Cryptocurrency & Mining - Page 15

El Salvador has been far out and ahead of the curve when it comes to adopting and advocating for cryptocurrencies, mostly Bitcoin, but this news takes the place.

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele told a crowd on Saturday night during El Salvador's recent Bitcoin Week that the new "Bitcoin City" would be made near a volcano, along the cost of the Gulf of Fonseca. The government plans on placing the power plant near a volcano, which would be great for both mining -- low power costs, great on the environment -- and for the city itself.

The exciting new Bitcoin City would be a "full-fledged metropolis with residential and commercial areas, restaurants, an airport as well as a port and rail service. The city will be laid out in a circle (like a coin) and in the city center will be a plaza that will be host to a huge bitcoin symbol. The city will have no income, property, capital gains or payroll taxes" reports CoinDesk.

If you were hoping to upgrade to a new AMD Ryzen 9 5900 or Ryzen 9 5950X processor -- or even AMD's next-gen Zen 4-based desktop CPUs... you might be able to, and it'll be because of CPU miners.

It looks like the GPU shortage has seen crypto miners move to other cryptocurrencies -- including Raptoreum (RTM), which can be mined on the CPU and absolutely loves the large L3 cache on an AMD Ryzen 9 processor. The AMD Ryzen 9 3000 series and Ryzen 9 5000 series CPUs have large L3 cache which is perfect for Raptoreum CPU mining.

Even the now older-gen AMD Ryzen 9 3900 and 3900X are popular CPUs for Raptoreum mining because of their high L3 cache. Both of those CPUs beat Intel's just-launched Core i9-12900K "Alder Lake" CPU, but the newer Zen 3-based Ryzen 9 5950X is a Raptoreum mining beast -- beating out every other CPU.

Twitter has just announced it is building out a new division for all things cryptocurrency and blockchain, with the social networking giant hiring Tess Rinearson as the engineering boss in the newly-formed Twitter Crypto.

Twitter Crypto will have Rinearson "set the strategy for the future of crypto at (and on) Twitter". Rinearson said: "First, we'll be exploring how we can support the growing interest among creators to use decentralized apps to manage virtual goods and currencies, and to support their work and communities. Looking farther ahead, we'll be exploring how ideas from crypto communities can help us push the boundaries of what's possible with identity, community, ownership and more".

Parag Agrawal, Twitter chief technology officer (CTO) will be who Rinearson will be reporting to under Twitter Cryto. Twitter explains that there is "massive and growing interest among creators to use decentralized apps to manage virtual goods and currencies". Meanwhile, Rinearson will be working on these issues, "with a long term goal of exploring how ideas from crypto can help us push the boundaries of what's possible with identity, community and more".

The online poker experience is about to get a major upgrade as the beta launch for Polker is about to go live.

Polker has been created using Unreal Engine 4 and is the first free-to-play play-to-earn poker game that is designed to be an immersive experience that allows players to interact with each other in a highly detailed world. Since the game is built on Unreal Engine 4, the developers are able to provide a virtual experience for gamers, which as Cointelegraph reports, "really sets this metaverse into a league of its own." Additionally, users will be able to personalize their gaming experience by customizing their own world.

Reports also indicate that the next-generation poker game will be the first of its kind in how NFT's are integrated throughout the game's structure. For example, gamers will be able to earn NFTs while they enjoy the game, and these NFTs will grant access to more features to enjoy, such as special deals, new game launches, and tournaments. The developers plan on integrating the VR experience by Q2 of 2022. The entire Polker ecosystem is run off the Polker (PKR) coin, and due to the hype that is circulating the game and the upcoming beta testnet launch, the coin has seen a steep rise in value.

There are many different types of scams that plague the cryptocurrency world, and unfortunately, every day, people fall victim to them, which is why it's wise to keep up to date with the newest scams going around.

One Coinbase customer is feeling the burn from a recent notification scam that has caused the user to lose more than $12 million in Bitcoin. According to Business Insider, the Coinbase customer that goes by the initials G.R. purchased 200 Bitcoin in April worth $12,380,000 at the time of writing this article. Following the purchase, G.R. received a notification telling him that his account had been located and that he needed to call the provided number to initiate the unlocking process.

G.R. proceeded to call the number and was linked to an individual who impersonated Coinbase's customer support. The scammer guided G.R. to change settings in his Coinbase account that allowed for remote access to the account. Assistant U.S. Attorney Dan G. Boyle said, "Once granted access to the Victim Account, UI-1 increased the daily transaction limit and also attempted to deactivate certain notifications and alert settings on the Victim Account."

Patreon could soon allow users to reward their favorite creators with cryptocurrency, with the company reportedly "evaluating" the use of cryptocurrency according to Patreon executives.

At the recent The Information's summit, Patreon executives Jack Conte and Julian Gutman said that Patreon was "evaluating" the use of cryptocurrency. They reiterated a previous hint of "creator coins" that the company could have, which would let users buy to show support to their favorite creators.

