Cryptocurrency & Mining - Page 12

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.

It looks like we're going to have another player in the cryptocurrency hardware market, with a new ASIC miner from... Intel... called Bonanza Mine.

Don't worry this isn't an early April Fools Day joke, but rumor has it Intel will be unveiling a new ASIC miner at the upcoming International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC 2022) event between February 20-24. On February 23 @ 7AM PST, Intel will host a live presentation called "Bonanza Mine: An Ultra-Low-Voltage Energy-Efficient Bitcoin Mining ASIC".

Intel's new "Bonanza Mine" Bitcoin ASIC miner will reportedly offer low power consumption, while packing some hopefully very impressive performance mining Bitcoin. If we see Intel play its cards right, we might see Team Blue competing with ASIC mining giant Bitmain who is a huge customer of TSMC.

A cryptocurrency scam is entwining a famous Hollywood star, and professional athlete as both have been accused of pumping up a coin and dumping it.

According to a new court filing with the California federal court, Kim Kardashian, Floyd Mayweather Jr, and former NBA player Paul Pierce are being accused of playing a role in the sharp rise and fall of the cryptocurrency called EthereumMax. The lawsuit has claimed that the aforementioned individuals artificially inflated the price of the cryptocurrency that was then purchased by investors. The lawsuit also claims that investors were encouraged to purchase the asset with false information.

Kim Kardashian posted about EthereumMax in June 2021, saying to her 250 million Instagram followers, "Are you guys into crypto?? This is not financial advice but sharing what my friends just told me about the Ethereum Max token! A few minutes ago, Ethereum Max burned 400 trillion tokens-literally 50% of their admin wallet, giving back to the entire E-Max community."

In September 2021, El Salvador announced that Bitcoin (BTC) and the US dollar were now recognized as legal tender throughout the nation, marking the very first county to accept BTC as a legal currency.

Since the adoption of Bitcoin, El Salvador has been purchasing large swaths of Bitcoin and making announcements of its purchases. A goal of adopting Bitcoin was to offer digital banking to millions of individuals in El Salvador that are unbanked or don't currently hold a bank account. El Salvador's government partnered with digital identity provider Netki to create the BTC wallet Chivo that has now onboarded more than 4 million new users, according to a recent announcement.

As an incentive for people to start using Bitcoin as a currency, the government rolled out a $30 airdrop in BTC to anyone using the Chivo wallet. The announcement claims that the rollout of the new BTC wallet has onboarded 70% of the previously unbanked population throughout El Salvador, and now BTC is being used regularly to pay for meals at restaurants, shopping, and retail stores. If you are interested in reading more about this story, check out this link here.

One of the world's most recognizable cryptocurrency exchanges, Crypto.com, has announced it has been hacked.

Crypto.com took to its official Twitter account to announce that it has noticed some of its users reporting "suspicious activity" on their accounts, some users reported that coins were missing from their wallets. In response to these reports from users, Crypto.com decided it was best to pause all withdrawals across its entire platform, which prevents hacker(s) from moving stolen assets off the platform into other accounts. The hack announcement marks the first cryptocurrency exchange hacking of 2022.

The exchange followed up with another tweet that stated, "all funds are safe" and that the hack is being treated with an "abundance of caution". In response, Crypto.com wrote that "security on all accounts is being enhanced," which will require users to sign back into the Crypto.com app and exchange, and reset their two-factor authentication. Once these steps are complete, withdrawals will be re-enabled across the platform.

The Metaverse is being eyed by many companies around the world, and now one very well-known company has announced its plans to join.

According to a report from CNBC, Walmart filed several trademarks application with the US Patent and Trademark Office in December 2021 that state an intention for the company to sell virtual merchandise. One of the trademark applications states that Walmart intends to sell various virtual goods that fall under the following categories; electronics, appliances, apparel, home goods, toys, and personal care products.

Notably, another filing shows that Walmart is interested in creating its own cryptocurrency payment system as well as developing its own collection of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). According to trademark attorney Josh Gerben, who spoke to Business Insider, the language that is used throughout the trademark filings shows "there's a lot of planning going on behind the scenes about how they're going to address cryptocurrency".

According to the chairman of the Federal Reserve, the central banking system is "ready" to release its report on cryptocurrency.

Jim Powell dropped the news regarding the upcoming report during his re-nomination testimony that was held in front of the Central Banking Committee on Tuesday. Powell was asked about the status of the upcoming report by Idaho Senator Mike Crapo, and the Fed chairman replied by saying, "The report really is ready to go".

Powell has previously said that the Federal Reserve is looking into the possibility of creating its own digital dollar, following China launching its own digital yuan. Based on these and other previous statements from the Fed chair, it can be assumed that the report will focus on Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC) and touch on several other issues in cryptocurrency. If you are interested in reading more about this story, check out this link here.

One of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world just announced a nearly company-wide shutdown as it believes its employees are in need of a break.

