The US Department of Justice has dismissed the deferred criminal charges that have been hanging over HSBC since the bank was fined for money laundering and sanctions breaches five years ago, the FT reports. Under a five-year deferred prosecution agreement the US authorities could have reopened the criminal case if HSBC had repeated similar breaches. The Department could have extended the agreement (as it did twice with Standard Chartered). Cboe Global Markets have begun trading in bitcoin futures, ahead of rival CME Group, reports the FT. Bitcoin futures surged more than 20 per cent on their debut, forcing Cboe to halt trading twice due to "heavy traffic" on the website. The value of bitcoin rose more than 50 per cent last week along, to reach over US$17,000. Meanwhile, Reserve Bank of New Zealand acting governor Grant Spencer said over the weekend that bitcoin looks very like "a speculative bubble". The MoneyTaker group, a Russian-speaking gang of hackers, has pocketed US$10 million from 20 successful attacks on financial institutions and legal firms in the USA, UK and Russian, reports Finextra. The group primarily targeted card processing systems, and has so far gone unnoticed by constantly changing tools and tactics to bypass antivirus and other security solutions and by carefully covering their tracks after completing operations. Peer-to-peer consumer lending grew by 47 per cent in the UK over 2016 and P2P business lending by 36 per cent, according to new research reported by Finextra. The annual report from the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance shows the "alternative finance market" grew by 43 per cent over 2016 to reach £4.6 billion. As well as P2P lending, this includes a boom in invoice trading and crowdfunding. Finextra says that annual British Banking Association data implies that peer-to-peer business lending platforms now account for 15 per cent of all new loans lent to small businesses by all UK banks. Similarly, in 2016 equity-based crowdfunding accounted for 17.37 per cent of all seed and venture stage equity investment in the UK.