CEO joins Blockchain.info & OpenBazaar raises $3M & Kraken (exchange) acquires Glidera (wallet funding service) & BitPay’s volume is up 1800% in 2016 due to affiliate networks
14: Coinbase files to block the IRS from accessing their clients data
15: r/bitcoin is part of research on Reddit vote manipulation & Roger Ver donates $25000 to free Ross Ulbricht & Antpool is mining a large number of empty blocks & NTumbleBit, an anonymous tumbler, is alive
16: Overstock begins trading its stock via the Bitcoin Blockchain & A story of someone using Bitcoin in the Philippines
17: The Lightning Network spec draft is open for community feedback & Part 2 of an explainer on TumbleBit
18: The blockchain size reaches 100GB & Ideas to help Venezuela use Bitcoin & A Bitcoin purchase receipt from the Swiss National Railway
19: A Ukrainian exchange launches new futures contract on the index of Bitcoin
20: A very pro-bitcoin US congressman becomes head of the US Office of Management and budget & A German fund manager with $5B in assets adds €2.5M in Bitcoin to its portfolio
21: Asset management funds are contacting miners to buy large amounts of bitcoin
22: Bitcoin breaches its all-time high market cap at $14B & A book predicting Bitcoin in 1997 & An idea to try to get a Google doodle about Bitcoin on Genesis day
23: Bitcoin is on the frontpage of the biggest German finance portal as the price hits $900
24: Bitcoin on CNBC & A reminder that Tim Draper is making a lot of money off the auctioned Silk Road coins & Travel booking platform Destinia exclusively accepts bitcoin for Venezuela operations
25: The new US Budget Director is a Bitcoin supporter & Bitcoin is on the front page of Reddit & Someone found al old wallet file from 2011
26: Bitcoin at the top of Investing.com & ckpool start signaling for SegWit
27: Bitcoin surpasses a $15B market cap & Bitcoin may be worth it as the main currency in these countries
28: You can get jailed in India for possessing more than 10 old notes
29: Accepting Bitcoin is the #1 most requested new feature for Airbnb & People are becoming afraid to go to bed because they’ll miss Bitcoin hitting $1k
30: Satoshi’s lesson: You don’t need to be the next Einstein to change the world, you need to put in the effort
31: Bitcoin support coming to Microsoft Office 365 & Bitcoin is once again the best performing currency of the year

Thank you to everyone who is contributing to this exciting space!