Cryptocurrency & Mining News - Page 2

Larry Dean Harmon of Akron, Ohio has been arrested for operating a cryptocurrency laundering service, where he moved a hefty $300 million through Bitcoin in a "tumbling" operation.

Harmon partnered with underground marketplace AlphaBay on an operation called Helix, which was known for its illegal activity that included drug deals (and I'm sure much more) according to the Department of Justice. Harmon exchanged over 350,000 bitcoins on Helix between the years 2014-2017, with the act of "tumbling" seeing people turn their cryptocurrency transactions to hide them from illegal activities like drugs, guns, and much more evil activities.

Don Fort, chief of the IRS Criminal Investigations division said in a statement: "The brazenness with which Helix operated should be the most appalling aspect of this operation to every day citizens. There are bad actors and then there are criminals who facilitate hundreds of other crimes. The sole purpose of Harmon's operation was to conceal criminal transactions from law enforcement on the Darknet, and because of our growing expertise in this area, he could not make good on that promise".

A new report has indicated that the United States controls the lions share of Bitcoin ATM's globally and that the push into decentralized monetary solutions is being forced by millennials.

According to a recent report from LearnBonds, at the moment there are 4274 Bitcoin ATM's located in the United States. On a global scale, there are 6454 Bitcoin ATM's, meaning that the United States currently holds 66.2% of all Bitcoin ATM's globally.

So how do other countries shape up to that number? The United Kingdom only has 283 ATM's, Australia has 184, and Switzerland has 84. The report also covered an overview of the Bitcoin community and broke down engagement data into age metrics. The data indicates that millennials (25-34 years old) are 46.32% of Bitcoin community engagement, while individuals aged between 35-44 years occupy the second position at 26.76%. "From this perspective, it shows that the millennials are the driving force for the adoption of decentralized solutions."

Two men out of British Columbia in Canada have come forward and pleaded guilty to committing fraud against an elderly lady's Bitcoin fortune.

According to The Oregonian reports, two men who are brothers Jagroop Singh Khatkar and Karanjit Singh Khatkhar have admitted to committing fraud and money laundering. The brothers used Twitter to the woman's $158,000 Bitcoin fortune.

So how did this happen? The brothers created a fake Twitter account under the guise of HitBTC, the Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency exchange. The brother then tricked the woman into contacting @HitBTCAssist for account support then got her to share the details of her account with them. After the details were exchanged, the brothers then proceeded to wire her 23 BTC into one of their own accounts.

While the Bitcoin price certainly isn't where it was when it was at its peak, that doesn't mean there isn't large holders of the currency still out there.

According to the Twitter account 'Whale Alert' which tracks Bitcoin transactions from wallet to wallet, a massive transaction just occurred. This transaction wasn't in the hundreds of dollars either; it was, in fact, in the hundreds of millions of dollars equating to more than $310 million USD.

What is the exciting part about this movement is that the holder of 44,000 BTC only paid a measly $0.32 in transaction fees. This information comes from Blockchain.com's Bitcoin explorer, which says that the owner of the transaction paid just 0.00004551 BTC -- or $0.32c. This isn't the first time a massive amount of Bitcoin was moved for an extremely low amount in transaction fees, as back in July this year, one holder moved $450 million multiple times and only accumulated $400 in fees.

An extremely old US power plant located in the heart of Montana will be converted into a mining farm and a recent approval.

Old Rainbow, the 110-year old power plant is a historical landmark and since it was put out of commission the owners have been discussing what to do with it. Now, a grant has been approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to convert the building into a cryptocurrency mining facility that will run 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

It is unclear what the facility will be specifically mining, but all in all the residents in Montana are happy with the decision due to the building requiring very minimal changes, ultimately keeping its historical value. The proposal sent the FERC says "minimal impact and maintain the historic character of the building."

In a massive win for Bitcoin, authorities were able to use the bitcoin ledger to locate and apprehend an enormous child porn website operator and 337 pedophiles from several countries.

To many who are not well versed in how cryptocurrency works, it has always had a veil of shrouded secrecy or nefarious undertones. In reality, transactions via bitcoin are far more traceable than cash transactions. I'm sure this will come to a surprise for many of you, but as the story progresses, I will do my best to explain how this all works in a basic form.

The dark web child pornography site labeled "welcome to video" was operated by a Korean citizen identified as Jong Woo Son. Washington D.C.investigators just uncovered this information as they were able to trace and deanonymize Bitcoin transactions to the dark web, based website.

UNICEF now accepts donations made in both Bitcoin and Ether, with the United Nations charity now accepting both cryptocurrencies moving forward -- and is the first UN organization to accept crypto.

There are no fees when donating cryptocurrency to UNICEF, which will be a plus for donors who would traditionally pay fees with other payment methods. UNICEF won't be cashing out its cryptocurrency holdings and making money at the top like traders and HODLers do, but will instead keep the Bitcoin or Ether, or send it as funds to a charity for them to use.

By using cryptocurrencies in Bitcoin and Ether it will see UNICEF being transparent with its transactions, and it will also see charities receiving more of the donations it receives without taking percentages away in normal transaction fees.

Facebook is still slowly developing their own crytocurrency and to ensure that its a stable and clean coin once it arrives in the public's hands, the company is offering anyone up to $10,000 to find bugs or errors within it.

For those that don't know why bug testing is crucial before the coin arrives on the market, its extremely difficult to provide fixes once the coin has arrived on the blockchain. Since the company is aiming at squashing all the bugs before they launch the coin, they will be offering anyone up to $10,000 per bug depending on how severe the bug is.

Users that are interested in testing the infrastructure of Libra can do so by accessing it via its official hub page on HackerOne. Users will be required to make a HackerOne account and will be rewarded in either real-world currencies or digital currencies for their findings. Head on over to HackerOne to sign-up and find some of Facebook's flaws, here.

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