Bitcoin prices surge, Spotify and Tencent swap investments and Apple fixes a HomeKit vulnerability. All that and more in The Daily Crunch for December 8, 2017.

1. Why is bitcoin's price so high?

Bitcoin's price has risen stratospherically — but why? And is it going to come crashing down again?

The primary theory put forward by investors on social media is that bitcoin will soon benefit from big institutional money injections thanks to the introduction of the first BTC futures products.

2. Coinbase hits top spot on Apple's US App Store despite struggling to handle bitcoin demand

Speaking of which: There's no greater sign of bitcoin fever than the fact that Coinbase — an app that lets you buy the cryptocurrency — has become the most downloaded app in the App Store.

3. Spotify and Tencent agree to swap stakes in their music businesses

Tencent Music Entertainment (TME), the Chinese firm's subsidiary that manages its music streaming and karaoke services, will make an undisclosed minority investment in Spotify through new shares, while Spotify will buy a similar undisclosed stake in TME.

4. Uber lands investment from Singapore's largest taxi operator in blow to rival Grab

Uber has struck a major deal in Southeast Asia after ComfortDelGro, Singapore's largest taxi operator, agreed to buy a majority share of the ride-hailing giant's Singapore-based car rental business.

5. Apple issues fix for HomeKit vulnerability impacting smart locks and other devices

The fix appears to be a server-side update, meaning that the end-user doesn't have to update anything for it to take effect.

6. San Francisco made things much tougher for robotic delivery startups this week

In a five-to-one vote, the committee handed down some strict regulations on delivery robots, which have been piloted on city sidewalks over the past several months.

7. Meet "Genies", the lifelike personalized avatars that reenact news

"We plan on making Bitmoji obsolete." Well, we'll see.