Better yet, you could invest in a creator and if they get bigger, you are rewarded -- alternatively, having coins of your creators would give you access to special content reserved just for those coin holders. Conte wouldn't dive into what he and his company had been working on when it comes to Patreon + crypto, but they did talk about the possibility of letting creator coins become a reality soon.

If you haven't heard of Netflix's "Squad Game" show then you must be living under a rock, if you haven't -- wow -- if you have, Squid Game has turned into the SQUID cryptocurrency and has exploded in value in the last 24 hours.

SQUID is up over 1200% in the last 24 hours with a $182 million market capitalization at the time of writing, but as always, these types of coins come with their own warnings. CoinMarketCap has warned that it has received "multiple reports" that people can't sell their SQUID on PancakeSwap, a large decentralized exchange.

The new SQUID crypto popped onto the radar on October 20 and "sold out in 1 second" according to its own white paper, which has taken the same energy as the meme-fueled Shina Ibu which has absolutely exploded -- an $8000 purchase if SHIB back in August 2020 is now worth in excess of $5.7 billion.

Shiba Inu has absolutely exploded over the last few weeks, with one crypto investor putting around $8000 into the Dogecoin-fueled meme coin -- and with the explosion in the price of Shiba Inu -- is now worth over $5.7 billion.

Yes, that's $5.7 billion -- or $5,700,000,000 from an $8000 investment. YOLO.

In August 2020 the crypto investor purchased a rather large bag of Shiba Inu: 70 trillion -- or 70,000,000,000,000. At the time, Shiba Inu was worth around $0.000000000189 while peaking yesterday at around $0.00008500. This is why that $8000 is now worth over $5.7 billion.

The price of Dogecoin cryptocurrency competitor Shiba Inu has only skyrocketed for the last couple of weeks, but now Elon Musk pulled the price of Shiba Inu down by 27% with a single tweet.

Musk was asked by @ShibaInuHodler on Twitter if he had any Shiba Inu himself, to which Musk simply tweeted back "none" and the price of Shiba Inu started to drop. $shib dropped from $0.000004484 to around $0.00003823 at the time of writing -- but the price of Shiba Inu dipped right down into $0.00003472 after Musk's tweet.

I mean sure, Shiba Inu has dropped post-tweet from Musk but the crypto is up a freaking insane amount over the last few weeks, months, and year. Shiba Inu is still at beyond all-time-high price, after skyrocketing from $0.000006905 in May 2021 to $0.00003823 at the time of writing -- a 35,000,000% increase.

The US has overtaken China as the #1 destination in the world for mining Bitcoin.

That's at least according to the very latest data from Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI) that tracks the energy consumption of Bitcoin mining across the world. The data shows that the US is making up 42.7% of the Bitcoin network hashrate.

China banned Bitcoin mining a few months ago, and has quickly allowed the US to increase its foothold on the Bitcoin mining world. The US went from around 17% global hashrate of Bitcoin mining back in April 2021, to a huge 35% in August 2021. Since China pushed crypto miners out of the country, they've been finding other countries to operate and the US has become a haven for Bitcoin mining operations.

It looks like AMD has plenty of GPUs but just not for gamers, with a new crypto mining GPU spotted in a new AMD BC-160 mining card.

The new AMD BC-160 mining card uses a Navi 12-based GPU with 2560 Stream Processors and 8GB of HBM2 memory at 1.54Gbps on a 2048-bit memory bus. There's 2 x 8-pin PCIe power connectors required, with 150W TGP which isn't too bad considering it can mine ETH at around 69-72MH/s.

XFX China is reportedly the company designing the AMD BC-160 mining card, with a cluster of these new AMD BC-160 mining cards each hitting 72MH/s. There's 8 of the AMD BC-160 mining cards in this system, for a total of 579MH/s of ETH mining power, once again -- not bad for around 1000W of power.

Coinbase is diving into the world of NFTs with some news out of nowhere that the crypto exchange giant would be opening an NFT marketplace.

The NFT market is gigantic and will only significantly grow in size with NFTs being a one-of-a-kind digital asset that represent ownership of online items including rare art, or collectible trading cards. There have been some bonkers huge NFT sales so far, with NFTs -- or non-fungible tokens -- as in they're not fungible, you can't exchange an NFT for another NFT, unlike crypto.

Coinbase's announcement of a new NFT marketplace is a gigantic deal, as Coinbase NFT -- its official name -- will include things like social features, and will work its way into the "creator economy". A creator economy is where people make money for posting content -- in whichever way, pictures, articles, videos.

China is continuing to put the big squeeze on cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, and other crypto mining operations -- whether they're Chinese citizens or foreigners.

Bitcoin.com is reporting that China's Development and Reform Commission is asking for public commentary on a list -- a negative list that the Chines government would see limiting, or outright banning investment into the crypto mining industry -- or any industry that the CCP doesn't like.

China has already stamped crypto transactions as illegal, which makes it hard for anyone in the country to use or adopt cryptocurrency. China -- of course -- has been testing its own cryptocurrency but doesn't want any other cryptocurrency to be used in the country it seems.

Wait for it... the Biden administration is reportedly mulling over an executive order for Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general that would push for crypto oversight.

