Cryptocurrency & Mining - Page 13

Ubisoft calls its new Tezo-based Quartz NFT platform "experimental," assuring gamers (and investors) that the initiative will evolve and change over time.

Ubisoft's toe-dip into NFTs has seemingly further damaged an already-tenuous relationship with gamers (first there was microtransactions, then the sexual harassment scandals heated things up, now its NFTs). The publisher is trying to establish a foot-hold in an emerging market in order to fulfill its promise to "become a leader in blockchain gaming." Things aren't going so well PR-wise, and the new Quartz NFTs are seen as a money-hungry cash-grab by gamers who already feel Ubisoft over-monetizes all of its core games.

So where does Ubisoft go from here? They learn and keep trying. At least that's what Ubisoft Blockchain Technical Director Didier Genevois says.

The NFT market has amassed a huge $22 billion in trading volume in 2021, analyst firm DappRadar reports.

A new report from DappRadar outlines the emerging NFT trends that've taken 2021 by storm. The firm estimates that NFT volume trading has hit $22 billion throughout 2021, with a market cap of $16.7 billion based on the top 100 NFT collections, including heavy-hitters like Bored Ape Yacht Club ($26.2 million), Beeple's renowned The First 5,000 Days ($69.3 million) and Human One ($29 million), and CryptoPunks ($37.17 million total).

The report succinctly outlines emerging trends in the blockchain gaming space, discussing play-to-earn and GameFi. Startups have raised over $4 billion in capital to fund play-to-earn blockchain games, including Animoca Brands, who received a hefty investment from Ubisoft (and who is also making a Bored Ape Yacht Club video game). Other play-to-earn proponents include Gala Games, who is publishing Peter Molyneux's new game Legacy with its minted land NFTs, and Certain Affinity's new FPS, which pledges to be the very first play-to-earn AAA shooter.

Twitch co-founder Justin Kan is launching an NFT trading marketplace called Fractal, and it's off to a rocky start.

Early adopters of Fractal have been scammed out of about $150,000 worth of Solana, and it's all because of a Discord vulnerability. Over 100,000 members have joined Fractal's Discord in anticipation for the first NFT mint airdrop. Hackers gained control of Fractal's admin account and put out a fake post telling everyone the NFT drop was happening, and they could mint if they linked their wallets.

The fake out only lasted about 10 minutes, but that was long enough. 373 people clicked the link (only 0.3% of the total userbase) which looked authentic but was actually FractaI, with an "I", and not Fractal with an "L". Users linked their accounts and clicked the mint button, losing a total of 800 SOL which amounts to $149,576 USD.

REV's Tai Lopez and Alex Mehr plan to use 100 years of brand recognition to bring the DeFi (decentralized finance) world of cryptocurrency to mainstream consumer markets.

In a shocking move, RadioShack, the once-dead electronics titan, is being resurrected to embrace today's latest tech trends. Instead of selling gizmos and circuits, the new RadioShack will help facilitate DeFi with a new crypto swap--nomenclature for a cryptocurrency exchange. It's pretty complicated and the company has put out detailed documents here.

RaioShack's swap protocol, or decentralized exchange (DEX), is backed by Atlas USV (which is also run by REV's Tai Lopez and Alex Mehr), which has liquidity from the Atlas Treasury, which runs on the Ethereum-based USV token. In essence, REV wants to make an exchange like Uniswap using RadioShack's brand name.

Indian restaurant "Voosh" is doing things a little differently in India -- where the country has the highest number of cryptocurrency investors in the world -- has adopted cryptocurrency-themed food items on its menu.

Since the company made the crypto-fueled move, they've seen nothing but massive success and a huge influx of orders. Voosh's hottest-selling product is their regular Indian tea, but with a fancier cryptocurrency-themed name of "Crypto Chai By Voosh".