Coinbase's chief people officer L.J Brock took to the company blog to announce that "nearly the entire company will shut down" in an effort to give employees time to recharge their batteries after completing long periods with intense workloads. Brock states that Coinbase employees aren't specifically limited to a 40-hour workweek and that depending on the progress timeline for the work, employees may have to "pivot at a moment's notice", which can risk employees burning out.

Brock writes that Coinbase is aware that during 2020 many of its employees were taking time off from work because they either didn't want to ask fellow employees to cover their shift or because they were afraid they would fall behind their work. To combat this, Coinbase implemented a single "recharge week" at the end of 2020 and two recharge weeks at the end of 2021. Now, the company plans on having "four weeks of coordinated recharge time" that will save employees from burnout.

In the first deal of its kind, American non-profit news agency The Associated Press (AP) will tap the growing NFT market to fund future journalistic endeavors.

Leading news firm AP plans to launch a new NFT marketplace on January 31 where it will sell cryptographically-signed versions of its award-winning photographs. The AP's vast library of photographs chronicle 175 years of American and world history, and the NFT collection will include both contemporary images of modern life as well as photos detailing historic events.

The AP's new photo NFTs will cover topics like space, war, climate, and worldwide developments complete with robust metadata details. "Each NFT will include a rich set of original metadata offering collectors awareness of the time, date, location, equipment and technical settings used for the shot," reads the press release.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) recently completed all major deployments, and now the Webb team is sitting in some well-deserved breathing room.

NASA recently took to its blog to announce that the Webb team is moving forward with aligning all 18 of the observatory's iconic gold-coated mirrors, a process that will take around 5 months to complete. At the same time, the Webb team will be preparing the extremely sensitive instruments that will then relay the first batch of images back to Earth in the summer of 2022.

Now that Webb is approaching its destination and is moving into the new phase of its process of unfolding to operational capabilities, some individuals are wondering how long the life of Webb will be. Bill Ochs, the Webb project manager, told reporters in a livestream that Webb's lifespan depends on the amount of propellant the observatory has.

PayPal has made a very interesting announcement regarding the cryptocurrency space and how the company plans on moving towards adopting it.

PayPal is no stranger to the cryptocurrency industry as the company approved trading of cryptocurrency to all its users on its platform back in 2020. This change allowed for US PayPal users to complete transactions with cryptocurrency while also allowing users to purchase cryptocurrencies on select exchanges.

Now, PayPal's General Manager of Blockchain, Crypto, and Digital Currencies, Jose Fernandez da Ponte, has indicated to Bloomberg that the company is considering releasing its own stablecoin. Engadget reports that a software developer Steve Moser discovered code and images for a "PayPal Coin" and gave it to Bloomberg.

Imagine your Tesla Model 3 electric vehicle sitting in your driveway not being used -- so what better way do make some money, than to mine cryptocurrency from your Tesla -- might as well, right?

That's just what Siraj Raval did with his flashy Tesla Model 3 vehicle, using an Apple Mac mini M1 system with some discrete GPUs, which are unknown at this point, but it would be a few discrete GPUs at the very least as Raval is making around $800 per month. Raval is aware that mining cryptocurrency from his Model 3 voids Tesla's warranty, too.

The price of Ethereum hit a peak towards the end of 2021, which is when Rajal said he was making $800 per month mining from his Tesla Model 3, with Bitcoin miner Alejandro de la Torre adding: "The main component is the price of the electricity. If it's cheaper doing it through an electric vehicle, then so be it". As for the crypto mining power of the Model 3, Tesla hacker and crypto miner Thomas Sohmers said: "The best estimate I would have for the hashrate for the GPU in the Model 3 would be around 7-10 MH/s. Currently, at 10 MH/s, that would generate revenue of about $13.38 worth of ether, before any expenses. The difficulty is so high...I could make more money working at McDonald's".

Disney is taking some steps towards adopting the Metaverse as the company has been approved for a patent that creates new attractions at Disney theme parks.

According to the patent that was approved on December 28, 2021, Disney is moving towards developing new technology that will track visitors to its theme parks and then generate personalized 3D effects onto physical spaces located near the individual. This new technology doesn't require virtual reality (VR) or augmented reality (AR) headsets, and when created, it will be a major step towards Disney's own Metaverse.

The technology that Disney has patented is for a "virtual-world simulator in a real-world venue". Disney has previously expressed its interest in the Metaverse as the company's CEO Bob Chapek stated during a November 2021 earnings call that Disney is preparing to bring physical and digital assets more closely together, which will allow for "storytelling without boundaries in our own Disney Metaverse."

On January 5, the price of Bitcoin (BTC) dove by around 7%, and now reports indicate that the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange has bought the dip.

