Cryptocurrency & Mining - Page 29

Even with Cboe powering forward and looking at offering futures on other tokens, they may be up for some serious competition sooner than we thought.

Bloomberg asked Jeffrey Sprecher, CEO of Intercontinental Exchange Inc, the owner of the New York Stock Exchange when cryptocurrency futures contracts will be offered on one of his exchanges he replied:

While Mark Zuckerberg sits on his booster seat at a Senate hearing, the Winklevoss twins are continuing with their crypto empire. This week they have announced that their Cryptocurrency exchange Gemini will launch Gemini Block Trading. Block trading is a feature which allows high volume trades to exist outside of Gemini's continuous order books and will only appear once the trade is complete. This helps lessen the impact on the market price for such large buy or sell orders. For example, if someone holds a large amount of bitcoin and would like to sell it without affecting the market price they would use a block trade and the trade would only appear once it is complete. The minimum trade quantity for a Gemini Block Trade is 10 BTC and 100 ETH.

This is fantastic news and helps preserve the ecosystem. The Winklevoss Twins are longtime advocates of crypto and have been doing their best to help the space progress for many years now. They also mentioned to Bloomberg that they are hoping to add more tokens to their exchange. Currently, they only have bitcoin and ethereum. Obvious candidates for expansion "are from the Satoshi Nakamoto family tree -- Bitcoin cash, Litecoin," Tyler Winklevoss said.

The world is sick of centralised entities taking advantage of our trust and complacency. Facebook is imploding, now the Centre For Digital Democracy has requested for the FTC to investigate Google's YouTube for the illegal collection of personal data from children. Centralised giants are being ousted one after the other. Snapchat, Facebook, Google, YouTube, Twitter, and even Reddit are all guilty of selling and/or suppressing information.

This is not the first time social media users have called for decentralised alternatives. Two years ago a blog on Steemit, a decentralised blogging and social media website that launched in July 2016, reported there were 5 up and coming decentralised social media platforms. None of them are yet to catch fire.

We had no reason to leave MySpace, it was amazing until Facebook came along and as much as social media users are pained by their personal data being sold and even manipulating their consumption of information, they have not been given an alternative.

Deconomy 2018 saw shots fired from both bitcoin (BTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) camps. Roger Ver (BCH advocate) accusing Samson Mow (BTC advocate) of setting back digital currency by years and crying out that babies are dying in third world countries because of not being able to help the unbanked quick enough and Samson Mow acting too cool for school. Even Vitalik Buterin of Ethereum taking aim at BCH advocate Craig Wright.

This whole fiasco bought up the question when we are trying to create a better world, why would we lower ourselves to fighting over which is better? One Reddit user responded to the question:

Venrock, the Rockefeller family's venture capital arm, have announced a strategic partnership with CoinFund, a three year old crypto investment group. Venrock partner, David Pakman went on fortune.com's 'Balancing the Ledger' and spoke to Robert Hackett and Jen Wieczner about the partnership.

A very congenial Pakman seemed incredibly fond of the crypto space, not something we thought we would hear from any old money families so soon. Pakman said he finds it too convenient that platforms such as Google and Mailchimp are blanket banning the crypto space rather than taking the time to find out who the bad actors are. He also went onto say that he has no problem with the current crypto exchanges acting as gatekeepers and using pay to play tactics as he believes that decentralised exchanges will disrupt this soon enough.

After the friendly and crypto-positive banter Pakman goes onto say that: "Venture capital itself is effectively a gatekeeper industry and I'd actually like to see that undone."

In February this year $170 million worth of a cryptocurrency called Nano (formerly known as RaiBlocks) seemingly vanished on an Italian cryptocurrency exchange called BitGrail.

BitGrail says that they were the victim of theft, and the hacker took advantage of malfunctions in the software made available by the Nano team and, therefore, are not responsible for the disappearance of Nano. Yet, Nano is singing a different tune and claim on their blog: "From our own preliminary investigation, no double spending was detected on the ledger and we have no reason to believe the loss was due to an issue in the Nano protocol. The problems appear to be related to BitGrail's software."

BitGrail is currently suspended and hasn't put out any communication on their website since mid-March and yet the Nano team are forging ahead although they are in for some trouble now that a class action lawsuit has been filed against them. Silver Miller, an American law firm that proclaims they are 'the leading cryptocurrency investor law firm in the country' state on their website:

One of my favourite privacy coins has managed to stay the hand of ASIC miners- for now. In March, the Chinese company Bitmain announced they were releasing an Antminer X3, which was specifically developed to mine Monero.

Fearing mass use of the kind of ASIC offered by Bitmain would make the network more centralized by forcing small-time miners using home PCs and other devices out, creator Riccardo Spagni said: "I will do everything in my power to help the community prevent the proliferation of centralisation-inducing ASICs on the Monero network."

And he did just that. The hashrate and difficulty has dropped dramatically over the past 48 hours. Unlike the BCH/BTC split, a new coin has not been created, this has purely been a fork to avoid ASIC miners bleeding the network. In true Spgagni style he tweeted out the fork had been successful.

Bitmain has been teasing its Ethereum ASIC miner for a while now, but the China-based Bitcoin mining company has finally unveiled their new Antminer E3 that will ship in July.

Bitmain's new Antminer E3 is limited to "one unit per user" which will stem huge mining farms from loading up on them, while the new Ethereum ASIC miner costs just $800 and has 180MH/s of mining power with Bitmain adding that they expect shipping-ready Antminer E3s will "deliver higher performance and efficiency when they are ready to ship".

The new Ethereum ASIC miner consumes just 800W of power, and with an $800 price tag and 180MH/s of hashing power, this will put a dent in GPU-based mining. An overclocked NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti can push around 35MH/s in Claymore mining Ethereum, so you'd need 5 of them overclocked to match a single Bitmain Antminer E3.

The entire Ethereum mining bubble could pop with the arrival of Ethereum ASIC miners, so during the Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) #958 on Github on March 30, Ethereum developer Piper Merriam talked about the idea of a hard fork in the Etheruem protocol, a move that would invalidate ETH ASICs.

This is a reaction to the news that Bitmain is working on the world's first Ethereum ASIC miner, with the Chinese ASIC manufacturer close to the release of its Ethereum ASIC miner. The Ethereum White Paper itself said that the ETH protocol itself features a two-fold resistance to mining centralization, something ETH ASICs would definitely usher in.

The first line of defense for the Ethereum algorithm is that it requires miners to return the hash for data that has been "randomly selected" from the transactions in the next block. Then you have to consider that "Ethereum contracts can include any kind of computation, an Ethereum ASIC would essentially be an ASIC for general computation - ie. a better CPU".

With all the changes happening to the GPU market because of cryptocurrency mining, Intel is looking to make a move into the Bitcoin mining world with a new patent the company has just filed.

Intel filed an application for a "Bitcoin Mining Hardware Accelerator With Optimized Message Digest and Message Scheduler Datapath" with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in September 2016, which teases the company is working on a Bitcoin mining accelerator, something that would see Bitcoin miners consume less electricity, providing far better ROI.

Intel wrote in the filing: "Because the software and hardware utilized in Bitcoin mining uses brute force to repeatedly and endlessly perform SHA-256 functions, the process of Bitcoin mining can be very power-intensive and utilize large amounts of hardware space. The embodiments described herein optimize Bitcoin mining operations by reducing the space utilized and power consumed by Bitcoin mining hardware".

We've been hearing rumbles of an Ethereum ASIC miner, something that seems to be right around the corner... eyeing off a release in the next couple of months at the latest.

According to Susquehanna analyst Christopher Rolland, who said in a note to investors: "Bitmain has already developed an ASIC [application-specific integrated circuit] for mining Ethereum, and is readying the supply chain for shipments in 2Q18. While Bitmain is likely to be the largest ASIC vendor (currently 70-80% of Bitcoin mining ASICs) and the first to market with this product, we have learned of at least three other companies working on Ethereum ASICs, all at various stages of development".

Rolland says that Bitmain's impending release of an Ethereum ASIC miner will hurt the demand for graphics cards, which are sold out across the world and ridiculously priced right now. The analyst expects NVIDIA and AMD to also take some hits in share prices, with AMD the worst affected by his claims.

Your data was never safe. Bitcoin was never safe. The blockchain itself was never safe. The US government made sure of that by tasking the NSA back in 2013 to track all users and information flowing through Bitcoin.

Edward Snowden is behind the new information, with The Intercept writing it up revealign that the NSA has been tracking Bitcoin users since 2013. Snowden has classified documentation that shows the NSA has access to the various fiber optic cables that have the entire of the internet running through them.

This gives the NSA near unlimited power, and with this power comes no responsibility as an internal NSA report said on March 15, 2013 that the US spy agency was interested in other cryptocurrencies as well, but "Bitcoin is #1 priority" reads the memo. Another memo from March 29, 2013 said that the NSA collected users passwords, internet history, and unique device information in the form of a Bitcoin user's MAC address.

Coca-Cola is swirling into a new direction in its stamp down on forced labor by adapting new friends in the technology space by teaming up with the US State Department, and a group of cryptocurrency organizations.

The soft drink giant has teamed with Bitfury Group, Blockchain Trust Accelerator, and Emercoin for a launch pilot project that will use blockchain technology to enforce worker rights. This would see Coca-Cola using blockchain's distributed ledger technology to form a secure, decentralized registry for workers and their contractors.

Coca-Cola is leading the initiative as they've promised 28 national studies on labor and land rights for its sugar supply chains by 2020. The US State Department will provide Coca-Cola with their expertise on labor protection, while both Bitfury Group and Emercoin will be making the blockchain platform.

TSMC is seeing their production facilities completely taken over for cryptocurrency chip production, with Q1 2018 demand currently at very high levels for 12/16nm GPUs and ASICs for cryptocurrency mining.

DigiTimes reports: "TSMC has obtained the majority of orders for custom ASICs for cryptocurrency mining, but tight supply at the foundry has prompted several ASIC developers, such as Baikal Miner, to shift their orders to Samsung Electronics", according to their sources.

Bitmain has continued to push cryptocurrency mining chip production, overflowing from their orders to request TSMC to make mining chips for them. Bitmain are the #1 Bitcoin mining solution in the world, and have been making chips at maximum capacity for months now.

It looks like all of the big players in the tech industry are banning cryptocurrency ads as a collective, with Google and Facebook already slamming down the cryptocurrency ad ban hammer.

The latest company that should join the crypto ad ban fray is Twitter, with Sky News reporting that the social network will soon impose a worldwide ban against ads for ICOs (initial coin offerings), cryptocurrency wallets and token sales, all in the next two weeks.

Twitter will most likely use the same reason Google and Facebook used, in that there are a variety of risks surrounding cryptocurrency and they're trying to protect people from scams. I think it should be enforced across all industries, as there are plenty of penis enlarging ads that are obviously total BS (trust me, I've spend tens of thousands) and yet I see these everywhere. Facebook and Twitter are filled with bots and total crap news for the most part, but it seems the spotlight is being focused on cryptocurrency.

Don't fear, Google is here. The search engine and everything else giant has announced that it is placing an outright ban on cryptocurrency-related advertising.

Google is updated its financial services-related advertising policies, which will see any advertising for cryptocurrency-related content, will be banned. Google's Director of Sustainable Ads, Scott Spencer, told CNBC that this will include "initial coin offerings (ICOs), wallets, and trading advice".

The new cryptocurrency-related advertising ban will go into effect in June 2018, with Spencer adding: "We don't have a crystal ball to know where the future is going to go with cryptocurrencies, but we've seen enough consumer harm or potential for consumer harm that it's an area that we want to approach with extreme caution".

Last year when I first started getting into crypto mining, my 40+ graphics cards were an amazing thing during the Australian winter (June-August), warming my entire house even on 2C mornings.

But now French startup Qarnot has unveiled their new QC-1, a crypto heater that generates heat while mining cryptocurrency. Qarnot's upcoming QC-1 will be powered by two of AMD's Radeon RX 580s - specifically, SAPPHIRE's Nitro RX 580.

QC-1 will consume up to 500W of power, and has been designed for 20m2. Qarnot says that the QC-1 will make around $120 per month at the current price of Ethereum.

I would cry for years if $2 million of PC hardware turned up in my office so that I could use it for mining cryptocurrency, especially after reading about 600 systems being stolen from data centers in Iceland.

The thieves broke into data centers in Iceland between December 2017 and January 2018, with local police commissioner telling the Associated Press that it was "a grand theft on a scale unseen before".

The theft has been described as "highly organized crime", and because Iceland has been a hot spot for cryptocurrency mining operations thanks to its reduced electricity costs and low temperatures across the country, these thefts could only get worse as there are significant investments in crypto mining across Iceland.

Legends Room is a Las Vegas strip club that opened up in May 2017, and has become one of the first strip clubs in the world to not just accept Bitcoin payments, but some strippers have QR code tattoos on their body for beyond easy payment.

There's even a Bitcoin ATM at the club, while the dancers will don QR tattoos with wallet addresses that can be scanned by your smartphone. Just how many customers pay with Bitcoin with the QR tattoos? According to Brenna Sparks, who works at Legends Room: "Oh, quite often. Like the people that come here, they are like really into crypto. I feel like it's very smart. They are really into that".

She continued: "It's fun though. Once you invest, it becomes an everyday thing. It's peer to peer. It's anonymous, and it's instant".

It seems that cryptocurrency jacking is the new thing, with Tesla Motors now hit not just once but twice - the first of which with cryptojacking, and then an exposure to data theft.

The electric car maker was hit by hackers recently, something security researchers at cloud security firm RedLock revealed. RedLock said that the unprotected Kubernetes console that Tesla owns saw hackers getting into their systems, and mining cryptocurrency.

Kubernetes is something Google designed, and is used to deploy and manage containerized apps in the enterprise market. Tesla was vulnerable to the hit, as the console was unsecured in their AWS (Amazon Web Services) environment. Varun Badhwar, CEO and co-founder of RedLock said: "We weren't the first to get to it. Clearly, someone else had launched instances that were already mining cryptocurrency in this particular Tesla environment".