Here we go again: Reuters is now reporting that a report that was researched by "independent experts" was presented to the UN Security Council North Korea sanctions committee last week, which has sold bold claims.

The report says that North Korea used "widespread and increasingly sophisticated" hacks to secure $2 billion, laundered over the internet. These funds, according to the UN report, are being used to fund its weapons of mass destruction. Scooping up the funds this way means it's much harder for other governments and their respective spy agencies to snoop.

The experts said they are looking into "at least 35 reported instances of DPRK actors attacking financial institutions, cryptocurrency exchanges and mining activity designed to earn foreign currency" in around 17 nations around the world.

Facebook planned its new cryptocurrency 'Libra' for what I'm sure was a future of mass adoption, but the push from the social networking giant in the middle of its battle with users' privacy seems to have failed.

During a congressional hearing for the possible issues that Facebook could cause with its rollout of Libra, Congressman Warren Davidson from Ohio called Facebook Libra a "shitcoin". Davidson said: "A lot of people in this space will use a phrase that you may be familiar with: 'there's bitcoin, and then there's shitcoin.

Davidson questioned CoinShares' chief strategy officer Meltem Demirors, asking her if she knew what a shitcoin was, adding "Are you familiar with that phrase, and what people might mean by that?" to which Demirors replied "I am". So yes, the chief strategy officer of CoinShares obviously knows what a shitcoin is, and admitted it

President Trump has come out and talked about Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, with POTUS saying that he is "not a fan of Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies, which are not money, and whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air". His full tweet:

Interesting to see POTUS slamming Bitcoin yet the price of it didn't go down with many traders on Twitter thinking its bullish, and that directly after Trump's tweet the price of Bitcoin rallied and is still going higher -- at the time of writing. Right now, the price of one BTC is $11,400 or so, up from its lows of sub $4,000 just 6 months ago.

Trump talked about the price of Facebook's upcoming Libra virtual currency, with the President saying Libra "will have little standing or dependability" adding that Facebook should work with a banking charter and get regulated like traditional financial institutions. There are major concerns by House Democrats, and now President Trump, that officially asked Facebook to hold its Libra layout plans as it should be investigated for its possible risks to the entire global financial system.

Iran authories have clamped down on two gigantic cryptocurrency mining farms, with authorities seizing around 1000 Bitcoin mining systems from two "abandoned factories".

These two cryptocurrency mining farms were destabilizing the Iranian power grid according to a spokesman for the Energy Ministry in Iran. The spokesman also said that the Iranian government will continue looking into mining operations after the two cryptocurrency mining farms saw Iranian power consumption increase 7% with the minister saying that for the power consumed to mine a single Bitcoin that it could power 24 residential units for an entire year.

The price of electricity in Iran is pretty low as it is heavily subsidized to the point where you can get power as low as $0.006 kWh, compared to Australia being the most expensive in the world (and my state in South Australia where Elon Musk built the largest solar farm in the world) with its crazy $0.45 kWh. Iranian power prices are a tasty offering for cryptocurrency mining farms, so the government is looking at stamping a special price for crypto miners, as the minister warned that some crypto farms are using schools and mosques for their operations since they're able to be hidden away from paying the already ridiculously low power prices.

Warren Buffett is worth $90 billion and you don't get that way by jumping into every new fad, right? Well, during the annualk Berkshire Hathaway meeting in Omaha, he had some very wise words about Bitcoin.

Buffett talked with reporters where he called Bitcoin "a gambling device" that "just sits there" and "hasn't produced anything". He added, weirdly, that Bitcoin is "like a seashell or something". But the weird didn't stop there for Buffett, who compared Bitcoin to the buttons on his jacket. Yes, I wish I was joking, Buffett compared the price of Bitcoin to the buttons on his jacket.

He said: "I'll tear off a button here. What I'll have here is a little token... I'll offer it to you for $1000, and I'll see if I can get the price up to $2000 by the end of the day... But the button has one use and it's a very limited use".

His hate for Bitcoin is strong but he knows that the blockchain is something where more effort is put (at least for Buffett) where he said that the blockchain technology that Bitcoin is built on is "very big".

Gerald Cotten, the founder and CEO of cryptocurrency exchange QuadrigaCX died from complications with Crohn's disease on December 9, 2018 while travelling in India. In his passing, a huge $190 million in various cryptocurrencies is locked away as Cotten was the only one with the passwords.

