Cryptocurrency & Mining - Page 31

In the last few hours over $50 billion has been wiped away from the global cryptocurrency market cap, down to just $628 billion (at the time of writing) from its record high of $835 billion on January 7.

Why the massive drop in cryptocurrency prices? Well, there have been massive stories that the Chinese government will be banning Bitcoin mining in the country, and with 80% of Bitcoin mined in China, this is huge on its own. But then news broke a couple of hours ago from Reuters that the South Korean government was pushing laws in to ban cryptocurrency trading on SK exchanges.

This has seen the drop of virtually every single cryptocurrency, with Ethereum going from its record high of $1400+ to $1230 in a matter of hours.

Just as my story about the Chinese government and authorities putting their boot down onto cryptocurrency miners in China, the South Korean justice minister said he's preparing a bill a ban on cryptocurrency trading through South Korean exchanges.

Park Sang-ki said in a press conference: "There are great concerns regarding virtual currencies and justice ministry is basically preparing a bill to ban cryptocurrency trading through exchanges".

There are no other details on South Korea's movements in banning cryptocurrency trading on SK exchanges, but it will be working directly with the government task force on it.

With the price of Bitcoin cranking up to $20,000 and now Ethereum breaking through multiple new all-time high prices and now steady at $1300, China is spoiling the party for cryptocurrency miners in the country.

According to local news sources, Chinese authorities had a notice being sent around telling them to "guide" an "orderly exit" for cryptocurrency mining operations, as they begin shutting down their mines. These sources said that the notice was issued by an inter-agency task force (The Dark Army?!*) assigned to looking into risks in internet finance.

Electricity prices are dirt cheap in the remote areas of China, where there the temperatures in those areas is also super-low. This is perfect for crypto miners as operating gigantic mines uses lots of computing power, and that all generates heat. So mining in remote China is a perfect blend: cheap electricity and low temperatures, it's like Christmas everyday for miners.

Ethereum has truly exploded in the last month or so, breaking down every single wall it has reached: $1000, $1250 and now it has reached a peak of $1417.

Putting this into comparison, Bitcoin is worth $14,395 at the time of writing, down 5.68%. Ethereum is like a wrecking ball right now, and so it deserves to be. Bitcoin's network can't handle the pressure, and people are beginning to see the future of blockchain technology and Ethereum, so the money is flooding in.

I think we'll see Ethereum at $8000-$10,000 before the end of the year, and at this rate that number could be much higher. Except, I won't eat my own d*ck if it doesn't, sorry John.

Most people know that Dogecoin started off as a joke, with the parody coin named after the internet meme from a few years ago that featured a Shiba Inu Dog, and has gone ballistic ever since.

Dogecoin is now worth $0.01 and while it sounds like nothing, remember that Dogecoin flat lined for years at $0.0001, so the rise to $0.1 is actually significant. Big enough to drive the market cap of Dogecoin to $1.8 billion, which is crazy as this started off as a joke and a lot of people are making serious bank from it.

The founder of Dogecoin, Jackson Palmer, has talked about the recent price rise by saying: "I have a lot of faith in the Dogecoin Core development team to keep the software stable and secure, but I think it says a lot about the state of the cryptocurrency space in general that a currency with a dog on it which hasn't released a software update in over 2 years has a $1B+ market cap".

Ethereum has been on a huge run for the last week or so after it was happily sitting at around $800, where it breached $1000 and then $1100 easily in the last few days.

It didn't stop going, culminating in a new all-time high price of $1310 before cooling d own a little and coming down just under $1200 to $1191 at the time of writing. Ethereum's market cap is a ballooned $115 billion, with $3 billion ETH being traded in the last 24 hours alone.

Ripple (XRP) sets a new all-time record price of $3.17

Unikrn has been leading the gaming and eSports scenes for a couple of years now, but the company released Unikoin Gold and ever since then it has been golden.

