Cryptocurrency & Mining - Page 20

I don't know why, but someone has just paid $11.8 million for a non-fungible token (NFT) of a digital artwork called a CryptoPunk.

CryptoPunk #7523 is described as a "sought-after Alien variety with blue-green skin, and wearing a medical mask" according to Reuters, and was purchased with bitcoin, with the transaction taking place through Sotheby's, adding that "CryptoPunks are a set of 10,000 pixel-art characters made by Larva Labs in 2017".

Israeli entrepreneur Shalom Meckenzie, who is the largest shareholder of digital sports company DraftKings, is the one who purchased the CryptoPunk #7523 NFT. CryptoPunk #7523 was part of Sotherby's online auction Natively Digital: A Curated NFT Sale.

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele put himself in the direct center of the crypto world with his country becoming the first in the world to accept Bitcoin as legal tender. This has caused gigantic tsunami-level waves, shaking the cages of the International Monetary Fund.

The IMF is now stepping in and has said that it is "closely" monitoring the movements by El Salvador, and that it has called for a meeting with El Salvador officials.

International Monetary Fund (IMF) spokesperson Gerry Rice said: "adoption of bitcoin as legal tender raises a number of macroeconomic, financial and legal issues that require very careful analysis so we are following developments closely and will continue our consultation with authorities".

A congressional hearing for the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee's Subcommittee on Economic Policy is taking place -- with Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren saying some choice words about cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin mining.

Warren said there are 4 "significant problems" with cryptocurrencies, which are its fluctuating value, investment issues, illegal activity, and of course -- its cost to the environment.

Warren said: "Cryptocurrency has created opportunities to scam investors, assist criminals and worsen the climate crisis. The threats posed by crypto show that Congress and federal regulators can't continue to hide out, hoping that crypto will go away. It won't. It's time to confront these issues head-on".

In one of the most stupid things to have been an "accident", the private keys of sophisticated hax0r group DarkSide were left on a cloud server... the private keys to their $4.5 million in Bitcoin it was paid by Colonial Pipeline CEO in a ransomware attack that took down a huge percentage of US Southeast fuel supplies... so the FBI secured them, and didn't need the help of Coinbase.

Or at least, that's what authorities, the FBI, the US Department of Justice, and mainstream media are telling us. Well, I'm not biased and I'm not paid to say a single word that isn't from my own independent thought -- and this story smells like horse sh*t.

The FBI says that they recovered most of the millions of dollars paid in ransomware, but how in the hell did they get the private keys that gave them access to the wallets where DarkSide hackers "hid" their Bitcoin? Just how did they do that?

Chinese authorities have arrested over 1100 people involved in money laundering using cryptocurrency, all from phone and internet scams over the years.

The Ministry of Public Security has said that last month three industry bodies in China banned crypto-related financial and payment services. By the middle of the week, Chinese authorities had arrested over 170 criminal groups that were using cryptocurrency to launder money.

The criminals were charging somewhere between 1.5% and 5% to launder the illegal money they were receiving, converting it into cryptocurrencies through crypto exchanges. The public security ministry announced the news on its official Wechat account.

I can safely say I didn't see this coming -- but super-pro-crypto El Salvador President Nayib Bukele has just instructed the president of their state-owned geothermal electric company, LaGeo, to start offering facilities for Bitcoin mining with super-cheap energy from El Salvador's volcanoes.

Yes, you read that right -- the president of El Salvador is going to be using volcanoes for Bitcoin mining farms, as they offer super-cheap, 100% clean, 100% renewable, 0 emissions energy. Bitcoin and crypto mining farms in general, consume giant amounts of power... so why not tap into volcanoes for energy I guess?

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele tweeted out the news, following up that LaGeo engineers have "just informed me that they dug a new well, that will provide approximately 95MW of 100% clean, 0 emissions geothermal energy from our volcanos. Starting to design a full Bitcoin mining hub around it. What you see coming out of the well is pure water vapor".

El Salvador has just entered the history books as the world's first country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender, with President Nayib Bukele proposing a law to adopt Bitcoin -- and now Congress has approved the Bitcoin Law with 62 out of a possible 84 votes.

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies can now be used by Salvadorans living overseas, where they send money back home to their family and loved ones. This is a big deal as 70% of Salvadorans don't have a bank account, living outside of the fiat-based currency system -- whereas Bitcoin and cryptocurrency can be used anywhere as long as you have an internet connection.

The country will begin accepting Bitcoin as legal tender in 90 days, and it will be completely optional to Salvadorans. The government will be guaranteeing convertibility to dollars at the time of the transaction, which will be done through BANDESAL -- El Salvadore's development bank. The exchange rate with the US dollar "will be freely established by the market" according to the Bitcoin Law.

Last month Bitcoin's value took a major dive after China banned mining and Elon Musk announced that Tesla was no longer accepting Bitcoin as payment for its electric vehicles.

After making some steady gains, Bitcoin has taken another hit as the price of the cryptocurrency dived by 11% in just 24 hours. The drop occurred on Tuesday after the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it seized $2.3 million worth of Bitcoin that was related to a cyberattack on the Colonial Pipeline. The cyberattack shut down the US's largest gas line, and according to the DOJ, 63.7 Bitcoins were retrieved from the hacking group named DarkSide.

