Cryptocurrency & Mining News - Page 10

Russia is making a move to accept Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as a form of payment following harsh international sanctions placed on the nation.

The news comes from Denis Manturov, Minister of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation, who recently spoke at an event called New Horizon, where he explained that Russia is planning on legalizing Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to bolster its economy. Notably, Manturov said that the question is "when it will happen" it's "how it will happen and how will it be regulated". Furthermore, the Russian official said that both the Russian government and Central Bank are on board with the adoption.

Despite Russia's clear motivation toward adopting Bitcoin, the Bank of Russia recently pushed for a complete ban on cryptocurrencies, citing it could undermine the Russian financial system. It seems that tune has been changed since the harsh international sanctions have crippled Russia's economy, with Russia's President Vladimir Putin pleading with financial regulators to come to an agreement on how digital currencies should be regulated.

The future of Bitcoin as a payment network was questioned by FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, who recently criticized many aspects of the digital currency.

The founder and CEO of FTX, which often goes by his initials as SBF, said that Bitcoin has very little future as a payments network due to its inefficiency and high environmental costs associated with its proof of work algorithm. The 30-year-old billionaire went on to say that the BTC network isn't capable of handling thousands/millions of transactions-per-second (TPS), but also mentioned that BTC can be transferred over a layer two protocol such as Lightning.

However, Bankman-Fried also took to Twitter to clarify that criticisms weren't all that he said, as he mentioned that Bitcoin could have a potential future in becoming a store of value. If that were to become Bitcoin's future, the digital currency would change from being viewed as a currency to an asset, similar to how gold is viewed.

A YouTuber has been caught in the middle of a largescale market wipeout where billions of dollars were lost, leaving many investors hamstrung.

YouTuber Olajide Olayinka Williams "JJ" Olatunji, or KSI, took to his "KSICrypto" Twitter account to reveal his investment in the cryptocurrency project LUNA. The YouTuber showcased a $2.8 million investment into Terra Luna, which last week began experiencing large amounts of sell-offs, causing the market cap of one of the top 10 cryptocurrencies in the world to fall from $40 billion in April to $1.6 billion as of May 16.

The value of LUNA dropped dramatically, one coin was worth nearly $100 on May 1, and on May 16, its worth 0.00023c. In the span of 24 hours, 99% of the value of LUNA was wiped away, causing many individuals, such as KSI, to be caught up in the bloodbath of red candles. Many individuals that were either holding LUNA before the crash, or decided to purchase it while it was crashing and weren't able to sell before it was too late have taken to Twitter and other social platforms to voice their losses.

As virtual reality increases in quality through development, it will undoubtedly bleed into other industries other than gaming.

Technology is currently emerging through the gaming industry, and while virtual reality games will no doubt be a very big part of culture in the years the come, the technology has wider applications. NASA has recognized the potential in the technology and has partnered with Fortnite creator Epic Games to issue a "challenge" for game developers.

NASA has challenged game developers to create virtual reality assets with Unreal Engine 5 that are based on Mars. Game developers won't be starting completely from scratch as the MarsXR environment already contains a vast "world" that spans hundreds of miles squared, features day/night cycles, realistic martian weather, gravity, spacesuits, vehicles, and other assets. Developers have the option of using the already supplied assets or adding in their own to create their Mars experiences.

A 25-year-old woman from Texas has claimed that a man she met on Tinder has scammed her out of the fortune left to her by her murdered father.

Divya Gadasalli has told Bloomberg that she received $8 million from her mother's estate following her father's murder in 2015. Gadasalli told the publication that she had fallen victim to a scam called "pig butchering", which involves a scammer emotionally manipulating victims into investing in cryptocurrency projects, the scammer showing the investment is gaining profits, then advises more money should be invested, then the project's account is locked away from the investor or drained entirely.

Gadasalli met Jerry Bulasa on Tinder, and began talking to him for several months. Throughout that time, Bulasa touted to Gadasalli that he was making lots of money through cryptocurrency investments, which Gadasalli said coincides with a time in her life when she was craving financial independence. Gadasalli said to Bloomberg that Bulasa told her she could become a financial hero to her family.

For the very first time in Louisville, Kentucky, a home has been purchased with Bitcoin, making local history in just eight seconds.