Unikoin Gold (UKG) has had its price driven up towards the moon starting this year, hovering in the mid-50c mark before it started smashing through $1. UKG breached $1 on January 4 before rising further on January 7 when UKG started hitting new crypto exchanges.

UKG hit $2 before it began dropping, as there was resistance before it could drive up any further, with some original investors most likely taking some profits at the $2 mark. But that didn't stop UKG, which scaled right up with nearly triple its trading volume happening in the last 36 hours alone.

While it seems Bitcoin is cooling off after hitting new records in 2017, it's time for Ethereum (ETH) and Ripple (XRP) to shine.

Ethereum has breached $1000, reaching a new record high price of $1044, an 8.9% rise in the last 24 hours. There are 96.8 million Ethereum coins circulating, with a new market cap of a huge $101 billion.

Ripple (XRP) sets a new all-time record price of $3.17

It was only a few days ago that I reported that Ripple (XRP) had reached a new record high price of $2.17, but that was a few days ago and in the crypto market, that's an eternity.

XRP has reached a new record high price of $3.17, with a record market cap of a massive $122 billion. There are over 38 billion XRP in circulation, with a total supply of just under 100 billion XRP (the Ripple team hold 60% of XRP). These prices aren't cooling down, with more and more interest and investment into XRP.

Ethereum closes in on $1000, momentum isn't stopping

Just as I was going to sleep last night (around 10 hours ago now), the price of Ethereum was quite steady at $880-$900 or so, but it has reached a new high of $974. This is after it reached its record high price of $870 just a few days ago.

Ethereum's market cap is now a huge $92 billion (at the price of $965, at the time of writing) with 96 million ETH in the world right now. My 1.4GH/s Ethereum mining farm is still going well, and even better with these record high prices, while most of the alt coins are enjoying a sea of green in the last 24 hours.

Ethereum reaches new record all-time high price of $870

We all know everything cryptocurrency and blockchain technology is the next big thing, but now Hooters is joining in on the fun - yes, 'that' Hooters.

CNBC reports that Hooters announced it would be moving its customer loyalty program onto blockchain, and then pushing out a cryptocurrency called Mobivity Merit, seeing Hooters shares leap by 50%.

Michael Pruitt, Chairman, President, and CEO of Chanticleer Holdings (the parent company of Hooters) explained: "We wanted to expand our existing loyalty program with something that really changes the way our customers can leverage their rewards; Mobivity Merit is real cryptocurrency, leveraging the same infrastructure and principles of Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Litecoin, and more, and will enable our customers to make use of their rewards in entirely new ways".

We might have seen Bitcoin become the cryptocurrency that took headlines in 2017, but Ripple (XRP) smashed an all-time high price just 48 hours ago and now it's Ethereum's time to shine.

Ethereum has just reached a record all-time high price of $870, jumping 16.5% in the last few hours, boosting its market cap to a blistering $84 billion. Over $3 billion of Ethereum has been shifted around the crypto exchanges in the last 24 hours, or a huge 233,810 BTC worth.

There are 96,714,501 ETH in circulation right now, and my 1.4GH/s ETH mining farm is still going strong with the payout amounts continuing to swell.

Pavel Lerner was kidnapped earlier this week, with a gang wearing ski masks taking the cryptocurrency expert near his office in the Ukraine.

Lerner was held against his will, with the kidnappers demanding he pay them $1 million in Bitcoin as ransom. Lerner is a big Bitcoin expert in his country, doubling as an executive at Exmo, a large cryptocurrency exchange.

We don't know if Lerner transferred the $1 million in BTC himself, but he was released in the end. Exmo has said that the kidnappers didn't breach their network, and that the cryptocurrency exchange and their coins are "absolutely safe.

To ring in the New Year, Unikrn founder and eSports fan Rahul Sood has announced that UnikoinGold (UKG) is now available on Bittrex.

This is a big deal as Bittrex is the fastest and most secure digital currency trading platform, where countless cryptocurrencies are available. This move is significant, as it means millions of crypto traders can now trade UKG which will only spread the gaming-focused crypto into the mainstream.

