Cryptocurrency & Mining News - Page 1

Scams come in all different shapes and sizes, but one technique is particularly frightening and that's called "pig butchering," which involves an individual spending a long time developing a relationship with their victim only to eventually present them with a "business" opportunity that ruins them financially.

It's perhaps one of the cruellest forms of scamming someone as it involves developing trust with a person through a perceived genuine relationship. Unbeknownst to the victim, that trust is then shattered after the scammer runs away with their money. 53-year-old Shan Hanes, former CEO of Heartland Tri-State Bank in Elkhart, Kanas fell for this type of scam and has been sentenced to 24 years in prison for illegally wiring $47.1 million that led to the collapse of the bank.

The eleven transactions that Hanes made between May and July 2023 resulted in investors of the bank losing $9 million, which forced the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to absorb the $47 million loss and seize the bank. Some customers of the bank lost nearly all of their retirement funds, which funnily enough was also Hanes, who lost all of his embezzlement money.

An Airbnb host has been forced to change the rules of her property, after guests stayed for a few weeks and set up their crypto-mining rigs where they reportedly made $100,000+ while racking up a $1500 electricity bill for the Airbnb host.

Ashley, the Airbnb host, posted a video to her personal TikTok (above) to explain "the weirdest Airbnb rule I had to implement as a host". The guests rolled in their crypto-mining equipment into the house, set it all up, racked up a $1500 electricity bill, but left the house "perfectly clean" and a 5-star review after their 3-week stay.

Once Ashley received the $1500 electricity bill, she checked the external security cameras she has setup around her property, seeing multiple people taking at least 10 computers with them as they were leaving the Airbnb. Ashley said that the crypto-miners made over $100,000 mining cryptocurrency, but personally, I don't see how only 10 systems and $1500 of electricity usage would see the miners making $100,000. That seems absurd.

New on-chain data indicates the United States government has moved more than $2 billion worth of Bitcoin to an unidentified wallet.

The new on-chain data was shared by Arkham Intelligence and comes only a few days after former US President Donald Trump spoke at the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville, Tennesse, where he said that if he was reelected, the US government would not sell any of its currently held Bitcoin, which amounts to as much as $15 billion worth, or approximately 203,000 Bitcoins.

Additionally, Trump said that he was going to make the US the "crypto capital of the world" by implementing several policies that support cryptocurrency. Furthermore, Senator Cynthia Lummis announced the introduction of new legislation that proposes that the US government purchase 5% of the total circulating supply of Bitcoin to hold it as a strategic asset. The proposal was compared to the 1803 purchase from the French for $15 million for the American Midwest by the US government.

Defunct cryptocurrency exchange FTX, which was headed by the now-convicted Sam Bankman-Fried, has said that it will have more than enough money to pay back all of its customers.

In March 2024, Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), the co-founder of FTX, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for defrauding customers and investors with the investment firm. FTX entered into a Chapter 11 bankruptcy plan after the firm collapsed in November 2022. The result was SBF being arrested and John J. Ray III, an attorney who specializes in recovering funds from failed corporations, being brought on as chief executive of FTX.

Ray has since said that he is pleased the company is now in a position to "propose a Chapter 11 plan that contemplates the return of 100% of bankruptcy claim amounts plus interest for non-governmental creditors". Notably, the plan will still have to be approved by a US bankruptcy court, and FTX is currently still in the process of recovering all lost funds with no date on completion being mentioned in reports.

A group of FTX investors agreed to drop charges against the disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) in exchange for his devout cooperation in gathering information on celebrities who took money from FTX to endorse the company.

SBF's cooperation will reduce his civil liabilities, which are plenty, and come after his 25-year prison sentence, where he was found guilty on seven counts of fraud, embezzlement, and criminal conspiracy. Now, FTX investors are looking for as much information as SBF can provide on the seemingly long list of celebrities who took money from FTX to promote the brand. Celebrities such as Tom Brady, Larry David, Steph Curry, Shaquille O'Neal, and supermodel Gisele Bundchen immediately come to mind, but there are undoubtedly others that have been initially forgotten.

