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The cryptocurrency market rebounded after dropping below $344 billion, losing over $100 billion within the past week. Although major cryptocurrencies like Ethereum have recorded gains over the past 24 hours, most cryptocurrencies have started to fall again. Bitcoin’s Volatility On March 10, bitcoin, Ethereum, and other major cryptocurrencies recorded over 10 percent in daily gains,

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This article originally appeared on Bitcoin Magazine.

Banks in Finland are turning down business with a large Nordic cryptocurrency exchange. Prasos, based in Finland, has now had four bank accounts closed and is now dependent on just one account. The platform exchanges cryptocurrencies for euros and relies upon banks for its service, but they’re becoming increasingly wary due to uncertainty regarding the

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• "Pharma bro" Martin Shkreli was sentenced to seven years in prison for securities fraud on Friday.
• Shkreli is best known for raising the price of a decades-old drug by more than 5,000%. But Shkreli's actions didn't exist in a vacuum.
• Since outrage started pouring in around Shkreli's actions, the debate around how much people pay for their medication has taken a lot of twists and turns — and also gotten more nuanced —  but we still haven't seen any lasting solutions. 

Martin Shkreli became a household name in 2015  — and the face of everything that is wrong with prescription drug prices. 

As CEO of a tiny company called Turing Pharmaceuticals, Shkreli raised the price of a drug used to treat a parasitic infection by more than 5,000%. His unapologetic attitude earned him the nickname "pharma bro" and drew the fury of politicians and the public alike. 

It was a totally unrelated matter — securities fraud stemming from his time running a hedge fund — that landed Shkreli in jail. On Friday, he was sentenced to seven years in prison, but he was so notorious over the price gouging that it was hard to find an impartial jury. One potential juror reportedly indicated to the judge that he wanted to punch Shkreli in the face.

While the pharma bro everyone loves to hate is likely to drop out of the public eye for a while, what he set in motion has erupted into a years-long discussion about why people are facing high drug prices when they get to the pharmacy counter.

Mostly though, Shkreli's sentencing is a good time to remind ourselves that, for all the talking, and the few steps that have been taken to curb runaway drug prices, nearly nothing has changed. And it's not just pharma bros with tiny drug companies who can still hike prices by 5000%. Massive drugmakers can do it too.

From rarely used drugs to increases on medications in many Americans' houses

The outrage sparked by Shkreli and others, like Valeant Pharmaceuticals, was over drugs that were highly unlikely to be in your medicine cabinet. 

Shkreli's drug, called Daraprim, is used to treat toxoplasmosis, a common infection that can become a problem for pregnant women and people whose immune systems are weaker. Others were used in hospitals, or for rare diseases where the price increase was only felt by a select group of people. 

But at that point, Shkreli was the villain we needed to get the conversation started. Once we were talking about it — in the press and in Congress — the problems became easier to spot. 

The next outrage was over the continuously rising price of the EpiPen, a device used in emergency situations when people (many of them children) have allergic reactions. The drug increased from a list price for two injectors costing $93.88 in 2007 to $608.61 in 2016.  

Beyond the 'list price' 

Somewhere in the course of those EpiPen discussions, the complexity of the pharmaceutical supply chain started to become clear. Mylan, in the hopes of explaining EpiPen's price, created a graphic to break out all the parts of the healthcare system that get a piece of the sale.

At the end of the day, Mylan argued, even though it priced its EpiPens at $608.61, the company collected less than half that.

Up until this point, the conversation had centered around the list price, or the price set by drugmakers before accounting for rebates and discounts. It is the most publicly available number, but it doesn't reflect what most people pay. That's determined by their insurance company's deals with the drugmaker and the flow of rebates that are paid out to middlemen.

The graphic brought these middlemen of the pharmaceutical supply chain — including pharmacy benefit managers and the work they do to negotiate lower drug prices — into the conversation.

Drug companies readily picked up the argument, publishing the average net prices they receive for medications, arguing that while it may look like list prices are increasing by a lot, there's more to the story. 

"I have never met, in this entire experience, a PBM or a payer outside of the Medicaid segment that preferred a price of $50,000 over $75,000 and a rebate back to them," Gilead executive vice president of worldwide commercial operations Jim Meyers said in an interview with Bloomberg News in March 2017. 

