Cryptocurrency & Mining - Page 26

As trust in retail trading implodes over the r/Wallstreetbets $GME saga, people are looking at cryptocurrency, but it's not Bitcoin making the significant gains today. Doge is now the 8th largest cryptocurrency with a market cap of over $8.4 billion.

Usually, what "the internet" says doesn't really work as a collective mouthpiece, but sometimes enough people rally around an idea that it feels like a consensus; like the GameStop stock fiasco that's going on right, which has celebrities,

politicians, and billionaires alike rallying against hedge funds. Well, if you were caught up in the GME excitement today, you might have missed that the meme-based cryptocurrency, Dogecoin, has shot through the roof today.

If Kim Dotcom is to believed, Bitcoin will replace the USD as the world's reserve currency by 2030 -- so mining Bitcoin right now in a super-cold location with cheap power is a really, really good idea... and that's exactly what Russian crypto firm BitCluster is doing right now:

The company has built a new Bitcoin mining farm in the extreme cold environment of the Arctic Circle in the Siberian city of Norilsk. The city is a place that is called home to 180,000 people and has an insane 9-month-long winter which is why BitCluster built the Bitcoin mining farm there.

Norilsk will see temperatures plunge to -40C which is a big reason why BitCluster opened up the Bitcoin mining farm in the Arctic Circle, alongside power costs being considerably cheaper. The economy of Norilsk has been driven by nickel mining for many years but that might change as the city is powered by an independent power grid that is 25% cheaper than the rest of Russia -- so we should expect more mining firms to follow in the steps of BitCluster.

Kim Dotcom has come out swinging, with the MEGA founder tweeting out that within the next 10 years "the USD will be replaced by Bitcoin as the world's reserve currency".

He started off by saying "After WW2 the US was the largest holder of gold and other countries linked their currencies to USD. The gold standard is long gone but 61% of all foreign bank reserves and 40% of global debt are in USD. That's why the US had the luxury of printing USD to finance its debt".

But then it swung directly into cryptocurrency as the answer, where he replied to his original tweet saying: "Within the next 10 years the USD will be replaced by Bitcoin as the world's reserve currency. Nations can no longer rely on USD because of out of control US debt and excessive USD printing by the US for its own benefit. The fall of US Empire is near. Experts know and buy Bitcoin".

Bitcoin has been going kinda crazy in the last few months, but it has been doing some truly lambo moves as it broke $30,000 and then $33,000 -- and now Bitcoin has even breached $35,000.

But now we have JPMorgan Chase & Co throwing fuel onto the crypto fire, with strategists at JPMorgan saying that Bitcoin could skyrocket up to $146,000 in its "long-term target". At the time of writing, Bitcoin was sitting steady at around $35,330 or so.

The JPMorgan strategists explained: "A crowding out of gold as an 'alternative' currency implies big upside for Bitcoin over the long term, a convergence in volatilities between Bitcoin and gold is unlikely to happen quickly and is in our mind a multiyear process. This implies that the above-$146,000 theoretical Bitcoin price target should be considered as a long-term target, and thus an unsustainable price target for this year".

One of the stories from last week blew up, with Simon Byrne and his huge 78 x GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card crypto mining rig. But now... it has RGB lighting turned on and it is the most beautiful personal mine I've ever seen. Check it out:

But now the story has changed a bit, as the price of Bitcoin has exploded up to $34,000 -- as too as Ethereum. This means that those early numbers of around $10,000 per month or $128,000 per year are a little on the low side, and Bryne would now be making up in excess of $20,000 per month and around $250,000+ per year.

Byrne's total mining system power is 143 GPUs with 28.46 kW of power consumption, 9.665GH/s of ETH mining power -- and around $900 profit per day... all with RGB lighting on top!

Bitcoin was flirting with $30,000 on the edge of 2021 but it easily broke $30,000 and went up and above to a new all-time high of just over $33,000 before stabilizing at around $32,000 at the time of writing.

With this meteoric rise to $33,000 it means that Bitcoin is more valuable than some of the largest companies in the world, with BTC market value at around $580 billion. To put it into comparison TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) is worth $488 billion, Tesla Motors is worth $668 billion, Facebook is worth $778 billion, Alphabet (Google) is worth $1.18 trillion and Apple at a whopping $2.25 trillion.

Read more: Bitcoin's new all-time high close to $30,000: could tip over by 2021

Russian natural gas giant Gazprom is getting into a new business: Bitcoin mining. The company is using the oil and gas reserves in Mother Russia to mine Bitcoin.

