Cryptocurrency & Mining

Samsung Foundry has reportedly secured two Chinese cryptocurrency mining equipment manufacturers as customers for its new 2nm GAA process, to make new crypto-mining hardware.

In a new report from Korean media outlet Hankyung, Chinese crypto mining equipment manufacturers -- MicroBT and Canaan -- will reportedly have their new chips fabbed by Samsung Foundry on its new 2nm GAA node. MicroBT and Canaan are the world's second and third largest crypto mining equipment manufacturers, only behind Bitmain which has its new mining chips being fabbed on TSMC's new 2nm node.

Bitmain and Apple were two of TSMC's first customers for its bleeding-edge 2nm node, but its competitors have chosen Samsung Foundry and its new 2nm GAA process node, so this will be a great comparison of performance, yields, efficiency, and more once they all start hitting the market.

The US Treasury Department has revealed it has sanctioned eight North Korean individuals, along with two entities that are linked to cybercrime networks responsible for the theft of millions of dollars of cryptocurrency.

According to the Treasury Department, North Korean cybercrime operations have amounted to as much as $3 billion worth of cryptocurrency being stolen from banks, cryptocurrency exchanges, and other digital platforms, all of which have been funneled back into the North Korean government to fund the development of its nuclear weapons program.

US officials have sanctioned Jang Kuk Chol and Ho Jong Son, who assisted in the management of $5.3 million in cryptocurrency that is connected to ransomware attacks and revenue from North Korean hackers. Furthermore, US officials have also sanctioned an IT firm called Korea Mangyongdae Computer Technology Corp., which runs IT worker delegations in China and uses local proxies to hide the source of stolen funds.

Bitcoin has just reached a new record all-time high price of $125,700, while gold is trading at over $3880 per ounce, as the USD is on track for the "worst year since 1973" says an analyst.

The world's most popular cryptocurrency, Bitcoin (BTC), has had a tremendous rally in the last few months, with Trading View reporting that the value of Bitcoin has been driven by macroeconomic factors, including the recent US government shutdown, according to Fabian Dori, the chief investment officer at global digital asset bank Sygnum.

The US government shutdown started last Wednesday, closing down the operations of regulatory agencies and bureaucracies entirely, or partially forcing them to operate on a barebones budget, as well as minimal staff. In an article from CoinTelegraph, which reported on Nova Dius President Nate Geraci who posted on X saying: "Bitcoin hits new all-time high... and most people still don't even know what Bitcoin is", yet we're staring at $125,000+ USD for a single Bitcoin.

The world record holder for the highest IQ has announced he has converted all his assets into Bitcoin, as he expects the digital currency to become the world's "ultimate reserve asset."

YoungHoon Kim is the self-proclaimed world record holder for the highest IQ ever recorded, with a claimed IQ score of 276. Kim's assertion that he has the highest IQ ever recorded is far from widely accepted in the scientific community, and additionally, the figure of 276 exceeds that of standard psychometric scales, which typically see a reduction in reliability past the 160-200 range. Furthermore, VICE, along with other outlets, found some difficulty in verifying Kim's claims, and many major psychologists and high-IQ communities have dismissed the stat as implausible.

Despite the criticisms about his claim, organizations such as the GIGA Society and the United Sigma Intelligence Association have backed Kim's claims. It's worth noting that Kim assisted in the founding of the United Sigma Association. Kim predicts there will be a 100x increase in the price of Bitcoin over the next 10 years, which far exceeds financial firms, which typically predict a rise of between 5 and 20 times.

Users of the cryptocurrency browser extension MetaMask have confirmed what some users are reporting, unusually high disk writing that has been tracked to 5 MB/s, which works out to just shy of 500GB of data per day (432GB to be exact).

That cryptocurrency extension is MetaMask, quite a popular browser extension that is typically used for some off-the-beaten-track cryptocurrencies that aren't on popular exchanges. The response from Consensys, the creators of MetaMask, comes after GitHub users discovered a critical bug within MetaMask after installing the extension on a fresh install of a Chromium-based browser.

According to reports, the bug results in the extension writing 5 MB/s continuously in the background, even if the user is logged out of the app. Notably, SSDs don't live forever, and while most are extremely well built, they still have a lifespan, and that lifespan is determined by how much data is written to the drive. Reading does impact the lifespan, but not as much as writing.

College students are set to pit their sperm against each other in a speed race on a microscopic track, and while this may sound like a belated April Fool's Day joke, it isn't. There is real money behind the event, and it can even be gambled on.