Varun Agarwal, the co-founder of Alma Mater, posted a screenshot on her personal Instagram of Voosh's menu, saying: "Ah Bangalore, you beauty". Crypto enthusiasts are super enthusiastic about Voosh's moves, with over 100 million crypto investors in the country making India the hottest spot in the world for digital currency. The Indian government is regulating cryptocurrencies and a bill might be introduced in February 2022, not too far away now.

I noticed that my notifications on Twitter was blowing up a few hours ago, and it was over something called DogeBonk -- a meme coin that has a bigger bark than Dogecoin right now, beating Elon Musk's favorite cryptocurrency to the moon.

DogeBonk is now marketing itself as the first meme coin in space, beating Elon Musk putting a "literal Dogecoin on the literal moon". DogeBonk is being launched into space, which gives the marketing team at DogeBonk the ability to market their meme coin at beating Dogecoin to space.

The team tweeted, with what I'm sure was a huge smile on their faces: "Sorry Elon, but we beat Dogecoin as the first memecoin in space. Watch us prove it tomorrow on our stream. DogeBonk is the first crypto in space. Ain't too late to join us though, truce?"

I don't know how but Jaxson Davidson somehow has the keys to all of my crypto mining farms, and is showing them off on his personal Twitter account. Davidson has just started up his 4th -- yes 4th -- crypto mine and man is it beautiful.

Davidson has uploaded a tease of one of his crypto farms, where you can see hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of graphics cards -- all of them specifically NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3070 with 8GB of GDDR6 memory -- while his new building "will be all" of NVIDIA's new CMP 170HX cards.

The huge RTX 3070-powered crypto mining farm can be found in the Tonaquint Data Center, Inc. which is in Utah. It seems that Davidson has been using mostly NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition graphics cards -- you know, gaming-focused graphics cards and FE cards above that -- not AIB custom models, but rather directly from NVIDIA.

A big decision is about to be made by Russia, as the nation decides to accept cryptocurrency or ban it entirely.

A new report from Reuters revealed that the Central Bank of Russia is pushing for a ban on cryptocurrencies, as it believes it could cause financial instability with a large amount of transactions. This isn't the first move Russia has made against cryptocurrencies, as President Vladamir Putin recently stated during an investment forum that cryptocurrencies in general "bear high risks".

While Putin and the Central Bank of Russia have expressed their concerns about cryptocurrency, the chairman of the Duma, the Russian Parliament Committee on Financial Markets, has pushed for regulatory agencies such as the Federal Tax Service of Russia to tax transactions made on exchanges. Aksakov states that there is an approach that can be made towards legalizing these exchanges.

Traci and Dave Gagnon met back in October 2015 in virtual form inside of Dave's "virtual office" as an avatar, and fast forward just 6 years and the couple is the first to get married in the metaverse... while getting married in real-life.

The couple met in real life after meeting during their company's global convention -- the two work for a real estate brokerage -- and then started dating in March 2019. After 3 months of romance they were engaged, and then on September 4, 2021 the couple got married in a virtual chapel in the sky.

Traci told Insider that it was the CEO of the real estate company they worked for that floated the idea of a virtual wedding and getting married "in the cloud". A sister branch of the employer who creates virtual spaces stepped in, and provided the virtual world for the Gagnon's to get married in the metaverse.

Former first lady Melania Trump has announced her first non-fungible token (NFT) initiative, with proceeds from the NFT going to support children aging out of the foster care system.

The new NFT is called "Melania's Vision" and finds itself as digital artwork being sold for 1 unit of SOL cryptocurrency (worth around $180) and it also includes an audio recording from Melania. Melania's Vision and other anticipated NFTs will be released on MelaniaTrump.com exclusively.

Melania's Vision is an NFT of a watercolor done by artist Marc-Antoine Coulon which "embodies Mrs. Trump's cobalt blue eyes, providing the collector with an amulet to inspire". Melania Trump said in a statement: "I am proud to announce my new NFT endeavor, which embodies my passion for the arts, and will support my ongoing commitment to children through my Be Best initiative. Through this new technology-based platform, we will provide children computer science skills, including programming and software development, to thrive after they age out of the foster community".

