• A friend pointed out that The Guardian relinked to my story on Huobi and the CEOs personal bank account.
• Last week Wired ran a story about BTCChina and the various regulations that are quickly rearranging the marketplace in China.  They quote one of my friends, Scott Freeman, who I interviewed for my book (disclosure: I do not own any equity in any exchange).
• There is a big discussion now on reddit about Huobi removing the option to deposit fiat through the bank account of the CEO.  My only comment is I have not heard or seen anything about indictments/arrests/etc mentioned in subthreads there.  Thus the rumors on that thread about prosecution/lawsuits are most likely just FUD.
• On a few other reddit and BTCTalk threads there are comments by people saying how Alibaba-owned sites still have cryptocurrency-related wares available and this somehow disproves the new rule passed down by Taobao.  Again, the new rule (Chinese) won’t go into effect until January 14th.  Furthermore (and this is my own speculation) even if all of the wares listings are not purged immediately, that does not mean you should rely on these ecommerce sites for your business model in the face of such rules.  At best it is a short-term solution, part of the cat-and-mouse game.
• Tech In Asia has a good year-end summary of events in China regarding Bitcoin noting that “smaller sites such as Bitfash and IWannaBuy still accept Bitcoins, even for payments.”  TIA also does a pretty good job breaking Asian-related cryptocurrency news and hasn’t fallen into permabull mode.

My last comment regarding all of the news is one of caution.  Do your own due diligence before investing in a particular asset.  And remember, despite what a bull (or bear) might contend are blue skies and lollipops, there are many risks that could swing price levels around, quickly.  Caveat emptor.