Back in 2019, Binance took to its official Twitter account to announce a new wallet initially intended to be used to issue new crypto-pegged tokens onto the Binance Smart Chain, beginning with BTCB and BEP2 pegged to Bitcoin. However, it seems that the wallet address has turned into one of Binance's cold storage wallets as all it does is continue to accumulate Bitcoin around the $40,000 mark.

On Tuesday this week, the above wallet address purchased 43,000 BTC at the average price of $46,553.68, which has raised the total number of BTC contained in the wallet to 121,396 BTC, worth about $5 billion. CoinTelegraph reports that the wallet address is referred to as "Binance BTC reserve wallet address", and has never sold any Bitcoin since its creation.

The price of Bitcoin (BTC) has taken a sharp dive after reports surfaced about the Kazakh government shutting down the country's internet access.

A new report from CoinTelegraph states that Kazakhstan, the second-largest country in the world in Bitcoin mining hashrate has recently switched off its internet access following political unrest in the country. Kazakhstan's previous cabinet exited office, but before leaving, the state-owned Kazakhtelecom turned off the internet access to the country, which then caused BTC network activity to fall to 2% of daily highs.

According to data acquired by YCharts.com, in the following hours after the shutdown, the total Bitcoin mining hashrate across the country dove 13.4%, taking the hashrate from around 205,000 petahash per second (PH/s) to 177,330 PH/s. In total, Kazakhstan accounts for 18% of the total Bitcoin mining hashrate. So, what sparked the internet shutdown? According to CoinTelegraph, in the days before the shutdown, the previous Kazakh cabinet removed the price caps on liquid petroleum, and as a result, the price doubled in 24 hours, which caused protesters to hit the streets.

Quentin Tarantino, an American filmmaker, film director, screenwriter, producer, film critic, and actor, has announced that he will be auctioning off "Pulp Fiction" NFTs.

In November 2021, film director Quentin Tarantino announced that he would be releasing NFTs based on his hit film "Pulp Fiction". The announcement was met with some backlash by film studio Miramax as it filed a suit against Tarantino that claims the director doesn't have the right to produce and sell digital items. Now, Tarantino is moving forward with the auctioning of the NFTs despite the suit from Miramax.

Miramax claims that Tarantino doesn't have the right to create and sell digital collections based on Pulp Fiction and that by doing so, Tarantino is allegedly breaching the terms of a contract; copyright infringement, trademark infringement, and unfair competition, per Decrypt. Despite the suit, Tarantino's legal team believes that the director isn't violating any previous contractual agreements, as the 1993 agreement with Miramax states that Tarantino maintains the right to commercialize reproductions of the Pulp Fiction script.

Samsung has unveiled its new 2022 series TVs with fresh new models in their Micro-LED, Neo QLED, and The Frame families of TVs but there's something that stands out.

The company has revealed that its new smart TVs have a new "NFT Aggregation Platform" that will let owners of the NFT-capable TVs buy NFTs (non-fungible tokens) directly from their TV, preview their new NFT art, and then have it displayed on their TV as digital artwork. The TV and its app will let people see other details including who made the art, as well as the required blockchain metadata.

If you already own NFTs or start building your collection of NFTs you'll be able to showcase them on the TV, while Samsung notes that it has "Smart Calibration" technology that adjusts the settings on your TV to match the specifications that the original creator envisioned, to ensure that you're getting the NFT rendered on the TV as faithfully to the original art as possible.

Over the New Year holidays, the NFT space has been hit with ups and downs as millions of dollars worth of digital collections have been stolen while celebrities continue their adoption.

According to a report from Decrypt, Ozzy Osbourne has announced via his official Twitter account that he is releasing his own collection of NFTs. The singer, songwriter, and television personality announced the launch of "CryptoBatz" which will include 9,666 unique bats that are designed by Osbourne. Along with the NFT announcement, Osbourne directed everyone to the new CryptoBatz Discord server, where interested buyers will be able to get into the pre-sale.

In some not-so-positive NFT news, NFT collector Todd Kramer tweeted that 15 Bored Ape and Mutant Ape Yacht Club NFTs had been stolen from him by a hacker worth around $2.2 million. Kramer described the realization of what had happened as "arguably the worst night of my life".

GameStop is getting into NFTs, and plans to open an dex (decentralized exchange) on the Ethereum blockchain. Now it's recruiting creators to help fill its digital store shelves.

In a bid to pivot into emerging million-dollar digital trends, GameStop is delving headlong into the new NFT blockchain craze. The company will launch an NFT marketplace in the hopes of making royalties and revenues on peer-to-peer art/content exchanges. There's just one problem: GameStop doesn't have anything to sell just yet.

Now the ailing retailer has opened up a submissions and sign-up page on its NFT marketplace page. GameStop wants to recruit NFT creators so it has something to peddle in its marketplace. The sign-up page is pretty straightforward and asks basic questions like "why do you want to make NFTs for our platform?" and requires links to previously-created content. It's a vetting process that could see only a handful of NFT creators getting the opportunity to sell their content on the new market.