Cryptocurrency & Mining News - Page 20

Your day starts out by preparing for a raid on a dangerous facility where you're about to bust the doors down on an illegal marijuana farm, but then the doors get kicked down and all you can hear is the buzzing of a bunch of computers running instead.

That's what happened when the Spanish National Police discovered massive amounts of electricity being used, but the facility was illegally hooked up to the electricity grid. Once authorities were there, they discovered it wasn't a weed farm but a crypto farm instead.

Spanish National Police explained (through machine translation): "Police investigations began on a possible indoor marijuana plantation that could be located in some stables located in Santiponce. After carrying out the first inquiries, the agents realized that the existing indications did not correspond to the cultivation of marijuana, but rather that these facilities could be hosting a cryptocurrency farm of which there are hardly any records in Spain".

Bitcoin has been in a steady decline since its all-time high of $69,000 back in November, but the digital asset seems to have stopped dropping in value despite the fear-uncertainty-and-doubt (FUD) that plagues global finance markets.

There are many reasons for the continuous decrease in value for Bitcoin since November 2021, and most of them are macro factors that are playing out across global financial markets. One big macro factor is the Federal Reserve considering hiking up interest rates four times over the course of 2022 in a bid to combat inflation. Not only has the cryptocurrency markets taken a hit from this news, but so has the US stock market.

Some analysts believe that the "bottom" for Bitcoin's price has already arrived ($35,000 to $38,000 range), with technical analyst John Bollinger writing on Twitter on January 25, "It's time to start thinking about a bottom in cryptos." Bollinger goes on to say that his personal plan is to wait for this bottom to be apparent and re-enter the market once it's confirmed that the downtrend has stopped.

Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, has suggested via his blog that NFTs should evolve into being "soulbound" like items in World of Warcraft (WoW).

Buterin took to his website on January 26 to discuss the topic of "soulbound" NFTs, and comparing NFTs to items in World of Warcraft. Buterin explains that NFTs in their current form are similar to items in an MMORPG such as WoW as they "social signaling value: people who have them can show them off, and there's more and more tools precisely to help users do that". An example of this would be Twitter recently integrating NFTs and allowing for users to display them as a profile picture.

The Ethereum co-founder goes on to explain that when someone shows off a current NFT that can be purchased or obtained by doing "X" there is no way of knowing that person who is selling the NFT obtained it by doing "X", or just paid someone else for it. Buterin suggests the "proof of attendance protocol (POAP)", which, as he explains, is a protocol that "represents the idea that the recipient personally participated in some event."

China is planning on rolling out blockchain technology across businesses and government organizations - the process is being fast-tracked.

According to a notice published by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), a large in-house effort is being made by the CAC with other government agencies and regulatory authorities to create the infrastructure needed to "form a large-scale production-level cross-chain data exchange support capability, and promote the formation of a multi-party collaborative blockchain industry ecology." The effort will span across 15 zones and 164 entities.

As Cointelegraph reports, China plans on this blockchain infrastructure initiative to effect the following; "manufacturing, energy, government data sharing and services, law enforcement, taxation, criminal trials, inspection, copyright, civil affairs, human society, education, healthcare, trade finance, risk control management, equity market and cross-border finance."

One user has managed to purchase a Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT for tens of thousands less than the price it originally listed for (floor price).

According to a report from Decrypt, Twitter user Tballer announced that he had "lost an ape" and that he began to cry when he had realized what had happened. Tballer's ape sold to "jpegdegenlove" for just 0.77 Ethereum (ETH), which is about $1,700. Additionally, the same buyer also purchased two more BAYC NFTs, one for around $14,000 and another for around $50,800. Notably, the floor price or starting price for a BAYC NFT is 86 ETH, or around $200,000 (at the time this was written).

So, how did this happen? After a group of Twitter users got together on a thread to work out how it was possible that these Bored Apes sold for less than the floor price it was discovered that TBaller, and some other users attempting to sell their NFTs didn't pay the correct amount in Ethereum gas fees to completely de-list their NFT from the marketplace. Instead, these users chose to use OpenSea's "transfer" feature.

Some members of the Trump family have been made aware of the existence of cryptocurrency that uses their family name.

