$BTC (1:30 PM EST): $16,636.00 (27.66%)

90-day high: $16,923.80 // 90-day low: $3,260.70 // More… $BCH (1:31 PM EST): $1,343.50 (-9.0073%)

90-day high: $2,050.08// 90-day low: $275.90 // More…

$ETH (1:31 PM EST): $427.44 (-2.90%)

90-day high: $516.85// 90-day low: $198.72 // More…

$LTC (1:32 PM EST): $94.68 (-7.13%)

90-day high: $103.48// 90-day low: $37.87 // More…

The price of bitcoin soared over $18,000 per coin on Thursday before retreating to just below $17,000 in the latest swing of wild volatility. The exact price of bitcoin, though, has been tough to gauge as exchanges have reported wildly different prices. In some cases those differences are more than $2,000 apart. On Coinbase's GDAX exchange, for example, the price of bitcoin traded above $18,400.00 earlier today. This value represents a significant premium over the price reported on Bitfinex, where bitcoin traded at $15,531. On the other hand, exchanges in South Korea have seen prices over $19,000. -COINDESK

More than $70 million in bitcoin was stolen from NiceHash, a cryptocurrency mining company in Slovenia. NiceHash, which mines bitcoins on behalf of customers, said it is investigating the security breach. It will stop operating for 24 hours and encouraged users to change their online passwords. Andrej P. Škraba, head of marketing at NiceHash, said approximately 4,700 bitcoins were missing from the company’s wallet. He added that it “was a professional attack” but did not give any more details. -TIME

A release candidate for version 1.0 of the Lightning Network protocol has been completed. The Lightning Network would serve as a second level network built on top of the blockchain, acting as an off-chain payment layer that could theoretically speed up transactions. Lightning Labs, along with Blockstream and ACINQ, developed the specifications of the network. They will now look for peer feedback and reviews for final speculations from the higher development community before issuing a final release. -COINSPEAKER

A growing number of ethereum users have voiced their anger at the game CryptoKitties for slowing down the network. Coindesk reported there was a record-breaking 30,000 transactions stuck and waiting to be processed thanks, in part, to the cat breeding game which has consumed more than 20 percent of the network’s bandwidth. Users have called on developers to increase the “gas limit,” a metric that puts a cap on the number of transactions and smart contracts that can happen across the network. "The miners raising the block gas limit is the only short-term solution against our new feline overlords for now,” said Christian Reitwiessner, an Ethereum Foundation engineer. -COINDESK

The gaming platform Steam will no longer accept bitcoin, the company announced Wednesday. Steam said it could no longer support the virtual concern because of its high fees and volatility. "The value of bitcoin is only guaranteed for a certain period of time so if the transaction doesn't complete within that window of time, then the amount of bitcoin needed to cover the transaction can change," Steam said. "The amount it can change has been increasing recently to a point where it can be significantly different." Steam averages about 33 million different users per month. -CNBC