NBA legend Michael Jordan and his son Jeffery Jordan have entered the cryptocurrency and NFT market with a new announcement.

According to a report from Decrypt, Michael Jordan and his son have co-founded a new company HEIR.inc that has created a platform that will allow devoted fans to connect with professional athletes. The platform will have feature an HEIR token and is built on the Solana blockchain.

Additionally, the platform will support NFT assets and also allow users to participate in an athlete's limited capacity "huddle" that will include exclusive benefits and features. HEIR.inc has already successfully received $10 million in seed funding, and according to the release, Thrive Captial led the funding round, which Solana Ventures, Reddit co-founder and Seven Seven Six founder Alexis Ohanian, Chicago Bulls player Lonzo Ball, and New York Knicks Executive Vice President William Wesley.

Coinbase has selected another famous face to represent its brand, according to reports about a new deal signed with an NBA superstar.

A new report from Bloomberg revealed that NBA superstar Kevin Durant has signed a multi-year deal with the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, which will now be running advertising and sponsored content on Durant's website "Boardroom".

As Bitcoin is struggling to maintain the $48,000 price range, the famous cryptocurrency has reached a major milestone in its history.

A report from CoinDesk states that Bitcoin's circulating supply has crossed the 18.89 million Bitcoin mark, which means that 90% of the total 21 million supply of Bitcoin has successfully been mined. It took 12.9 years to mine 90% of the total supply of BTC, with the first Bitcoins being mined on January 9, 2009.

According to the publication, it will take a staggering 112 years to mine the remaining 10%, with the estimated time frame for completion is sometime in February 2140. Bitcoin's value has been in a downwards trend ever since it reached its new all-time high of $69,000 back in November, and with the digital asset already down 30%, some are wondering if the range the coin is currently sitting at is the bottom. To find out more, check out the below link.

Spatial made a major announcement on Tuesday. The company has shifted its focus and made a significant pivot into the world of NFTs. The company was built to create a virtual collaboration space for enterprises that brought AR and VR users together. It has now abandoned that whole idea and is doubling down on NFTs to become one of the leaders in this immerging new space.

"User feedback has always been at the heart of our product strategy, but over the last year since we launched our freemium version across any platform, we've witnessed a fascinating shift occurring," Jacob Loewenstein, head of business at Spatial. "We've gone from an AR/VR platform focused on enterprise productivity to a web/VR platform linking digital creators and the broader NFT economy. Why? Because the metaverse will be far beyond a meeting space. We're witnessing this trend in the creator economy from the inside and can see the huge opportunity as power moves into the hands of these creators."

NFTs are not new to Spatial. The company started hosting art galleries and exposes for up-and-coming NFT artists earlier this year. Now, Spatial is shifting its entire focus towards digital artwork. Spatial is no longer focusing on VR and AR with this new direction. The company said that 80% of its users come from web browsers and mobile devices. Before Spatial started offering NFT art galleries, 80% of its users used headsets to access the platform.

Time Magazine has named SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk "Person of the Year", and throughout Musk's interview with Time, he outlined why he picks Dogecoin over Bitcoin.

The interview with Musk has been posted to the Time Magazine YouTube channel and begins with Musk being asked who he most admires, to which he explains that he admires anyone who is in pursuit of making a positive contribution to humanity. Time explains that Musk is incredibly influential, being the leader in two separate industries while also having nearly 70 million Twitter followers, he has the power to affect the price of cryptocurrencies at the push of a button.

Two of Musk's most-talked-about cryptocurrencies are Dogecoin and Bitcoin. During the interview, Musk outlines why he backs Dogecoin over Bitcoin, saying that Bitcoin is suitable for a store of value, but when it comes to transactional currency, Bitcoin isn't a good substitute, and this is due to Bitcoin having a high cost-per-transaction. Musk goes on to say that Dogecoin is a much better substitute for transactional currency due to Dogecoin having the capabilities of being able to support more transactions per day over Bitcoin.

