A new report released by the Bank of Russia indicates that the central bank is advocating for a blanket ban on cryptocurrency trading and mining.

Russia's central bank argues that cryptocurrency investments is a danger to the financial system that millions of Russian's use. Additionally, the report goes on to push that financial institutions and commercial banks should sever themselves from cryptocurrency and be prevented from allowing transfers of fiat into cryptocurrency.

The Bank of Russia didn't stop at cryptocurrency trading and investing, it also took aim at cryptocurrency mining, stating that it should be prohibited. The report cites energy concerns for cryptocurrency mining, and currency Russia is the third-largest country for cryptocurrency mining when it comes to global hash rate distribution. At the moment, cryptocurrency remains legal in Russia, but it seems that the Bank of Russia won't stop pushing until its banned.

Digital assets are making a slow climb into everyday life as more people adopt cryptocurrencies in various forms.

Cryptocurrency platform Voyager Digital published the first annual Crypto Confidence Survey that found 61% of individuals that participated in the survey are likely to purchase some form of cryptocurrency throughout 2022. The results from this most recent survey have increased substantially when compared to 2021's survey that found 27% of Americans planned on investing in cryptocurrency throughout 2021.

The survey also found that individuals would prioritize purchasing cryptocurrencies over traveling on a plane, purchasing a new car, buying a house, or even starting a romantic relationship. Additionally, 66% of survey participants indicated that cryptocurrency should be taught in schools and be a part of the educational system. 33% of participants believe that cryptocurrency educated should begin in middle school.

The co-founder of Reddit has predicted that in five years, 90% of people won't play games unless they are paid for it.

The Reddit co-founder Alex Ohanian appeared on the "Where It Happens" podcast, where he said that 90% of people won't play a game "unless they are being properly valued for that time". Ohanian continued and predicted that in five years, people will have their time "valued properly", and that instead of people playing games as they are now and their data being harvested for advertisements, the people will become the harvesters as they are rewarded for spending their time.

Ohanian predicted that 90% of gamers will be playing some Play-to-Earn game on the blockchain that will reward players with in-game items, perhaps in the form of loot or tokens that have intrinsic value in the real-world. Depending on the game being played, these tokens or items could then be traded for cryptocurrency stable coins that are pegged to the value of the US dollar, for example - USDC.

One lucky miner received a very handsome reward for participating in a relatively small Ethereum mining pool.

The miner was using the 2Miners: Solo pool on January 17 when they were awarded with 168 Ethereum (ETH) for successfully mining one block. Cointelegraph reports that the average reward for successfully mining one block is around 4 ETH, or about $11,965. The miner was using a pool that has around 854 miners online pushing 1.5 Tera hashes per second, which equals out to each miner putting forward 1.85 Giga hashes per second of GPU power.

Despite these jackpot rewards from mining blocks, average daily Ethereum profitability has been on a decline since May 12, 2021 as the all-time high peaked at $0.282 and is now around $0.0474, according to BitInfoCharts. The reason for this decline, in part, is because of EIP-1559 which burns fees instead of distributing them out to miners.

AMD has launched its new Navi 24 GPU with barely a whimper, powering the new Radeon RX 6500 XT -- of which I'll have my review up soon, my card only arrived a few hours ago -- and now an AMD staffer has cleared up how the company will be deploying its Navi 24 GPU.

AMD Linux NPI SW Architect John Bridgman explains: "The primary use of Navi 24 will be in laptops paired with a Rembrandt APU, which has full video functionality and Gen4 PCIe. My impression was that it was just encode that was limited in Navi 24, not decode - still not sure if that limitation is real or just a typo on the product page. Trying to find out a definitive answer".

The reason Bridgman addressed the video functionality on Navi 24 is that the GPU itself doesn't support H264/265/AV1 encoding -- which is a big deal, something all Navi 24 GPUs -- the workstation-focused GPUs in the PRO W6400, W6500M, and W6300M, and the new W6400.

AMD has officially launched its new low-end workstation GPU with the introduction of the Radeon PRO W6400, which is based on the Navi 24 GPU and packs 4GB of GDDR6 memory.