Cotten was the "sole officer and director" of QuadrigaCX, and has the $190 million stuck behind his encrypted laptop without anyone knowing the password. The news comes from a debt filing from QuadrigaCX to which his widow Jennifer Robertson said in an affidavit that "Gerry died due to complications with Crohn's disease on December 9, 2018 while travelling in India, where he was opening an orphanage to provide a home and safe refuge for children in need".

QuadrigaCX has since experienced major issues of pumping out customers' funds to their accounts, with the crypto exchange saying it is going through "significant financial issues". The company added that it has "very significant cryptocurrency reserves", but it couldn't locate or secure said servers. So effectively, QuadrigaCX's CEO died with the customers' money on his encrypted laptop. All of those cold wallet private keys are lost.

Sapphire today announced its new Sapphire RX 570 16GB HDMI Blockchain Graphics Card specifically aimed at mining cryptocurrency, complete with a boosted 16GB of VRAM.

Sapphire's new blockchain-focused graphics card is built on AMD's Polaris GPU tech with 2,304 Stream Processors across a 256-bit interface and a whopping 16GB of GDDR5 VRAM for demanding crypto mining. It sports dual-slot design with an 8-pin power connector, and its two 95mm fans can easily be changed out. Power consumption sits at about 175W, Sapphire says.

Sapphire's new card specifically aims at cryptocurrencies like the fledgling Grin, Cuckaroo 29+ and Cuckatoo 31+. The company says the new card can mine at a rate of 0.42GPS in Cukatoo 31+ and marks the beginning of a new fleet of mining hardware from Sapphire.

Razer's new revenue scheme gives you premium currency if you let it use your GPU for blockchain mining.

Today Razer announced SoftMiner, a new way to indirectly monetize gamers while rewarding them with digital goods. Essentially Razer is asking to use your GPU to slowly mine crypto with a new program, and in exchange it'll give you Z Silver based on how many blocks you let it mine per day. Z Silver can be used to buy apparel, gift cards, and Razer peripherals like keyboards. The tech is powered by Gamma's technology that rewards you for tapping idle GPU power.

"When your computer is idle, the Razer SoftMiner desktop application utilizes your idle GPU processing power to supplement distributed network needs for the mining process. You will be rewarded with Razer Silver, which varies depending on the amount of idle time and strength of your hardware or graphics card," Razer wrote on the announcement page.

Cryptocurrency is widening its grasp across the world, especially with many retailers and businesses accepting it as a form of payment. But now Bitcoin can be used to pay taxes in Ohio.

In a landmark move for the United States, Ohio becomes the first state to support Bitcoin for tax payments. Ohio-based businesses can now use Bitcoin to pay a wide variety of state corporate taxes including cigarette sales and employee withholding taxes reports The Wall Street Journal. Companies must register on OhioCrypto.com to use the digital currency for payments.

It's worth noting that businesses aren't technically using Bitcoin to pay taxes, at least not directly. The cryptocurrency is sent to BitPay, an Atlanta-based firm, who then exchanges the digital currency into legal tender and sends it to the state's treasury office. Ohio state Treasurer Josh Mandel says everyday residents could one day use Bitcoin to pay their personal taxes

If you thought the future was here with smartphones in our hands, Wi-Fi, and every other electronic convenience - it'll be the world of cryptocurrency that we go through in the next couple of decades that will redefine industries.

Spanish hardware hacker Richardo Reis created a Coke vending machine that accepts Bitcoin, before Coca-Cola itself has announced let alone rolled out vending machines that accept cryptocurrency as a payment. Reis is using BTCPay on the vending machine, with a QR code being generated on the machine and then scanned in from your smartphone. An instant payment is then made and the sale is complete.

Bitcoin transfers normally take roughly an hour to process but this BTCPay-powered Coke vending machine uses the Lightning Network. The Lighting Network allows for micropayments as small as .00000001 BTC to take place, compared to the blockchain which has minimum requirements magnitudes higher than that. Instead of the traditional Bitcoin blockchain that requires six blocks to be verified in order for the transaction to process (something that can take up to an hour), LN works over the blockchain and requires just two parties for the transaction to process.