UKG will soon be launching on Braveno and CoinHub, which Sood said on his Medium post "it's coming - stay tuned. The problem is not on our end, it's their end setting up for scale".

The South Korean government is tightening its grip on Bitcoin, where the government has proposed legislation that would limit how conventional banks interact with not just Bitcoin, but all cryptocurrencies.

This new law would stop South Korean companies from providing settlement services for cryptocurrency-based transactions, something that is at the heart of credit and debit card transactions. Earlier this month, a fresh set of rules restricted financial firms from investing heavily into cryptocurrency, with rules levied capital gains tax on any money conventional investors made from buying and selling crypto.

South Korea's new ruling would stop companies from selling Bitcoin anonymously, with their new "Know Your Customer" rules pushed as anti-money laundering rules with banks across the world.

Bitcoin might have skyrocketed from its price of $1000 at the start of the year all the way up to $20,000 - but there are professional analysts that think the cryptocurrency has zero value.

Morgan Stanley analyst James Faucette says that Bitcoin might be worth $0, where Business Insider spotted a research note from the analyst, where he said: "If nobody accepts the technology for payment then the value would be 0".

Faucette said that he addressed the "very difficult" question of what the real value of Bitcoin really is, but said that the value of BTC could drop as it is rerliant on the "network effect", and that is no one wants to buy it, Bitcoin could become totally worthless.

Hackers are using any means necessary these days to make money, so hacking PCs and getting them to mine cryptocurrency is the new thing, something that has now reached the huge user base of Facebook Messenger.

The cybercriminals are using Messenger to infect users' PCs with malware dubbed 'Digmine' that targets as many PCs possible, mining Monero, but the malware can get much worse. Trend Micro, a major cyber security firm, says that these hackers could get into, and takeover your Facebook accoun

Users that are on Google Chrome and use the desktop version of Messenger have been targeted by hackers to mine Monero on their PCs, but with their Facebook accounts under threat, it could get much worse. The researchers added: "If the user's Facebook account is set to log in automatically, Digmine will manipulate Facebook Messenger in order to send a link to the file to the account's friends".

It seems that by simply changing your business name with something crypto-related results in your share prices rising just like crypto prices: by 500%.

Long Island Iced Tea Corp changed their name to Long Blockchain Corp, seeing their pre-market trading prices rise by a huge 500% before stabilizing to a 275% gain. Long Blockchain has been making non-alcoholic lemonades and ice teas, and as of Wednesday had a market value of $23.98 million.

The company peaked at a point of pre-market trading with 9.76 million outstanding shares, seeing the company with a market value of a much larger $138 million... all due to a name change that involved blockchain, because you know... drinks are like crypto, I guess.

I didn't think I'd ever have to type this but, Paris dominatrix 'Theodora' has been pimping out her clients to mine cryptocurrency in something she calls a "Crypto Slave Farm". Her slaves, will deposit cryptocurrency into a digital wallet with her clients turning into a "human ATM".

MarketWatch has the story, where they report: "... clients - many of whom never meet her in person - derive sexual pleasure from giving her gifts and money. Exchanges of money can range from several dollars in "tributes," as they are called, to gifts of more than six figures. Some clients even become a "human ATM," meaning they give her complete control over a bank account".

Theodora explains: "It's a form of psychological domination where money is the tool for the transfer of power. It's quite common for powerful men like politicians or CEOs to look for a form of sexual release by submitting to a woman - they are in control all the time during the day - and giving up control financially is a more tangible instrument of power for them".

NiceHash has been embroiled in a massive Bitcoin heist over the last few weeks, where some $60 million+ was stolen, forcing the company to close its doors to miners, temporarily.

Well, the company has announced on its website that they are coming back online, where they said: "Dear Miners: Final checks are in progress and NiceHash.com platform will be back online and operational tomorrow, December 20, 2017 until 24.00 CET".

Once NiceHash is back online, you might need a guide to get you going again - it just so happens I wrote one in the days leading up to the hack.