A report from The Courier reveals that up until February 2022, there was no record of Bitcoin being used to purchase real estate in the area and that the seller of the property was looking to liquidate several homes to invest in Bitcoin. The buyer contacted the seller and informed him that he was able to purchase the property in Bitcoin, which was later sold for $65,000, according to Ashley Brown, a real estate agent with Louisville-based Homepage Realty.

The buyer spoke to the publication and said, "I'm happy that I can help try and bring this technology to the future. There's so many uses for [Bitcoin], and I think we're at the very, very early stages of it. It'll be interesting to see where it goes." While commission fees, title fees, and recording fees were paid in US dollars, the actual purchase of the property was made through a direct transfer of Bitcoin from one wallet to another, taking about eight seconds to complete and a small fee of $0.70 cents versus a traditional fee of $25-$30.

The world's most popular cryptocurrency is continuing its downtrend in price and has now reached lows that haven't been seen since January 2022.

In late March, Bitcoin recovered in price, hitting just over the $48,000 mark, and maintained the $45,000 to $47,000 range for the first few days of April before it fell off a cliff on April 6 and began a downtrend that brought the price to below $40,000 by April 11. For the majority of April, Bitcoin maintained a side-ways but overall trickling downward trend that has eventuated into a massive sell-off on May 8 that caused the price to plummet to $33,000.

Glassnode, a blockchain data and intelligence provider generating innovative on-chain metrics, published some bearish indicators that may have influenced the now-falling price of Bitcoin. A recent Twitter post on Glassnode Alerts suggests that any Bitcoin whales holding at least 1,000 coins may be leaving the market in preparation for a further decrease in Bitcoin's price.

The Humanity 2.0 Foundation has signed a strategic partnership with Sensorium, a metaverse developer.

The new public-private partnership aims to bring the Vatican's heritage into the digital world by creating a VR and NFT gallery for content from the Vatican. Humanity 2.0 is a non-profit "Vatican-affiliated organization." According to a Sensorium spokesperson corresponding with VICE's Motherboard, "it would be correct to say that the Vatican is entering the metaverse and the world of NFTs."

"To give you more context, the Vatican plans to bring its heritage - manuscripts, masterpieces, and academic initiatives - into the metaverse with the goal to make them more accessible to people across the world (some who might never be able to visit the Vatican in person)," the spokesperson wrote to Motherboard.

On Saturday, a new NFT collection launched, and due to the demand for the project, the Ethereum blockchain broke.

The new NFT collection comes from famed developers Yuga Labs, known for creating the extremely popular Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT project. Yuga Labs released a new NFT collection that featured 100,000 land deeds for the upcoming Bored Ape metaverse called "Otherside". With Bored Ape's being the most popular NFTs, the land deed drop from Yuga Labs was expected to have high interest, but very quickly, the developers and users attempting to purchase the land plots learned that there was very high demand on the Ethereum blockchain.

Users attempting to purchase the land plots were met with exorbitant gas fees, which caused many users to be forced into paying thousands in failed transactions. Notably, CNET reports that the Ethereum network was "unstable for hours" following the launch of the NFT collection, and Yuga Labs even took to its Twitter account to announce that the developers "we're sorry for turning off the lights on Ethereum for a while".

Famed investor Warren Buffet has taken another shot at the world's most popular cryptocurrency, Bitcoin.

The 91-year-old investor spoke with Charlie Munger, another famed investor that has openly spoken out about his distaste for Bitcoin, at Berkshire Hathaway's annual shareholder meeting on Saturday. Buffet said that even if all of the Bitcoin on the planet was offered to him at a price of $25 dollars, he wouldn't buy it. The same sentiments were echoed by Munger, who described the cryptocurrency as "stupid", "evil," and something that causes its owners to "look bad".

Buffet explained that he won't get involved in Bitcoin because the cryptocurrency doesn't produce anything, and its value is purely determined by someone willing to purchase the cryptocurrency at a higher price. Furthermore, Buffet said that instead of purchasing Bitcoin, he would prefer to invest in the US's farmland or housing in the form of apartments. Both Buffet and Munger have previously voiced their distaste for Bitcoin, with Munger even describing the cryptocurrency as a "venereal disease".