The new AMD Radeon PRO W6400 workstation GPU is based on the Navi 24 GPU which is made on the 6nm TSMC process node, the first in workstation GPU on 6nm, with 4GB of GDDR6 on a 64-bit memory bus. The Navi 24 GPU has 768 Stream Processors, so you won't be taking this into your work at Pixar and booting up your dailies, but the Radeon PRO W6400 is here.

AMD is only providing 4 x PCIe 4.0 lanes wired to the GPU, even though the Radeon PRO W6400 workstation card arrives with a full-sized PCIe 4.0 slot. The new Navi 24-based Radeon PRO W6400 workstation GPU slots under the higher-end Apple Max exclusive Radeon PRO W6000X series -- as well as the Navi 21-powered W6800, Navi 23-based W6600, and Navi 24-based W6400 -- the new Navi 24 GPU skips over the Navi 22, which we might eventually see later in the year.

Nearly 18 months ago now I wrote a news article titled "TSMC is so ahead of the game, Samsung might not catch up until 2030" and yeah... well, it will be 2030 before Samsung can catch up to TSMC and its dominant foundry business.

A new report from DigiTimes and their industry insiders said that Samsung will be mass-producing 4nm chips for Qualcomm, and will be getting into a better position to fight TSMC as we lead into 2030... some 8 years from now. Samsung recently announced a rather gigantic $151 billion investment into its chip manufacturing business through to 2030.

The DigiTimes report said: "Samsung Electronics recently announced its wafer foundry now serves over 100 customers. Based on current conditions, the wafer foundry market in 2022 looks to be just as hot as it was in 2021. As a result, the South Korean industry is optimistic about Samsung's wafer foundry, which is about to enter a full-scale growth stage. However, Samsung is still relatively new to the automotive and AI chip fields".

Microsoft's CEO of Gaming Phil Spencer confirms Call of Duty will not be Xbox exclusive any time soon and will still come to PlayStation systems.

Following a long day of debating on COD's exclusivity, Xbox gaming boss Phil Spencer finally delivers the verdict: Call of Duty will remain on PS4 and PS5.

"Had good calls this week with leaders at Sony. I confirmed our intent to honor all existing agreements upon acquisition of Activision Blizzard and our desire to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation. Sony is an important part of our industry, and we value our relationship," Spencer said on Twitter.

Microsoft's rich coffers are paying for its $68.7 billion Activision-Blizzard buyout, but Sony only has a fraction of that to spend on acquisitions.

Following Microsoft's huge Activision-Blizzard buyout, now is a good time to remind everyone about Sony's current trajectory. Sony's board of directors and shareholders have authorized the expenditure of only 2 trillion yen, or $18 billion USD, for strategic investments across a three year period. This is part of Sony's Fourth Mid-Range plan that lasts until FY23.

The spending plan includes buyouts and acquisitions of video game, entertainment, and software companies, as well as share buyback repurchases and capital investments in companies like Epic Games. To date, Sony has already spent an estimated $6 billion on share repurchases, leaving approximately $12 billion left for buyouts. This is a stark contrast to Microsoft's net cash offer for Activision-Blizzard that equates to nearly $69 billion.

Is Call of Duty now exclusive to Xbox? Will the franchise sill come to PlayStation? How long is Activision's marketing deal with Sony? These are major questions that will determine the future of Call of Duty, Microsoft, Activision, and Sony.

Everyone wants to know whether or not Call of Duty is coming to PlayStation consoles after Microsoft buys Activision-Blizzard. Why spend $68.7 billion to release games on a competing platform? Money, for one--Call of Duty is a thunderous success on PlayStation hardware, and Sony has shipped over 116 million PS4s to date. That kind of install base mixed with powerhouse game sales equals lots of revenue.

But there's a chance Microsoft could keep Call of Duty off of PlayStation platforms in an effort to push Game Pass subscriptions. Quality content is a compelling reason to buy a subscription. Exclusive content is a better one.