Forbes reports that the DOJ was able to retrieve the Bitcoin from the hacking group by, "reviewing bitcoin's public ledger, locating the transaction and using a private key to access the tokens." At the moment, it remains unclear exactly how the DOJ was able to get the private key to get access to the Bitcoins. Nicholas Weaver, a cybersecurity professor at the University of California at Berkeley, has said that the DOJ effectively hacked the hackers, which is something that has yet to occur in the cryptocurrency space until now.

1% of Bitcoin's total supply, worth approximately $6.2 billion, has been successfully tokenized on the Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) protocol.

The news comes from Kia Mosayeri, who is the product manager of crypto custody firm BitGo. According to Mosayeri, 1% of Bitcoin's total supply has successfully been brought over to the Ethereum blockchain via WBTC. CoinGecko states that there is currently 18.73 million Bitcoin currently in circulation, and 1% of those, or 182,610 BTC are now on the WBTC protocol.

Additionally, BTConEthereum has estimated that around 240,620 Bitcoins have been converted to tokens via various protocols, which equates to a total market capitalization of $7.91 billion. However, 78% of tokenized Bitcoin on Ethereum is WBTC. If you are interested in reading any more about this story, or stories similar to this one, check out this link here.

Former President of the United States Donald Trump has recently slammed Bitcoin, saying that the cryptocurrency "just seems like a scam".

The former president recently appeared on Fox Business, where he was asked his thoughts on cryptocurrency. Trump doubled down on his long-standing opinion on Bitcoin, saying that "it just seems like a scam," and he doesn't like that it's competing with the US dollar. Back in 2019, while Trump was still in office, he was asked his thoughts on cryptocurrency, and he said that the value of the coins is based on "thin air".

Additionally, Trump allegedly told the now-former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin to "go after Bitcoin," and in Trump's final days of office, his administration, as well as the Treasury, sought to implement regulations to wallets. President Biden has now expanded on these proposed regulations and is currently backed by the Internal Revenue Service who is looking to squash anyone who is using cryptocurrencies as an avenue to avoid tax. For more information on this story, check out this link here.

Colonial Pipeline was hacked last month, with the largest US fuel pipeline operator shutting down around 45% of its network of fuel supply across the US east coast in May 2021 over a cyberattack.

The attack was from ransomware group DarkSide that held Colonial Pipeline by the balls, forcing the company to pay the hackers $4.4 million in bitcoin on the day of breach in order for DarkSide to return the keys to decrypt its network. Colonial Pipeline Co. CEO Joseph Blount told The Wall Street Journal himself that his company complied with DarkSide's orders, paying $4.4 million in bitcoin as ransom.

President Biden has of course blamed Russia, saying the US government has "strong reason to believe" that these "criminals" were living in Russia -- but the Biden administration added it doesn't think the Russian government was involved.

The world thought Elon Musk was joking around when he said "SpaceX is going to put a literal Dogecoin on the literal moon" on April 1, 2021... but he was serious... and now he's going to be beaten to the punch by BitMEX + literal Bitcoin on the literal moon.

BitMEX has announced that it will be teaming with space robotics company Astrobotic Technology, where it will be sending its first commercial lander to the Moon in Q4 2021 -- and BitMEX will be strapping a physical crypto wallet with a single bitcoin to it, and it will be taken to the surface of the Moon.

In a blog post on its website, the crypto exchange takes a large swipe at SpaceX and Tesla founder -- and major Dogecoin enthusiast, Elon Musk. BitMEX starts off its post, saying: "One Dogecoin protagonist / EV car innovator / space enthusiast recently laid down the gauntlet in saying he plans to send Doge to the Moon. We've nothing against Dog Money, we felt it was only right to help bitcoin get there first".

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has been very vocal about his support for cryptocurrencies, and now Musk has said that he agrees with an Ethereum co-founder over upgrading a meme-cryptocurrency. 



Artificial intelligence researcher and podcaster Lex Fridman recently had Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin on his podcast, where he asked Buterin a series of questions regarding cryptocurrency. One of the many topics that were covered on the podcast was improvements to the meme-cryptocurrency Dogecoin. Fridman asked if Dogecoin could be upgraded to "beat bitcoin hands down", to which Buterin said, "If doge wants to somehow bridge to ethereum and then people can trade doge thousands of times a second ... that would be amazing."

Additionally, Fridman said, "There's a power behind someone like Elon Musk pushing the development of a cryptocurrency, is there a way to leverage that power and momentum to improve ethereum?" Buterin replied by saying, "I think if we can have a secure doge to ethereum bridge that would be amazing and then when ethereum gets any scalability that works for ethereum assets you would be able to trade wrapped doge with very low transaction fees and very high speed as well."

Google has announced that it will be allowing companies to start blasting cryptocurrency ads in August, after an initial ban on crypto-related advertising that started in 2018.

The new crypto-friendly ad policy will apply globally to Google searches, as well as third-party sites that include YouTube, Gmail, and others. We should expect a decent uptick over the years with crypto ads being offered, with Google pulling in a gigantic $147 billion in revenue in advertising in the last year alone.