Notably, SBF isn't the only one that is rolling on celebrities as other former FTX officials like Nishad Singh, Gary Wang, and Caroline Ellison, former girlfriend of SBF, have also all agreed to cooperate with prosecutors and provide any information they can, which they reportedly already have begun to.

Entering the digital future, I have had the chance to explore BioMatrix's cutting-edge blockchain platform. As a technology enthusiast, the idea of the Proof of You (PoY) token caught my attention at first, especially with its pledge to "distribute wealth in a fair and equitable manner."

The selling point of the PoY token is that it is not just a digital asset, but it is an integral part of the company's Universal Basic Income (UBI) distribution strategy, which is designed to connect the user's biological identity to blockchain technology - an important development that could help bridge financial divides around the world.

At its recent launch in Dubai, the BioMatrix platform showcased its potential to redefine the UBI landscape. Like many other secure platforms, BioMatrix is built with user empowerment in mind, and leverages advanced AI and blockchain technology to facilitate its ecosystem growth and expansion. However, the key difference that sets BioMatrix apart from other UBI platforms is using newer cryptography solutions like Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKP) to protect user privacy and security.

Uh-oh... it's starting again... AMD's current-gen Ryzen 9 7950X processor has become a super-popular CPU for crypto mining, earning higher profits than some of the fastest GPUs on the market.

Our friends at Wccftech are reporting that because of the rise of Bitcoin pricing, CPUs are being used for crypto mining, whereas Qubic (QBIC), crypto miners are using CPUs that have AVX2 and AVX512 instructions on the Zen 4 architecture, which are great for crypto mining. Intel dropped AVX512 support for its processors, starting with Alder Lake, seeing crypto miners flocking to Ryzen 7000 series processors.

AMD processors were used for Raptoreum mining algorithms, using the huge L3 cache on Ryzen and Threadripper CPUs. 3D V-Cache models featured gigantic pools of cache stacked on the chips, perfect for crypto mining. Qubic (QBIC) coins generate a profit of around $3 per 24 hours, including the electricity cost of running a Ryzen 9 7950X processor, even at 170W of power consumption.

After years of waiting, the price of Bitcoin hit a new all-time high, pushing just above $70,000 before it quickly recorrected by 5%.

It was November 2021 when Bitcoin hit its previous all-time high, capping out at $69,000 before the world's most valuable cryptocurrency entered into a bear market of price recorrection. That bear market has seemingly come to its end as the price of BTC has been on the rise since November 2022, steadily increasing all throughout 2023 and now reaching its new all-time high of $70,184.

CNBC reports the upswing in price began when the US stock market opened, which can be traced back to the introduction of spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds in the US. On Tuesday, BTC pushed to its previous highs, and once it got there, the cryptocurrency quickly tumbled back down by as much as 10%, which resulted in many other cryptocurrency coins coming down with it. However, those losses were then regained the next day, eventually leading to the new all-time high.

Well, we're seeing some interesting use of the PlayStation 5 APU... in the form of the AMD BC-250 crypto mining card that has just hit eBay. Check them out:

ASRock has a crazy mining system that cost $15,000 when it was released, packing 12 x AMD BC-250 crypto mining cards in a kitted-out mining chassis. Each of the BC-250 crypto mining cards features the Ariel/Oberon processors that have Zen 2 CPUs and RDNA 2 GPUs, which make up the APU or SoC inside of Sony's current-gen PlayStation 5 console.

However, these BC-250 chips are not fully functioning, as they have partially disabled graphics that were also retro-fitted into the AMD 4700S desktop kit. At the time, the ASRock 12 x GPU mining system was pumping away at 610MH/s on both ETHASH and ETC. That wasn't bad at the time, with $2 per day per GPU.

Binance is in a world of trouble right now, with Binance founder Changpeng Zhao pleading guilty to money laundering and agreeing to resign from the company.

Not only that, but Zhao will pay a $50 million fine and will be barred from any involvement in the Binance business. As for Binance, the company pleaded guilty, accenting the appointment of a monitor and a criminal fine of close to $1.81 billion, and a $2.51 billion order of forfeiture to settle not one but three criminal charges.

The US Justice Department charged Binance, which is the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, with conducting an unlicensed money transmitting business, a conspiracy charge, and violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.