The project is co-founded by Eric Zhu, Nick Small, Shane Fan, and Garrett Niconienko, who said the new form of competition encourages men to look at their health as a byproduct of increasing the performance of their sperm. The project has already attracted $1.5 million in seed funding from venture capital firms, including Figment Capital. So, how does it work? Well, pretty much how you are imagining in your head.

The competitors will have an hour to ejaculate into a cup, and the samples are then placed into a "microfluidic chip" that's designed to mimic the reproductive system and engage rheotaxis, which is the phenomenon when sperm swim against the flow of a fluid. Basically, the process starts their engines.

Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), the founder and former CEO of now-collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, has been thrown in solitary confinement over his recent Tucker Carlson interview.

A new report from The New York Times has revealed SBF has been placed into solitary confinement over his recent interview with Tucker Carlson as the US Bureau of Prisons didn't approve the interview of Prisons. According to the report, the US Bureau of Prisons is an agency within the US Department of Justice that is responsible for the administration of the federal prison system, and according to the recent report, SBF wasn't granted permission by the regulatory body to participate in an interview.

It appears the interview was conducted on Wednesday, a day before it was posted to social media platforms such as Rumble and X. SBF is currently serving a 25-year sentence for fraud after the collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX folded in 2022, and according to the Times report, SBF initiated the interview with Carlson in an attempt to secure a presidential pardon from Trump.

Cryptocurrency exchange Bybit was hacked on Friday last week, resulting in $1.5 billion worth of Ethereum being stolen, marking what is being reported as the largest cryptocurrency heist in history.

Bybit officials confirmed more than 400,000 Ethereum, along with staked Ethereum coins, were stolen from the cryptocurrency exchange on Friday last week, and now Bybit has announced a new bounty program to incentivize the public to track down the stolen funds.

According to the announcement, every time someone traces and freezes some of the stolen funds, 5% of the amount is transferred to the person who discovered the funds, and 5% goes to the "entity" that froze the funds, for a total of 10%. The program has already paid out $4.23 million in bounties to five bounty hunters.

Dubai-based cryptocurrency exchange Bybit was robbed on Friday last week of approximately $1.5 billion worth of cryptocurrency, and fingers are being pointed at North Korea.

Bybit officials confirmed the theft of more than 400,000 Ethereum, along with staked Ethereum coins, just hours after the theft took place. According to the disclosure by Bybit, the cryptocurrency coins were initially stored in a "Multisig Cold Wallet" but were then transferred out to an exchange hot wallet where they were then distributed out of the exchange altogether to wallets with unknown owners. Now, researchers at Elliptic, a blockchain analysis firm, has said the moves bear the calling cards of North Korean attackers who have reportedly already washed the funds.

So, how did this happen? Multisig Cold wallets are some of the most secure digital wallets available to cryptocurrency traders, as the idea behind the wallet is much like a nuclear missile launch that requires multiple people to engage. Just like the missile, the wallet requires two or more authorized persons to digitally sign before access can be granted. Immediately, speculation began on how the wallet was drained, with many pointing fingers at Safe, the company that provides the infrastructure hosting the cold wallet. However, Safe conducted an internal examination of its systems and found no traces of unauthorized access.

James Howells has been on a quest to recover his lost Bitcoin, which he claims is missing within a landfill site in Newport, Wales.

Howells' quest to recover the lost hard drive, which he says contains approximately 7,500 Bitcoins, worth approximately £586 million ($728 million USD) at the current time of reporting, has now resulted in the man offering to purchase the landfill site from the city council. The escape of events doesn't start there, though, as Howell has been trying to convince the Newport City Council to give him access to the landfill so he can begin sifting through the trash to look for the hard drive.

According to Howell, the hard drive's location has been pinpointed down to 100,000 tonnes of waste, which may sound large, but it's not as large as the landfills' approximate total capacity of 1.4 million metric tonnes. Howell has already been rejected by the city council for gaining access to the landfill, despite his promise to share 10% of the recovered Bitcoin with the city council if the drive is found. In response to the rejection, Howell filed a lawsuit against the Newport City Council, which was dismissed early last month as the judge ruled Howell had no reasonable grounds along with no realistic prospect of success at the trial.

Australian computer scientist Craig Wright falsely claimed he invented bitcoin and has been sentenced for contempt of court on Thursday for his 911 billion-pound ($1.2 trillion USD) lawsuit against Twitter founder Jack Dorsey's payments company, Block, in Britain.

