 Bitcoin is approaching 9K, and it's been a pretty interesting week. Telegram and the Kremlin's crosshairs. Christine Lagarde makes a U-turn on crypto. Kraken pulls out of Japan. And Cambridge Analytica wanted to release its own coin? Here is your overview of the week! Traditional institutions now have more reason to fear the power of Bitcoin. Pavel Durav, founder of Telegram, said he will spend $1 million in Bitcoin on grants for proxy services and VPN developers. After Russia's communications watchdog blocked 18 million IP addresses, while aggressively trying to block the messaging app, their efforts were futile. Telegram is still operational in Russia, even experiencing an uptick in users. And unrelated services were affected, including Google and Amazon cloud services, even a Kremlin-friendly radio station. Durav is as bullish on Bitcoin as he is on privacy. We promised our users 100% privacy and would rather cease to exist than violate this promise. The Telegram ICO raised $1.7 billion earlier this year. The Kremlin's secret service hinted that fear of a Telegram cryptocurrency was the real reason behind the block. Christine Lagarde, head of IMF, is rethinking cryptocurrencies. Previously, she talked about fighting fire with fire. Now, she believes cryptocurrencies can coexist alongside traditional banks. Lagarde, Bitcoin could revolutionize the global financial system and make it safer, cheaper, and faster, despite inevitable accidents. But still no word as of yet. Is she a hodler or a no-coiner? Crypto Exchange Kraken ranked 10th. Tentatively took their tentacles from Japan because doing tentacle business there is costing too much. Suspending tentacle services for Japan residents will allow us to better focus on our resources to improve in other geographical areas. Kraken hasn't ruled out returning and truly would be welcomed back with open arms. Cambridge Analytica, the recently-discraced data company, attempted to issue its own crypto this year and hold an ICO. The company was hoping to raise as much as $30 million through the venture, which would let people store and sell their personal data. Cambridge Analytica also quietly promoted Dragoncoin, a digital currency aimed at casino players, by doing things like arranging for potential investors to take a vacation to Chinese gambling capital, Macau. The coin was supported by a Macau gangster, Wan Ku Kui, aka Broken Tooth. What could go wrong? Plans to launch their own coin were shelved following the Facebook data scandal. Pornhub now accepts Verge, a privacy-focused cryptocurrency. Pornhub is not the first adult site to accept cryptocurrency, but it's the 32nd largest website in the world, which legitimizes not just the coin, but the crypto industry as a whole. Pornhub users can take advantage of the anonymity tools not available when dealing in fiat. Verge is an open-source project that leverages Tor, which hides your IP address by encrypting your traffic and bouncing it through a chain of computers around the world. Online payments, video streaming, VR. This was no different when Pornhub started accepting Verge. It was only a matter of time before everyone else caught on. The future had finally come. And the anonymity is not 100% even if you connect it through Tor, because when you eventually cash those coins in, people can track you. Surprisingly, the price of Verge went down after this news. Performance issues many Pornhub users can relate to. Bitcoin might be coming to Amazon, but not on the way that you might want. They have acquired a patent for a data streaming service. Amazon imagines that the data marketplace has a wide range of applications, but we are only interested in applications related to crypto, so let's cut to that. Amazon said, for example, a law enforcement agency may be a customer and may desire to receive global Bitcoin transactions correlated by country with ISP data to determine source IP addresses and shipping addresses that correlate to Bitcoin addresses. This appears to go against the principles behind Bitcoin. It's a centralized model that gives Amazon a lot of power. We say, no thanks. Thanks for watching. What do you think was the most important news of the week? Answer in the comments. And don't forget to like, subscribe, and hodl.