The Bank of England has issued a statement saying that leading cryptocurrency bitcoin could become "worthless" and that anyone investing in bitcoin should be prepared to lose it all.

The warning from the Bank of England was delivered to its investors, questioning if there's any inherent worth in bitcoin. Bank of England deputy governor, Sir Jon Cunliffe, said that the Bank had to be prepared for risks associated to the viral nature, and the rapid rise of cryptocurrency prices.

Sir Jon Cunliffe told the BBC: "Their price can vary quite considerably and [bitcoins] could theoretically or practically drop to zero".

Bitcoin has taken another hit as Wall Street opened on December 13, sending the digital asset down by around 8.4%.

Recent trend analysis indicates that Bitcoin's price has continued to decrease for the last four consecutive weeks, putting the digital currency 30% down from its all-time high of $69,000 on November 10. On December 4, Bitcoin saw a sharp 21% decrease in value before bouncing to regain around half of its value, which then led it towards today's miniature crash of 8.4%.

So, is this the bottom, or is it possible Bitcoin can continue decreasing in value? Below, I outline all of the potential supports Bitcoin may fall to if it doesn't hold around the $45,000 mark. If support at $45,000 doesn't hold, it's likely that we will see a $40,000 Bitcoin before the end of the year. While that does sound depressing if you are currently holding any cryptocurrency, it isn't a usual thing to happen. Bitcoin makes large recorrections in price before it makes massive upward movements.

The new AMD/XFX BC-160 crypto mining card is now here available, packing a Navi 12 GPU, and 8GB of HBM2 memory you're looking at $2000 or so.

The new BC-160 (Blockchain Compute) has no display I/O, and features a blower-style cooler that will see these used in crypto mining farms. The Navi 12 GPU is made on 7nm at TSMC, has 2304 Stream Processors, 36 Compute Units, and is on the PCIe 4.0 x16 standard.

8GB of HBM2 memory is used on a 2048-bit memory bus, which means we'll have 512GB/sec of memory bandwidth. AMD/XFX's new BC-160 crypto mining card offers around 70MH/s for around 150W TGP, which is a little better than the Radeon RX 6800 XT at around 64MH/s... but that same Radeon RX 6800 XT is a proper gaming graphics card, not a crypto mining-only card for $2000 that is useless for anything else.

Alright, now this is interesting... EVGA is now offering up a new GPU firmware for its GeForce RTX 3080 Ti LHR series graphics cards, that unlocks crypto mining performance by up to 21%.

Reddit user @bravo_char discovered how to increase mining performance on GeForce RTX 3080 Ti LHR graphics cards, explaining that most of the RTX 3080 Ti LHR GPUs on the market have a "hidden feature" in the default BIOS that access the power limit for the card that activates when the memory load increases (which happens with crypto mining).

EVGA was made aware of this, and then offered a firmware update that boosts crypto mining on their EVGA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti series GPUs. On an updated EVGA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti XC3 graphics card, ETH mining went from 66MH/s to 80MH/s which is an increase of 21%.

There's a new crypto farm in town, and she's making a pretty penny. The new GPU crypto mining farm has some serious silicon in its hands, with up to 3.91 TH/s mining hash rate at its peak and an average of 2.47 TH/s.

If you don't know about these numbers, let's break it down into money: this crypto farm is mining around 5 ETH every 3 hours at a price of $4100+ at the time of writing. 5 x $4100 is $20,500 per 3 hours or $164,000 per day... and per month, well that's over $4.9 million per month.

Not too shabby at all, no matter the power bills at that cost -- even if you're paying $1 million a month in electricity, $3.9 million profits isn't anything to sneeze at. We don't know what GPUs or ASIC miners are powering this new crypto mining farm, but what we do know is that it is new... new, new, new -- like, 12-days-old new.