Cryptocurrency & Mining - Page 2

The IT maintenance staff working in the Supreme Administrative Court of Warsaw, Poland, were busted with a hidden cryptocurrency mining operation underneath the Supreme Court.

Crypto mining hardware was found inside of the ventilation duct, and the technical floor was discovered in the last couple of months, with the investigation being conducted by the prosecutor's office, while the Internal Security Agency has been notified of the crypto mining operation being busted.

Investigators found computers and components placed inside of the technical floor near the devices supplying power to the building, so the crypto mining operators were sucking down power from the court while making moola on the side. The cryptocurrency mining operation under the Supreme Court in Poland might have been using their power. Still, they had their own networking hardware and modem, meaning they had their own internet connection to the mining rigs, too.

A blockchain and cryptocurrency YouTuber was livestreaming when he accidentally revealed vital information for several of his crypto wallets.

That YouTuber is Ivan Bianco, who runs the channel Fraternidade Crypto, a cryptocurrency-gaming focussed channel based out of Brazil. Bianco was livestreaming when he accidentally revealed some of his seed phrases for his wallets. If you aren't familiar with the crypto nomenclature, seed phrases are basically complex passwords that grant access to wallets containing coins.

Bianco opened a document during his livestream that revealed several seed phrases, which viewers then recorded down and then later accessed, stealing $60,000 worth of coins and NFTs. The theft reportedly occurred within minutes of the seed phrases being revealed, and the YouTuber was seen during a later livestream crying and explaining to his viewers what had happened.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has settled its first-ever enforcement action against a company that was selling unregistered Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs).

That company is Impact Theory, and according to a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company has been ordered to pay more than $6.1 million in penalties. Impact Theory, the Los Angeles-based media company, raised approximately $30 million from hundreds of investors for its NFT project "Founder's Key".

According to the SEC, Impact Theory wrongfully encouraged investors to purchase the NFTs as a way to invest in the business, and since the company offered investors digital assets through a form of "investment contracts", the NFTs are considered to be "securities". Additionally, the SEC order instructed the company to create a "Fair Fund", which is meant to be a way investors can recover their losses.

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.

One of the key members in the downfall of what was the world's second-largest cryptocurrency exchange, FTX, will plead guilty to fraud charges.

A new report from Bloomberg has revealed that former FTX executive Nishad Singh is currently working on striking a plea deal with New York prosecutors that have filed charges of fraud against Singh. The report indicates the former FTX executive will plead guilty to the fraud charges and his involvement in the alleged scheme that resulted in the collapse of FTX. The publication cited its source as 'people familiar with the matter'.

Singh was the director of engineering at FTX and if a plea deal is struck, would be the newest member of Sam Bankman Fried's (SBF) inner circle to plead guilty, with FTX co-founder Gary Wang and former Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison, both entering into plea deals last year near the time of the collapse. If the plea deal is struck between Singh and authorities, it could involve working with prosecutors on their case, which was outlined in both Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang's plea deals.

The former Coinbase employee is Ishan Wahi, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud in court on Tuesday, February 7.

The former product manager at Coinbase was charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud in the Southern District of New York. Notably, Wahi pleaded not guilty to wire fraud back in August, which was based on an insider trading scheme that involved the former Coinbase employee informing his brother and his friend Sameer Ramani about coming token listings on the platform. Wahi's brother Nikhil pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in September and received a 10-month sentence.

According to reports, federal prosecutors are describing the Wahi case as the first insider trading case involving cryptocurrencies. Notably, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is also coming after Wahi and charged him back in July last year, deeming 9 out of the 25 tokens involved in the case as "securities". However, lawyers representing Wahi filed to dismiss the SEC charges, claiming that tokens bought and sold on the secondary market aren't securities.

Ripple has announced a new president will take the helm at the company as the cryptocurrency coin reaches the end of its long lawsuit with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The company took to its blog to announce that Monica Long, Ripple's senior vice president, and general manager, will be taking up the position of president of the company. Long started her career at Ripple when the firm was in its infancy, counting just ten employees back in 2013. Sticking with Ripple long made her way up the ranks to eventually be given the position of general manager in 2020.

A blockchain investigator has revealed the hackers behind the Harmony Bridge attack that occurred in June 2022 are trying to move millions in stolen funds.

Reports indicate that blockchain investigator ZachXBT found evidence that the group of hackers behind the Harmony Bridge exploitation that cost the startup $100 million are trying to move the stolen funds to a few different wallets on various cryptocurrency exchanges. For those that don't know, Harmony is a US cryptocurrency startup that discovered in June 2022 that its Horizon blockchain bridge, which allows users to send/receive assets from one blockchain to another, had been hacked.

ZachXBT took to Twitter with on-chain data that backed up his claims that the hackers behind the Harmony attack transferred stolen assets to six different cryptocurrency exchanges. Notably, ZachXBT states that the appropriate cryptocurrency exchanges were notified of the transfer and at least partly froze the assets. Additionally, the movement of the stolen funds to the new addresses comes only days after the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced the culprits behind the $100 million Harmony hack. The FBI named the Lazarus Group and APT38 as responsible criminals.

A new report claims the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has accidentally leaked the personal information of many cryptocurrency miners.

The claims come from the Washington Examiner, which published a report that stated it had seen screenshots of the SEC failing to bbc all of the people involved in its investigation into the blockchain company, Green. As the report states, the SEC has been privately investigating Green for years and communicated with many of its members that cooperated with the regulatory body. Green's users answered all of the SEC's questions, and on January 6 the regulatory body failed to bbc all 650 users in an email, leaking their personal information online.

Notably, the information that was leaked contained personal data such as names, email addresses, and more. Cryptocurrency enthusiasts have said that the leaked information is more than enough for a hacker to access the "nodes", or computers used to mine the Green cryptocurrency token. These nodes are used to verify transactions of the coin across the network, and according to crypto enthusiasts, they are now compromised.

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has announced it will be filing charges against FTX founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF).

The announcement from the SEC comes shortly after Bahamian law enforcement revealed that SBF had been arrested, which was confirmed by the US Attorney's Office Southern District of New York. The arrest by Bahamian authorities was done at the request of the US government, with Bahamas Attorney General (AG) and Minister of Legal Affairs, Ryan Pinder, adding that if the US requests extradition, the Bahamas will respond "promptly".

Notably, Bahamian prime Minister Philip David said that both countries have a "shared interest in holding accountable all individuals associated with FTX who may have betrayed the public trust and broken the law." According to reports, SBF is facing charges of wire and securities fraud, conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, and money laundering.

On a recent Twitter post, Elon Musk announced that he is taking action against a small number of bad actors who control large armies of bot and spam accounts on the platform.

In the post, Musk stated that he is shutting down the IP addresses of these individuals in order to combat their malicious activity. This move is a response to the growing problem of bots and spam accounts on Twitter, which have been used for a variety of nefarious purposes, such as spreading misinformation, manipulating public opinion, and spamming cryptocurrency scams. These bot armies have become increasingly sophisticated and can be difficult to identify and combat.

Musk's decision to shut down the IP addresses of these bad actors is a bold move that could have significant repercussions for the individuals involved. It will likely disrupt their ability to operate their bot and spam accounts, at least temporarily. However, it is unclear how effective this move will be in the long term, as the individuals involved may simply switch to using different IP addresses or find other ways to continue their malicious activity.