The company is Russia's gas monopolist and world's 10th-biggest oil producer, with Gazprom leading up major projects with cross-border gas pipelines like the Nord Stream and the South Stream, which delivers gas from Europe to Russia. But now, Gazprom is pushing into crypto mining with its direct subsidiary Gazpromneft.

Gazpromneft's new facility is in Khanty-Mansiysk region of northwestern Siberia, and is using local gas from oil fields as the energy source -- not only that, but it has its own power plant that is transforming that gas, into electricity. All of this is for mining Bitcoin.

John McAfee very famously said back in 2017 that he predicted Bitcoin would be "$500,000 by the end of 2020" and that if he didn't, he would "eat my dick if wrong".

Bitcoin has just reached a new all-time high of $29,000 and could soon breach $30,000 but we're not quite at the $500,000 level where McAfee would like it. Far from it -- but McAfee did promise he'd eat his own meat if BTC wasn't at $500,000 by the end of 2020 -- where it would need to burst out 10x over its current price to reach $500K.

Bitcoin has been rallying right up to $29,000 in the last 24 hours hitting a new all-time high but not quite breaching the $30,000 barrier -- but there's still around 24 hours left of 2020.

BTC had a high volume push right through the $28,500 resistance level, and now the new sights are on the juicy $30,000 target. Material Indicators have data that shows there are large sell walls at the $30,000 level at major cryptocurrency exchanges like Binance.

But what happens once BTC breaches $30K?

As the price of Bitcoin (BTC) hits a new all-time high, the prices of bitcoin mining machines are also going up -- around 35% since the beginning of November.

Bitmain and Microbt are reportedly totally out of bitcoin mining rigs until at least May 2021, which is 6 months away. This means that knowing there's no new mining machines arriving for 6 months, demand for machines is as solid as it can be -- and now miners are looking at second hand market to pick up hardware.

John Lee Quigley on Hashr8 explained that "everybody is bullish on bitcoin and the rise in the price of mining machines is certainly reflecting that". He adds that Marathon Patent Group got its hands-on a "purchase agreement for latest-generation" mining rigs that include 6000 x Antminer S-19J Pro mining rigs that will arrive in August 2021, and 4000 in September 2021.

Pornhub enacted the "most comprehensive safeguards in user-generated platform history" when it purged millions of videos from its website that were uploaded by unverified uploaders.

The company saw Visa and MasterCard remove support for payments on their website, so Pornhub turned to cryptocurrency almost instantly. Pornhub is now crypto-exclusive in the US, UK, Australia, Singapore, and other markets -- where credit cards will no longer work as they're not accepted.

Pornhub is the 10th biggest website on the internet, with 42 billion visitors in 2019 alone. The site estimates that over 11,000 hours of video is watched per minute, with traffic to Pornhub going on a stiff incline over millions more people being glued to their homes because of the on-going COVID-19 pandemic worldwide.

The price of Bitcoin has hit a new all-time high. The $20,000 barrier has been smashed, and the top cryptocurrency is now worth over $22,000 per coin.

Just a month ago, it was big news that Bitcoin was back up to $19,000, approaching its all-time high of just shy of $20,000 in December 2017. Today, $19,000 is old news. We're in new territory with the cryptocurrency now trading well north of that $20k mark.

On December 16, 2020, Bitcoin's price finally crept past $20,000, which seems to have ignited a new fire of speculative investors. Within hours of breaking the psychological barrier of $20,000, the price shot up beyond $21,000. While I was writing this article, the ticker on Bittrex.com peaked at $22,922. Although, before I could hit publish the price started to plummet again, with it now below $22,000 again. Bitcoin is nothing if not volatile!

Pizza Hut is now accepting payments for pizza and other foods and drinks in-store in Venezuela, with digital assets firm CryptoBuyer announced as the payment partner in Venezuela.

Venezuelan pizza-buying customers can use bitcoin, dash, and XPT -- which is CryptoBuyer's own token, to buy pizza at Pizza Hut. Richard Elkhouri, CEO of Pizza Hut in Venezuela explained: "Today Pizza Hut is trying to go hand in hand with technological innovation, with the support of what technology offers every day to be able to maintain ourselves and evolve in the market".

As for payment partner CryptoBuyer, they are a startup based out of Panama, and have been operating in Latein America since 2015. CryptoBuyer has been acting as a point-of-sale and cryptocurrency ATM service provider in the region. But recent economic issues with hyperinflation, etc, Venezuela is in dire need of a change in methods of payment and value of currency -- this is where cryptocurrency steps in.

Bitcoin has had a huge 6 months, with the father of all cryptocurrencies flying upwards by 120% since May 2020 -- reaching $19,196 at the time of writing.

