Cryptocurrency & Mining News - Page 17

After being on a slow climb since its massive leg-up on February 4, Bitcoin has taken a hit when it comes to its price as prominent investors and other global factors cause fear, uncertainty, and doubt to flood the market.

Bitcoin broke its down-trend in late January and then experienced a massive increase in value on February 4, taking the digital asset from $37,000 to nearly $42,000 in a day, a jump by nearly 12%. The following days after the sharp increase in price, Bitcoin continued to rise, eventually failing to break the resistance at $45,000, which would have been a vital price point to re-take. From February 16-17, the price of BTC tumbled by nearly 10%, sending the price down from around $44,000 to where it is at the time of writing this article, $40,500.

So, why have we seen a sharp drop in the value of Bitcoin? There are several factors, and the first would be the stark words spoken by prominent legacy investor Charlie Munger, who said that he is proud of the fact that he hasn't invested in cryptocurrency and that it should have been banned immediately. Munger describes cryptocurrency as a "venereal disease". On top of comments from large investors spreading doubt throughout the cryptocurrency market, there are also the events between Russia and Ukraine that are injecting fear, uncertainty, and doubt into not only through the cryptocurrency markets but the stock markets as well.

There's a new crypto miner on the loose, with the introduction of the Jasminer X4 Etchash Brick crypto miner that's on Amazon for $2099.

The Jasminer X4 Etchash Brick crypto miner features a fanless design, so that it can sit in your living room, garage, or even your office and mine cryptocurrency without making much noise, if any at all. Sunlune Technology has made the Jasminer X4 chip inside, which uses 3D chip tracking technology with through-silicon vias (TSVs).

What this allowed Sunlune to do was put all of the computing and data storage units into a single chip, which reduces overall power consumption to 30W. You're going to mine around 65MH/s of Ethereum for that 30W, which isn't too bad at all... you'll be making around $2.85 per day at the price of Ethereum today.

The governor of a US state has announced that during the middle of this year residents will be able to pay their state taxes with cryptocurrency.

The announcement comes from Colorado governor Jared Polis who revealed a rough timeline of the roll out in an interview with CNBC on Tuesday where he said that he expects "by this summer to accept crypto for all of our state tax-related purposes". Polis added that the acceptance of crypto-payments could also be used for other government-related expenses such as a driver's license or a hunting license.

Pew Research reports that Colorado joins another 20 states that are looking into accepting some form of cryptocurrency legislation. Polis is no stranger to cryptocurrency as he was one of the first politicians to accept Bitcoin donations for his political campaign when he was elected into Congress in Colorado back in 2014. Additionally, Polis is also heading the effort of making Colorado the United States' blockchain innovation hub.

A new filing with the US Patent and Trading office reveals that the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) Group is moving towards developing a virtual/augmented reality marketplace.

The new patent describes an online marketplace where users can interact using virtual or augmented reality. This new marketplace would allow for users to trade virtual goods with each other such as cryptocurrencies, Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), digital media, and much more. If the NYSE launches a new online marketplace that supports transactions of cryptocurrencies and NFTs, it would directly compete with the current largest NFT trading platform, OpenSea.

While the trademark filing is certainly very promising as it proves something is in the works over at the NYSE Group, a spokesperson for the NYSE said to Reuters that there aren't any immediate plans to launch cryptocurrency and trading. It also seems like the NYSE is looking to get into the Metaverse and what the future of trading will be as the filing states that this marketplace could be accessed via a virtual or augmented reality device or PC.

Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway has sold a portion of its shares in both Visa and Mastercard in a move away from traditional credit systems.

Berkshire Hathaway has sold $1.3 billion worth of Mastercard and $1.8 billion worth of Visa stock. Through a securities filing it was discovered the conglomerate purchased $1 billion worth of Nubank Class A stock throughout the fourth quarter of 2021. In the past Buffet has been critical over investing in fintech, emerging technologies aimed at competing with traditional financial systems, and has even honed in on Bitcoin saying it "does not create anything."

