Most major coins are in the green, while the crypto market marked this week with upward momentum and a total market cap of over $130 billion.
After last week's fluctuations, Bitcoin has once again passed the $3,900 resistance, and the numbers are looking good for the leading cryptocurrency on the charts.
Bitcoin, as to this moment, has a weekly price growth of 1.20 percent.
With a strong resistance ahead, it's difficult to predict whether Bitcoin will continue with the price increase in the following days, or will fail to break through the resistance levels and undergo a pullback.
Ethereum shows moderate growth compared to last week but is currently standing below the $140 price point.
However, the coin still firmly holds onto the second place on the market, pushing down Ripple's XRP that did not have the best week nor month, and saw poorer gains compared to the rest of the major altcoins.
The market upsurge was in fact led by Litecoin (LTC), after the coin reached $55.57, which is a price last seen in October 2018.
Litecoin is currently the fifth largest coin on the market, falling down one place on the chart, even though marked the past seven days with a growth of over 20 percent in price.
Crypto Miner Coinhive Shutting down This Week
In a blog post published late February, Coinhive announced that they would be shutting down their crypto mining services.
The complete shutdown is happening this week, and according to Coinhive, the reason why they decided on this step is that their work isn't economically viable anymore, as this market is currently unprofitable, especially after Monero's price fall.
The operations will be terminated on March 8, but crypto miners will still be able to open Coinhive's dashboard, at least until the end of April.
Coinhive is a cryptocurrency miner that has made the headlines many times for its abuse by cybercriminals that used it as a vehicle for Monero cryptojacking.
It was also used by the torrenting website The Pirate Bay on a few occasions. Back in 2017, news emerged that they added the plugin miner on their homage to generate revenue.
Their users noticed the miner after seeing that their CPU increased when visiting certain webpages on The Pirate Bay.
Ex-Cop Jailed for Selling Fake IDs for Bitcoin & $3.3 Million Fraud
James Goris, a former police officer in Victoria, Australia, was recently jailed for selling forged IDs on AlphaBay, a now-defunct darknet market.
Goris, also known under his username PirateDeadpool, also offered fake police badges and wallets, among other things, and his dark web customers paid him in Bitcoin.
After the police raided Goris' home, they found out that not only was he a dark web vendor, but he also conned a 92-year-old man to take his $3.3 million share portfolio.
After leaving the police force, Goris was briefly working for a stock transfer company, where he first came into contact with his victim, the 92-year-old Kenneth Holt, who was a client there.
Holt had been saving money throughout his life but wasn't aware that his shares rose up to more than $3.3 million over time.
Goris calculated the scam with great detail, and when the authorities raided his home, they found maps of Holt's home, as well as lists on what Goris would have spent the money on.
Goris pleaded guilty on more counts, including fraud, using fake documents and being in possession of child exploitation material, which was discovered in his house by the authorities.
For the crimes he committed, he was sentenced to four years and will serve a minimum of two and a half years in jail.
Crypto Money Laundering in Japan on the Rise
Illegal use of cryptocurrency in Japan is on the rise. The Japanese National Police agency recently reported that the number of suspected money laundering cases that were connected to cryptocurrencies was 7,096. That's 10 times higher compared to the numbers recorded the previous year.
The transactions that the Japanese police traced were looking suspicious mostly because some were using the same ID photo, despite the different names and addresses. The transactions were often linked to dark web purchases or extortion.
Older reports indicate that from January to October 2018, there were almost 6,000 cases of possible cryptocurrency money laundering.
In 2017, the number of such cases between April and December was only 669.
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That's it for our summary of this week's major crypto news headlines. This is the 36th post in our crypto news series. Catch up on the latest installments here:
