Cryptocurrency & Mining - Page 27

Microsoft might have just found one of the most interesting, and one of the most frightening ways of mining cryptocurrency -- with your body. This isn't the first time I've written about mining cryptocurrency with your body, either.

The company published a patent yesterday called "Cryptocurrency system using body activity data", which while it sounds strange, it sees Microsoft using "human body activity" to mine cryptocurrency. Microsoft explains it as "a brain wave or body heat emitted from the user when the user performs the task provided by an information or service provider, such as viewing an advertisement or using certain internet services, can be used in the mining process".

This could lead to a world where you could be paid for watching ads online or on TV, in cryptocurrency. Microsoft's interest new patent would see the crypto mining activity replacing the "massive computation work" that is required by normal cryptocurrency systems. The data that is taken from the body activity, would be regarded as Proof of Work "therefore, a user can solve the computationally difficult problem unconsciously". Oh, that doesn't sound creepy at all.

The world is going through a very scary time right now, with global markets in a complete panic -- with freefall events happening, which have pushed Bitcoin and virtually all other cryptocurrencies off a cliff.

Just overnight, Bitcoin (BTC) has seen a 40% change in its price -- where it enjoyed 2020 highs of just over $10,000 -- but overnight it has dropped to its knees and down to $4564 (at the time of writing) -- representing a 40.72% drop in its price. Even when Bitcoin was down 26% it represented the largest sell-off of BTC in over 7 years.

Altcoins aren't safe from this, with cryptocurrencies like Ethereum (ETH) dropping by an even larger 44%, down to just $105 from its 2020 highs of $284.

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

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".

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.