BTC was at $18,059 just over 24 hours ago and is now at a 24-hour high of $19,146 -- with it just over $800 away from its all-time high of $20k. This is the first time Bitcoin has been above $19,000 in over 3 years -- where it was last at this point in December 2017.

It seems Bitcoin will be ringing in the New Year with an all-time high, hell it could happen in the next couple of days or even today. Just a few weeks ago PayPal announced it would allow cryptocurrency for buying, selling, shopping in 2021 -- and then not even two weeks ago PayPal allowed all US users to buy, sell, hold cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.

It wasn't even a month ago that PayPal announced that it would let its customers use cryptocurrencies and hold them in their wallets, but it has just delivered crypto support to all US accounts.

At first, PayPal made crypto-capable payments and holdings in a small batch of users but it has now opened the crypto floodgates to all US users of PayPal to now buy, sell, and and hold bitcoin, etherum, litecoin, and bitcoin cash.

Not just that, but PayPal said that in "select international markets in the first half of 2021" the company will have cryptocurrency into Venmo, which will see users paying merchants with their cryptocurrencies in their wallet. The way this will work is the transaction will take place between cryptocurrencies, with the digital currency converted to fiat.

The world is going through some major changes right now because of COVID-19, but PayPal allowing cryptocurrencies across their merchants in 2021 is some major news.

Reuters reports that PayPal Holdings Inc will allow its customers to use cryptocurrencies in order to buy, sell, and hold bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies using your PayPal wallet. PayPal President and Chief Executive Dan Schulman said in an interview: "We are working with central banks and thinking of all forms of digital currencies and how PayPal can play a role".

Schulman said that PayPal hopes to see its new cryptocurrency service to kick start the use of cryptocurrencies around the world, and prepare its network for new digital currencies that may be developed by central banks and corporations.

How much power does the global bitcoin mining systems of the world consume? A freaking lot. According to new studies, bitcoin-related power consumption has hit new highs in 2020.

Bitcoin-related power consumption chews over 7 gigawatts of power, with a new study from the Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance saying that the global bitcoin mining industry uses 7.64 GW of power -- equivalent to around 63.32 terawatt-hours of energy consumption.

With power costs of around $0.03 to $0.05 per kWh in 2020, March estimations had around $4000 in profits with the March 2020 price of bitcoin at around $7500. That's not bad, but you need the super-low power prices and enough ASICs to do it.

A new cryptocurrency mining facility is about to have the lights turned on, and crypto mining insanity begin -- with mining facility operator Enegix teasing its huge new 180-megawatt (MW) data center for mining pools opening in September 2020.

The new mining facility has been built in Ekibastuz, Kazakhstan -- close to the Russian border. Enegix sales director Dmitriy Ivanov said that the facility can host up to 50,000 mining rigs -- where if packed at full capacity with Bitmain AntMiner S19 series or MicroBT WhatsMiner M30 -- it would have around 4% of Bitcoin's current hashrate at a huge 5-6 EH/s.

Enegix's new facility will hire over 160 people, ranging between engineers, electricians, and security. It's not the first in Enegix's history, as it has 2 mining facilities already, but the new one in Ekibastuz is its largest so far.

Can you believe that it has been 3 years since John McAfee famously said he'd eat his own dick on national television if the price of Bitcoin wasn't $1 million. Well, those 3 years have flown past -- and we're finally here, but no dick-eating on national TV is happening just yet.

McAfee first said he predicted Bitcoin to be priced at $500,000 by the end of 2020, but that predicted was from a model that predicted $5000 by the end of 2017. BTC had accelerated "much faster" than his "model assumptions" so he changed his prediction to Bitcoin hitting $1 million by the end of 2020 and that he would "still eat my own dick if wrong".

McAffee tweeted the news 3 years ago, with some repliying to make sure he meant that he thought 1 BTC would be worth $500,000 in 3 years. His reply: "if not, I will eat my dick on national television"... and now, the internet is trolling him.

Can you imagine paying $45 million for a single pizzas? Yeah, me either -- but Laszlo Hanyecz did such a thing on May 22, 2010 -- buying a single pizza for 10,000 bitcoin.

May 22 is now known as "Bitcoin Pizza Day" because of it, with the 10,000 bitcoins at $9500 today, translating to a gigantic $45 million on just a single pizza. Hanyecz is known as the first person to use bitcoin in a commercial transaction, buying two pizzas with 10,000 bitcoins back 10 years ago now.

The transaction was 10,000 BTC -- which today is worth over $90 million. Back on May 22, 2010, Hanyecz write on the BitcoinTalk forum: "I just want to report that I successfully traded 10,000 bitcoins for pizza".