The news is literally breaking, with Bloomberg reporting: "The Biden administration is weighing an executive order on cryptocurrencies as part of an effort to set up a government-wide approach to the white-hot asset class, according to people familiar with the matter".

The executive order would give the Biden administration and US government and its various agencies, to study and recommend various things in the crypto industry. This would include financial regulation, economic innovation, and even national security. Bloomberg added that their sources "who asked not to be named discussing plans that are still under consideration".

Bank of America is running right into the warm arms of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, with the BofA launching a new digital asset research with a new report called "Digital Assets Primer: Only the first inning".

The strategists at Bank of America said that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are simply "too large to ignore" and that their view is "there could be more opportunity than skeptics expect". The research group was led by strategist Alkesh Shah, who said that Bitcoin and other cryptos are "too large to ignore".

Strategists Alkesh Shah and Jessica Reif Ehrlich said: "Our view is that there could be more opportunity than skeptics expect". The report added that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are "gaining traction on Wall Street despite its many controversies". On top of that, the strategists said that regulation plays a key role and that "more regulation could be a positive for crypto in the long run. Once rules are established, the uncertainty over how to invest in crypto will be lifted".

The United States Federal Reserve has said that it's planning on reviewing the risks/benefits of implementing a US digital currency.

A new report from the Wall Street Journal states that within the coming weeks, or as early as next week, the US Federal Reserve will be revealing detailed plans of a central bank digital currency that very well could shake up the global financial market. Unlike Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, if the Fed decided to release its own digital currency, it would be backed by the US central bank as US paper dollars and coins are.

It should be noted that the Fed is currently very divided on the release of a US digital currency, which means that it won't be implemented/released any time soon. According to Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, the US isn't rushing into releasing its own digital currency because it's currently weighing the benefits and disadvantages due to the power the US plays on the global financial markets. Powell states it's "more important to do it right than do it fast."

Shiba Inu has absolutely exploded in price over the last 12 months, and in the last 24 hours alone the cryptocurrency has blown up by over 50% with a price of $0.00002522 at the time of writing.

Why the manic price increase? Crypto and meme lord Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, tweeted out a single image of his dog, Floki. Musk tweeted out on Monday a picture of his dog, with a simple caption of "Floki Frunkpuppy" and then the price of Shiba Inu skyrocketed.

Even though Musk didn't tweet about Shiba Inu specifically, but because Musk supports Dogecoin (a dog-focused cryptocurrency) we have Shiba Inu riding that high as well. Dogecoin has gone from around $0.20 to around $0.25 at the time of writing, but man has Shiba Inu gone nuts -- especially when you look at it over the last 12 months, with Shiba Inu and its absolutely insane 27,000,000% increase over 12 months.

I'm sure that most of us know someone who has lost money, and some of them considerable sums, over cryptocurrency. So, it should come as no surprise to hear the first rehab clinic for cryptocurrency addictions has opened up in Scotland.

The new rehab clinic in Scotland is one of, if not the first crypto trading addiction clinic, overseen by therapist Tony Marini. Marini claims to be the first physician that recognizes cryptocurrency trading is very similar to gambling. Marini adds that most addicts start out by trading occasionally, but this ramps up once you start making a bit of money, which pumps dopamine (feel-good feelings) and the hopes of making millions.

But then the habit-forming behavior kicks in and thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions of dollars can be lost. Marini talked with Decrypt, where he said: "If you say to somebody doing crypto, 'so you're occasionally gambling,' they're gonna go 'no, I'm not'. So take out the word gambling and say 'occasionally trading'. Commonly, people start because they want to buy stuff off the dark web. And the only way to do that is with cryptocurrency. The biggest problem is this cross addiction [with crypto] starting-through drugs and alcohol".

The massive cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has confirmed that thousands of accounts have been breached.

Coinbase has sent out a notification letter to at least 6,000 Coinbase customers who have had funds removed from their accounts. According to the letter, which can be found in full below, "these third parties first needed prior knowledge of the email address, password, and phone number associated with your Coinbase account, as well as access to your personal email inbox" to gain access to the Coinbase accounts.

Additionally, Coinbase states that it has found no evidence that the aforementioned information was acquired from Coinbase itself. On top of that, Coinbase says that even if the third-parties that stole the cryptocurrency had all of the aforementioned information, they would still need proceed through additional authentication measures to access a Coinbase account.

AMD's new Radeon RX 6600 graphics card is nearly here, with the non-XT variant also thrown into some crypto mining and achieving 27MH/s of Ethereum mining power.

The new Radeon RX 6600 has been benched on the crypto mining table somewhere in the world, with Wccftech reporting that the Radeon RX 6600 has 27MH/s at stock and around 30MH/s when overclocked and tuned for crypto mining.

AMD's current Radeon RX 6600 XT is already a performance champion, offering 33MH/s of Ethereum crypto mining power for just 55W... but the new Radeon RX 6600 has 30MH/s of mining power for 50W. The cut-down Radeon RX 6600 features a Navi 23 XL GPU, with 28 Compute Units or 1792 Stream Processors. AMD will have 8GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit memory interface, and 32MB of Infinity Cache.