Back in 2018, we saw Google follow social media giants Facebook and Twitter with their collective stance of banning crypto-related ads... although that was watered down pretty quick, but a lot has changed in the last few years when it comes to cryptocurrency.

Well, we're living in a world where anti-virus software is now automatically mining cryptocurrency in the background of your PC -- with the Norton 360 security suite to soon mine cryptocurrency Ethereum for you.

Norton 360 is being updated with a new tool called Norton Crypto, which will let you mine Ethereum and make money from your PC. Vincent Pilette, CEO of NortonLifeLock explains: "As the crypto economy continues to become a more important part of our customers' lives, we want to empower them to mine cryptocurrency with Norton, a brand they trust. Norton Crypto is yet another innovative example of how we are expanding our Cyber Safety platform to protect our customers' ever-evolving digital lives".

When you've got Norton Crypto enabled and mining, it will mine Ethereum (ETH) when your PC is idle... so if you're using the PC it'll be yours -- but when it's idle, it will mine crypto. You'll be able to track your crypto mining earnings, and even move your cryptocurrency into the Norton Crypto Wallet which is stored in the cloud.

El Salvador's president wants to see cryptocurrency as legal tender in the country, with President Nayib Bukele says Bitcoin being used in El Salvador is a great thing -- and would see the country become the first in the world to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender.

President Bukele says Bitcoin will help Salvadorans living overseas send money home much easier than the traditional fiat-based system, as those living outside of the financial world can't access that money. But cryptocurrency can be accessed from a laptop and internet connection from anywhere in the world, and to the 70% of Salvadorans that live outside of the fiat-based system (they don't have bank accounts).

President Bukele tweeted that Bitcoin has a market cap of $680 billion, and that if just 1% was invested in his country their GDP would increase by 25%. The other side of that he says is that Bitcoin would have up to 10 million more users, and the fastest-growing way to transfer $6 billion per year in remittances.

Anonymous have a warning for SpaceX and Tesla boss Elon Musk, after his wild west tweets about cryptocurrency and especially Bitcoin and Dogecoin. Check it out:

Anonymous isn't happy with the amount of power Musk has amassed over the years, especially with a silver spoon out of his mouth. He has the power to swing cryptocurrency markets by hundreds of billions of dollars at a time, or so it seems from the outside

In the video, Anonymous takes shots at Musk saying "people are beginning to see you as nothing more than another narcissistic rich dude who is desperate for attention. It appears that your quest to save the world is more rooted in a superiority and savior complex than it is in actual concern for humanity".

President Biden is making some big moves to crack down on cryptocurrency tax evaders, as well as bring in more IRS regulations.

President Biden has unveiled his Fiscal Year 2022 Revenue Proposals. The main goal of the new proposal is to catch people that are evading taxes with cryptocurrency and add more Internal Revenue Service (IRS) oversight to cryptocurrency exchanges. Currently, cryptocurrency exchanges are required by law to collect your personal information and provide the IRS with a Form 1099-Ks report of your cryptocurrency activities if you hold more than $20,000 in gross volume and perform 200 or more transactions in a year.

However, that is the current rule. Biden's new plan aims at lowering the gross volume threshold down to $600 and allows for the IRS to have much more oversight over the exchanges. On top of that, the proposed guidance from Biden pushes for cryptocurrency exchanges to provide the IRS with more user activity information such as "gross purchases, physical cash, payments to and from foreign accounts, and transfer inflows and outflows", according to Forbes.

When Bitcoin dove in price, most of the alt-coins begun to suffer as well, Dogecoin was no exception, but now the meme-cryptocurrency has started to pick up some traction.

On June 2, Dogecoin gained by more than 40% in the early morning after it was listed on Coinbase Pro, the pro-trader app from Coinbase. The listing caused a spark that lit the coin's value pumping on June 1, as it jumped from $0.3137 up to $0.4398 overnight. Dogecoin is trading on Coinbase Pro in the following trading pairs; DOGE/USD, DOGE/BTC, DOGE/EUR, DOGE/GBP, and DOGE/USDT.

On top of the announcement from Coinbase, Tesla CEO and Dogecoin supporter Elon Musk shared a meme to his personal Twitter account on the same day as the announcement. The meme can be seen above, and judging by the number of likes, comments, and retweets it received, it's safe to assume that Elon's tweet assisted, in some way, the increase in the value of the coin. For more information on this story, check out this link here.

I think the entire world knows that SpaceX and Tesla boss Elon Musk is a huge Dogecoin enthusiast, but would he go to a DogeFest if that were a thing? Yep.

Twitter account @itsALLrisky tweeted out asking the world would they go to a Doge Festival, later calling it DogeFest. They said that in order for DogeFest to happen they would need Elon Musk to be the DJ, Musk's partner and the mother of his child Grimes along with Snoop Dogg would need to perform.

Not only that, but DogeFest would have a BYOD policy -- or Bring Your Own Dog, while Mark Cuban needs to be an investor... and of course, of course, Dogecoin would be used as a "payment for everything" at DogeFest.