Reuters reports that Wright has long claimed to be the author of a 2008 white paper which was the foundational text for Bitcoin, published under the pseudonym "Satoshi Nakamoto". A judge at London's High Court found that back in May 2024, Wright had repeatedly lied and forged documents to support his claim, after the trial of a case brought by the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) to stop Wright suing bitcoin developers.

COPA said that Wright's recent lawsuit against Block and others breached an injunction preventing Wright from bringing litigation on the basis of his claim to be the creator of bitcoin, or that he owned intellectual property (IP) rights over bitcoin. The group's lawyer Jonathan Hough told the court that Wright's latest lawsuit was "a desperate publicity stunt to keep his cultish supports engaged".

Bitcoin has finally officially reached the $100,000 mark, a celebratory milestone for all those who have been following the journey of the world's most valuable cryptocurrency.

The US$100,000 mark was hit on December 5, which is only a few weeks after Bitcoin smashed through the $90,000 psychology ceiling, spurring speculation that $100,000 was inbound - it appears that speculation was correct. At 3:08 am UTC, Bitcoin reached its all-time high of $104,000, which means it gained 125% since January and $31 billion in net inflows across spot exchange-traded funds in the US.

The increase can be attributed to Donald Trump's US presidential election victory, as speculation circulated that Trump will adopt BTC into the US national reserve, along with assisting in further integrating and legitimizing Bitcoin in the corporate space. Moreover, Trump recently appointed cryptocurrency advocate Paul Atkins to replace Gary Gensler as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chair, which sparked speculation that regulatory hurdles preventing the further adoption of cryptocurrencies will solved.

Bitcoin, the world's most valuable cryptocurrency, has surpassed its previous all-time high and is now closing in on the $100,000 mark.

The latest milestone of the world's most valuable digital currency was achieved after a 24-hour price rally that took the price of a single Bitcoin from $80,000 to $90,000. The price of Bitcoin broke through the $90,000 ceiling and quickly re-corrected back down to $87,000, where it's currently sitting at the time of writing. The rise of the price of Bitcoin has been occurring since President Trump was elected into office on November 5, gaining as much as 30% since the announcement was made.

According to reports, analysts are predicting the price of Bitcoin could reach as high as $100,000, but given the meteoric rise since Trump was elected, it appears the $100,000 mark will be exceeded. Additionally, the price of Bitcoin isn't the only cryptocurrency-related thing rising in value, as shares of the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase increased by approximately 75% to what is nearly a three-year high for the company.

Bitcoin has smashed through a new all-time record high price of $88,000+ after Donald Trump's victory in the 2024 US presidential elections, after his administration saying they'll be pro-crypto.

The world's biggest cryptocurrency has pumped over 25% in value since the November 5 elections, with Reuters also pointing out that Elon Musk's automotive side Tesla has seen its shares skyrocket by 40% after the elections, as Musk is joining the Trump administration and its DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency).

Nick Twidale, chief market analyst at ATFX Global in Sydney said: "Obviously (it's) a clear Trump trade as he is so supportive of the industry, and this can only mean more demand both for crypto stocks as well as the currencies themselves. The fact that bitcoin was trading near all-time highs when the election result came through meant that it had clean sky above".

Blockchain analysts flagged mysterious transactions that happened between Thursday and Friday last week after a hacker broke into a cryptocurrency wallet owned by the US government, stole funds, and then promptly returned them the next day.

The strange string of events has got cryptocurrency analysts and undoubtedly the departments at the US government scratching their heads, especially considering how high profile this theft was. It began on Thursday when pseudonymous blockchain sleuth ZachXBT highlighted transactions showing millions of dollars being moved out of US government-owned cryptocurrency wallets. In total, about $19.3 million worth of funds were returned to the wallet last Friday, which was in the form of Ethereum (ETH) and the stablecoin USDC.

Where did the funds come from? Reports indicate the US government seized millions of dollars in cryptocurrency two years ago following the infamous Bitfinex hack in 2016. Only an hour after the wallet received its funds back did more transactions start occurring, but this time in smaller quantities. According to reports, funds started being moved to a wallet address beginning with "0x0Ca." After a small amount of Ethereum was sent to this wallet, $6.1 million of ETH was transferred, which was then followed by another $11.6 million worth of aUSDC, a version of the stablecoin that includes interest.

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.