Eric Trump took to Twitter to announce a "Fraud alert" for a cryptocurrency called "TrumpCoin" that uses the ticker symbol $TRUMP. Eric Trump goes on to write that this cryptocurrency project has nothing to do with the Trump family, and that they "do not authorize the use and we are in no way affiliated with this group." Eric concludes his tweet by writing that "legal action will be taken".

Notably, the TrumpCoin is a meme cryptocurrency, which means it has been created as a joke, holds no inherent utility or value. In response to the tweet from Eric Trump, the TrumpCoin Twitter account posted a screenshot of its website that states that "TrumpCoin" is in no way owned, operated, endorsed, or affiliated with Donald Trump, the Trump Organization, or any other organization owned and/or operated by Donald J. Trump or any of his affiliates.

A 24-year-old Canberra, Australia-born cryptocurrency fraudster, has explained why he stole $123 million from investors in a tell-all interview before going to prison for 7 years.

Stefan Qin sat down for a tell-all interview with EST Media to discuss his motives behind stealing $123 million from investors and what the money was spent on. Qin explains that after dropping out of the University of New South Wales in 2016 and moving to China, he began getting into cryptocurrency, where he worked at a crypto exchange. Qin created software and formed his own company Virgill Sigma Fund, which then received millions in funding from investors.

Qin goes on to explain his motivation for scamming investors, citing bullying and harassment that started in school and eventuated into "extreme depression and suicidal tendencies" by the time he entered high school, combined with the pressure of the "Asian community to be as successful as possible at all costs", and the pain he felt from his girlfriend cheating on him whom he was in love, led him to the mindset of deliberately misleading investors.

On January 23, a selection of cryptocurrency-based YouTube accounts was hacked, and videos were posted in an attempt to scam audiences.

Cointelegraph has reported that the following YouTube accounts were a victim of a hack; BitBoy Crypto, Altcoin Buzz, Box Mining, Floyd Mayweather, Ivan on Tech. Each of the hacked accounts had a video posted without the creator's permission that instructed viewers to send "USDT/USDC/BNB/ETH" to a wallet address that was in the description of the video in return for a new cryptocurrency called "OWCY".

Michael Gu, the creator behind the YouTube channel "Boxmining" spoke to Cointelegraph and said that it "seems like YouTube might be responsible" as he performed an internal virus sweep on his system that yielded zero results. Additionally, Gu posted on Twitter and said that he has two-factor authentication enabled, leading him to believe YouTube is responsible for the hack.

Since its all-time high of $69,000 in November last year, Bitcoin's price has been on a slow downtrend, with the cryptocurrency now dipping below the $35,000 mark.

The last week in the cryptocurrency market was a bloodbath of red sell candles with only a few select projects managing to make some increases in price. Decrypt reports that at the time of writing its post, Bitcoin was up 1.64% in the last 24 hours, and now as of 12:01 am Monday, January 24, Bitcoin's price is down 0.20% with 30.96% less trading volume. Notably, the cryptocurrency briefly dipped below the $35,000 support on Friday night, with orders being filled at $34,420.

Over a week, Bitcoin and Ethereum have decreased in price by 18.38% and 27.44%, respectively. Compared to all-time highs made back in November of last year, both of the digital assets' prices are significantly down, with some traders and holders pointing towards the Federal Reserve raising interest rates, inflation, and the COVID-19 Omicron variant contributing to the overall downtrend.

Despite the contentious topic of NFTs, Twitter has stepped forward and has announced it will be integrating blockchain technology into its platform.

The social media giant announced that Twitter users that participate in Twitter Blue will now be able to verify ownership of their NFT and use it as a profile picture on their account. At the moment, the new "NFT Profile PIctures" is only available on iOS and locked to individuals who have signed up for the "Labs" feature.

Additionally, Twitter stated that the new feature won't be available to all iOS users using Twitter Blue, only some as the company wants to gather valuable feedback from a select audience before rolling the new feature out to all iOS and eventually Android users. Once an NFT has been verified by a user it will be displayed as a "soft hexagon across all Twitter surfaces where your avatar is visible". On top of that, tapping on the profile picture will display information about the NFT, such as the creator, collection and more.