Cryptocurrency & Mining News - Page 2

The once-popular Non-Fungible Token (NFT) collection Bored Apes has dramatically decreased in value since the collapse of the price of Bitcoin, resulting in fear-uncertainty, and doubt to plague the cryptocurrency space.

Following the dramatic price dip of Bored Apes, which were only highly sought-after NFTs, a group of Bored Ape investors have filed a lawsuit against Sotheby's auction house for a 2021 promotion of a Bored Ape collection. According to the four plaintiffs, the auction house "misleadingly promoted" the NFT collection and colluded with Bored Ape Yacht House creators Yuga Labs in an effort to artificially increase the price of the NFTs.

Sotheby's isn't the only one named in the lawsuit, as the group of investors has also named celebrities such as Justin Bieber and Paris Hilton, which are both accused of promoting the NFT collection without disclosing financial ties to Yuga Labs. For context on how much the price of Bored Apes has dropped, the cheapest of the colorful NFTs was sold back in May 2022 for $400,000, and now the cheapest Bored Ape can be bought for just $52,445.

The price of Bitcoin is an a freefall and according to reports more than $800 million in cryptocurrency positions were liquidated within just 30 minutes.

The mass sell off caused the price of Bitcoin to plummet down to $25,300, the lowest its been since January this year. The liquidations coincide with a recent article published by The Wall Street Journal that revealed rare details about Elon Musk's private space flight company SpaceX.

The report from Wall Street Journal revealed details about Elon Musk's finances and claimed that SpaceX's Bitcoin holdings were $373 million for last year and the year before, but the company has now "sold the cryptocurrency".

Reports indicate that a federal judge has revoked Sam Bankman-Fried's bail after new information surfaced that alleges Bankman-Fried attempted to intimidate witnesses.

Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), the founder of the now collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, has been thrown behind bars, according to individuals present at his August 11 hearing in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered that SBF's $250 million bail be revoked, with reports indicating that Kaplan cited SBF's interviews with New York Times reporters where he revealed some information with the likely intention "to hurt or frighten" former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison, SBF's former colleague, and girlfriend.

On-chain data indicates the U.S. government is moving its massive stockpile of Bitcoin it seized from James Zhong, the hacker who infiltrated the Silk Road marketplace.

A Bitcoin address named "The U.S. Department of Justice" moved a total of 9,825 BTC to various addresses, which equates to a staggering $302 million dollars. Notably, the U.S. government announced back in March that the 51,351 BTC that it seized from James Zhong, following his infiltration into the notorious online black market. Authorities seized the Bitcoin from Zhong at his home in Georgia in November 2021, and at the time, the stack of BTC was worth $3.6 billion. Reports indicate that Zhong pleaded guilty to wire fraud.

Furthermore, while the U.S. government was moving its multi-million stack of BTC, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York announced that Roger Thomas Clark, a senior adviser to the Silk Road marketplace, was being sentenced to 20 years in prison. These events, funnily enough, occurred on the same day. According to the Department of Justice website, Clark was sentenced for "conspiring to distribute massive quantities of narcotics, arising out of his role as the top adviser to Ross Ulbricht, a/k/a "Dread Pirate Roberts," the owner and operator of the "Silk Road".

Russian security agencies have been targeted by a mysterious hacker that has used Bitcoin technologies to erase and send funds to Ukraine.

Chainalysis, a blockchain analysis firm that has worked with the US government, has reported that a rogue hacker has targeted cryptocurrency wallets that appear to be owned by Russian security agencies such as the Foreign Military Intelligence Agency (GRU), the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), and the Federal Security Service (FSB). Notably, the hacker even took the time to write in Russian that these identified wallets were involved in hacking activity.

Chainalysis was able to confirm at least three of the alleged Russian wallet addresses are linked to Russia, with two of them being used in the SolarWinds cyberattack in 2020 and one of them being used to pay for servers that were used in Russia's 2016 election disinformation campaign. Furthermore, the hacker appeared to both erase funds and send funds to Ukraine. The hacker destroyed more than $300,000 worth using the OP_RETURN function in the Bitcoin blockchain, which nulifies previous transactions of Bitcoin.