However, these recent actions from Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway seem to indicate that the billionaire has at least changed his opinion to some degree about these emerging technologies, as Nubank is the largest fintech bank in Brazil and furthermore has been offering its users Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) since June 2021 through the trading platform it purchased in 2020 called Easynvest.

Reports indicate that the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange is under investigation by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the SEC has launched a probe into Binance for its relationship between trading firms Sigma Chain AG and Merit Peak. The report states that the SEC has requested information to be provided on Binance's relationship with the aforementioned parties that are constantly trading on Binance's platform and how that relationship was disclosed to users of the exchange.

The WSJ report cited documents from 2019 that revealed ties between Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao and the two trading firms Sigma Chain AG and Merit Peak. This isn't the first time Binance has reportedly been under investigation by a government body, as in May 2021, the Department of Justice (DOJ), as well as the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), launched a probe into the cryptocurrency exchange regarding crypto coins being used to perform illegal acts.

Coinbase, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, purchased an advertising slot during the Super Bowl, and while the ad was certainly a hit, it didn't go exactly as planned.

The advertising slots at the Super Bowl are some of the most expensive advertising slots in the world, and that is because around 200 million people are watching. Coinbase reportedly spent $14 million on its ad, which was just a black screen with a QR code bouncing from corner to corner. It seems the ad was based on the classic DVD screensaver that featured the DVD logo bouncing around the screen.

Viewers of Coinbase's ad that scanned the code were redirected to Coinbase's website, where they could claim $15 in free Bitcoin. Although, it didn't all go to plan as millions of people scanned the QR code to find that Coinbase's website wasn't displaying due to the immense load of traffic that was rushing to Coinbase's servers. Chief Product Officer Surojit Chatterjee said the website was getting "more traffic than we've ever encountered".

The publisher behind one of the biggest game franchises of all-time Grand Theft Auto has recognized the massive potential in Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs).

Grand Theft Auto publisher Take-Two Interactive has acknowledged the growing NFT space, and according to Take-Two Interactive CEO, Strauss Zelnick, who to spoke to Nintendo Life, the company is "highly convinced there's an opportunity for NFTs to fit with Take-Two's offerings in the future". The publisher's CEO continued to explain that Take-Two believes in collectibles, but the current NFT space is plagued with "speculation" which is causing the publisher to "stay away" for now.

Take-Two Interactive has now joined other companies such as Ubisoft into slowly moving into the NFT space, with Ubisoft pioneering the move by being the first major gaming company to launch in-game NFTs, even despite the public disapproval from many gamers. If you are interested in reading more about this story, check out this link here.

A billion-year-old black rock that was expected to be purchased for millions was bought at an online auction on Wednesday.

The black rock is a 555.5-carat black diamond called "The Enigma," and it was recently sold at an online auction held by Sotheby's on Wednesday for $4,292,322. Sotheby's decided to keep the buyer anonymous, but disclosed that the purchase of the extremely expensive black diamond was made in cryptocurrency. After the auction, cryptocurrency entrepreneur Richard Heart claimed on Twitter that he was the individual who purchased the ancient black diamond, saying that it would be renamed to the "HEX.com diamond".

The Guinness World Records declared The Enigma the world's largest cut diamond, and it's even larger than the Golden Jubilee that's 545.67 carats. So, what makes it so expensive? The Enigma is a carbonate, the toughest type of diamond when it comes to hardness, and extremely rare as they are believed to have originated from space due to them containing a mineral called osbornite that is only found in meteors.

The world's largest cryptocurrency exchange when it comes to trading volume has made a very large investment into media.

According to a report from CNBC, Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, has invested $200 million dollars into becoming one of the two biggest owners of Forbes. The strategic investment has gained Binance two new directors out of nine total board seats, and according to Forbes CEO Mike Ferdele, "With Binance's investment in Forbes, we now have the experience, network, and resources of the world's leading crypto exchange and one of the world's most successful blockchain innovators."

The move is just one of many cryptocurrency exchanges such as Binance are making towards bringing more awareness to the cryptocurrency space. Crypto.com is a better example of spending large quantities of money on marketing to raise awareness as the crypto exchange has already spent millions on sports sponsorship's, acquisitions, and even re-branding the Staples center to the Crypto.com center.