The finger-pointing was inevitably returned by PBMs, and on and on. 

Drug prices are still high (and rising)

Daraprim, the EpiPen, and other drugs that have been called out for price hikes haven't had to change their list prices. At a national level, apart from hearings, not much has been set in motion to curb the high prices patients are facing for their medications. The list prices of two insulins  — a drug that's been around for decades — has even increased. 

There are some things in the works: from new generic competition, to plans to help people with high deductible health plans get rebates that would get them closer to a net price. And states have picked up the mantle of taking on the industry. Companies have started self-policing themselves as well, pledging to only raise prices by a certain percent a year. 

And FDA commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb also has the healthcare industry in his crosshairs when it comes to high prices. Speaking at a policy conference hosted by America's Health Insurance Plans on Wednesday, the lobby that represents health insurers, Gottlieb called out the practices insurers and pharmaceutical middlemen use that keep prices high for patients.

"We're living in a world where financial toxicity is a real concern for patients. And every member of the drug supply chain needs to take responsibility for addressing it," Gottlieb said. 

Shkreli may have been the villain we needed in 2015 to get the drug-pricing conversation started. In 2018, it's going to take something much more than that. 

SEE ALSO: 'Pharma bro' Martin Shkreli has been sentenced to 7 years in prison

DON'T MISS: The world's biggest drugmaker pulled back the curtain on drug pricing

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While it does not recognize bitcoin as a payment tool, China recognizes that digital currency is inevitable and is in no hurry to regulate cryptocurrencies, according to Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the country’s central bank, the People’s Bank of China (PBoC). The central bank official gave his views on digital currency during a press conference

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• CEO of low-cost fitness chain Pure Gym says it plans to reach 500 sites across the UK.
• The chain currently has 200 gyms and 1 million members.
• CEO says international expansion also highly likely.

LONDON — Low-cost gym chain Pure Gym plans to more than double its number of sites in the UK over the next decade, according to its CEO.

Speaking to Business Insider at the Retail Week Live conference in London this week, Humphrey Cobbold said: "I think we can get, with both the large format and the small format, towards 500 sites in the UK."

Pure Gym charges just £20 a month and doesn't lock people into long contracts. Founded in 2009, it currently has 200 sites across the UK and 1 million members.

The chain will pass 500 sites in "five, six, seven years — that sort of time," Cobbold said. "I’m not too focused on time frame, I’m more focused on quality. I could open 50 sites next year, no problem, but half of them will be duds. You just can’t find that many good ones in that time period."

The majority of Pure Gyms are in major towns and cities but Cobbold said the company is trialling new small format gyms to cater to less populated areas of the UK.

"We can’t open a gym on our old model in places like Salisbury, or Lemington, or Thirsk, or places like that because there are people there but not enough people to fill a gym that needs 5,000 people," he said.

Pure Gym was sold to US private equity house Leonard Green last year in a deal reportedly worth £600 million. Cobbold said the owners were supportive of the expansion strategy and added that Pure Gym is likely to go overseas at some point in the future.

"We think we’re building a great business and we’ve got great process, systems, and capabilities behind the front of the business and at some stage, we’ll come to look at whether we should deploy that overseas," he said. "The value fitness proposition is definitely finding application in most markets in the world."

Cobbold said Pure Gym had not identified specific markets for overseas expansion yet, saying: "I’ve done enough headline work to know there’s a model that would work in other geographies but we haven’t done the proper profiling."

The chain's expansion plans come despite signs of a serious consumer slowdown in the UK. Retailers Toys R Us and Maplin both recently went bust and restaurant chains Prezzo and Jamie's Italian have been closing down stores.

Cobbold said: "This business was born and bred in a recession — we opened our first gym in November 2009 and the gyms took off like a rocket right from the early days. There’s a counter cyclical history to the business.

He added: "There’s good evidence from the past recessions that people are going to tend to trade down rather than trade out of the market and we’re very well positioned given there are still 2.4 million members of mid-market gyms and about 3 million members of public sector leisure centre gyms, all of whom are paying on average between £30 and £45 a month."

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