Computex 2023 is off to a racing start and while the showroom floor is inundated with PC gaming hardware we have spotted a pretty unique cryptocurrency mining rig.

While cryptocurrency has certainly taken a downward turn since the price of Bitcoin dropped, there are still some interesting products emerging from various companies. One of those companies is Engineered Fluids, which walked us through their custom cooling solution for a Bitmain Antminer S19 90T.

As showcased by the above image, the Antminer has been completely submerged in oil which is then filtered through a cooling unit. The cooled oil keeps the system running at lower temperatures, enabling better performance, and thus, a higher hashrate.

One of the biggest figures in the cryptocurrency space has said that Bitcoin, the world's most popular cryptocurrency, has said that Bitcoin has bottomed out and a new bull run has started.

Michael Saylor, the co-founder and executive chairman of MicroStrategy, has become one of the few Bitcoin maximalists to publicly embrace Ordinals, a protocol that allows for arbitrary and non-financial information to be included on the Bitcoin blockchain. In an interview at the Bitcoin 2023 conference in Miami, Saylor discussed his views on Ordinals, its potential use cases, and the ongoing debates within the Bitcoin community.

Saylor sees Ordinals as a positive development for Bitcoin, although he acknowledges that many of the early use cases are more speculative than serious. He stated, "What if I was using them to tokenize all of the stocks and ETFs trading on NASDAQ so that individuals can take personal custody of their shares of stock instead of leaving them locked up with a centralized custodian? If it was presented that way, then Bitcoiners would love it."

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, the creator of the highly popular artificial intelligence-powered chatbot, ChatGPT, is close to securing $100 million in funding for another one of his projects called Worlcoin.

According to a new report by the Financial Times, which spoke to three people familiar with the deal, Sam Altman is on the verge of securing a new round of $100 million in funding from new and existing investors for Worldcoin, a project that aims at creating a global digital currency that is distributed equally and fairly to everyone. The project's foundations lay with Worldcoin's proof-of-personhood protocol that involves users participating in a biometric scan of their irises, which is then verified against a government-issued ID such as a driver's license.

Once the user is verified, Worldcoin is able to distribute the token out to the unique personhood address. Additionally, last week Worldcoin announced World App wallet and World ID, a new protocol that will enable users to sign in to websites, applications, and other cryptocurrency-related applications. The company was only founded in 2019 and has since reached a $3 billion valuation, attracting the attention of many investors around the world that are interested in the utility of iris scans.

Microsoft's Edge browser has been on a run of adding various bits and pieces of functionality of late, and the firm isn't letting up, with another new feature having been spotted: a crypto wallet.

The Edge team might be introducing a built-in way of managing your crypto assets right in the browser, as flagged up in a tweet by well-known leaker Albacore on Twitter (spotted by Bleeping Computer).

This feature consists of a 'non-custodial' crypto wallet (meaning you, not Microsoft, are in complete control of the funds within), supporting multiple Ethereum accounts (and maybe Bitcoin in the future).

According to new court records, the army of professional lawyers and advisors has billed a collective $38 million plus expenses for just the month of January.

FTX, the previous position holder for the world's second-largest cryptocurrency exchange, filed for bankruptcy in November after it was discovered exchange officials were illegitimately managing customer funds. Since then, a widespread effort has been implemented to clean up the financial mess created by FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), along with his other top-ranking officials from FTX and its sister company Alameda Research. Notably, some of these officials have turned on SBF and are cooperating with regulators and authorities.

Shortly after the collapse of FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried stepped down as CEO of the company, and John Ray III was brought in as the new CEO. Notably, John Ray III was responsible for assisting in the clean-up process of the energy firm Enron. FTX bankruptcy administrators have Sullivan & Cromwell on retainer as counsel, as well as Quin Emmanuel Urquhart & Sullivan and Landis Rath & Cobb. All of the aforementioned firms contain approximately 180 lawyers and more than 50 staffers that are all working on the FTX case.