Cryptocurrency & Mining - Page 4

A hacker from England managed to get into Ed Sheeran's online accounts and steal two unreleased songs from the singer, which he then sold online.

The hacker from Ipswich, England, is Adrian Kwiatkowski, who has been sentenced to 18 months in prison for stealing the two songs from Sheeran along with 12 songs from American rapper Lil Uzi Vert. Kwiatkowski was charged with copyright infringements and possessing criminal property, with the hacker admitting to a total of 19 charges.

BBC reports that Kwiatkowski managed to steal the unreleased music by hacking into the artist's cloud-based accounts, with Sheeran and Lil Uzi Vert only being some of the artists impacted by Kwiatkowski as authorities found 1,263 unreleased songs from 89 artists on his laptop during the seizure. Notably, the laptop also contained other incriminating evidence, such as documents that detailed how Kwiatkowski hacked into the victims' accounts, as well as the Bitcoin he admitted to receiving in return for distributing the unreleased songs.

Tesla made what is now considered a really good decision to sell a very large portion of its Bitcoin holdings earlier in the year when the price was much higher than it is today, but the electric car manufacturer isn't completely done with Bitcoin.

Tesla recently released its Q3 earnings report for 2022, and that report shows that Tesla sold three-quarters of its $1.2 billion stack of Bitcoin back in March this year, leaving the electric car manufacturer with $218 million in Bitcoin at the time. Around the time of the large sale of Bitcoin, Musk explained that the company required liquid cash as there was large uncertainty with COVID-19 lockdown in China, which directly impacted one of Tesla's factories and thus its revenue stream.

The car manufacturer explained that it was important for them to maximize "our cash position". However, as of September 30, it seems that Tesla is still holding onto the remaining Bitcoins it didn't end up selling back in March. That stack of Bitcoin is definitely not worth as much as it was back in March, when the price of one Bitcoin fluctuated between $35,000 and $45,000, approximately. Bitcoin is now worth under $20,000 and seems to be barely holding onto that price point, with it slowly trickling down.

Kim Kardashian has been ordered to pay more than $1 million by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over her involvement in a cryptocurrency project called EthereumMax.

The fine stems from an Instagram Stories post that Kardashian posted about EthereumMax's EMAX tokens, which the SEC determined that she didn't disclose was a paid advertisement, which is a violation of the SEC's federal securities laws that require a person must mention that its a paid promotion (if it is a paid promotion). According to the SEC, Kardashian agreed to pay the $1.26 million fine, which it says covers the initial $250,000 she was paid for the post, and any interest made.

Furthermore, Kardashian pledged that she would not promote any cryptocurrency projects or assets for the next three years. In a new video posted to the US Securities and Exchange Commission YouTube channel, Securities and Exchange Commission chair Gary Gensler explained that just because celebrities and influencers endorse investment opportunities, including cryptocurrency assets, it doesn't mean that the celebrity/influencer's promotional product is the "right" purchase for all investors.

A study on Bitcoin's climate impact titled "Economic estimation of Bitcoin mining's climate damages demonstrates closer resemblance to digital crude than digital gold" has been published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Researchers from the University of New Mexico have suggested the Bitcoin cryptocurrency be considered akin to "digital crude oil" instead of "digital gold," after revealing the scale of environmental damage caused by mining Bitcoin is comparable to that of producing beef, or other energy-intensive products such as natural gas and crude oil. The researchers assessed Bitcoin's climate damages, the estimated financial damage resulting from its associated carbon emissions, and the resultant impact of climate change on economies using three criteria.

The first criterion was whether damages were increasing over time. They found that energy emissions for Bitcoin mining have increased 126-fold, rising from 0.9 tons of emissions per coin in 2016 to 113 tons per coin five years later in 2021. The second criterion looked at whether the market price of Bitcoin surpassed the economic cost of its climate damages, which found that in 2021, climate damages associated with a single Bitcoin amounted to 11,314 USD, about a quarter of its market value at the time. Damages peaked at 156% of the coin price in May 2020.

The cryptocurrency space is riddled with many problems, and one big issue is the amount of theft, fraud, and security breaches that occur.

In March 2022, the Ronin Network, a sidechain built for the popular play-to-earn game Axie Infinity was hacked by North Korean-linked hacking group Lazarus Group. At the time, the Ronin Network explained that the security breach resulted in 173,600 Ethereum and $25.5 million in USDC ($625 million in total) were stolen after the attacker used hacked private keys in order to forge fake withdrawals.

Chainalysis, an American blockchain analysis firm, took to its blog to explain how it assisted the US government in recovering the stolen funds and the process of how the money was laundered. The Lazarus Group gained access to five of nine private keys held by transaction validators for the Ronin Network's cross-chain bridge, and with these keys, the hackers approved two withdrawal transactions - the 173,600 Ethereum and $25.5 million in USDC.

The price of Bitcoin is in yet another steady downtrend as the world's most valuable cryptocurrency's value drops below the $19,000 mark.

Bitcoin reached its all-time high price of $69,000 in November 2021, and since then, the cryptocurrency has been in an overall downward trend, with only some small periods of a price increase. One of the small periods of price growth occurred halfway through July, when Bitcoin broke the $21,000 resistance ceiling and climbed to approximately $24,500 by August 12.

The following day Bitcoin began its now current downward trend in price, dropping from the achieved $24,500 mark down to $21,000 by August 19, and a further drop to $19,000 by August 31. Currently, Bitcoin has fallen through the $19,000 support range, dropping to $18,700 at the time of publication. Over the last seven days, Bitcoin has lost 7% of its value, and over the course of a month, its value has decreased by 6.6%.

The monetary system of the future will be a collaborative effort between cryptocurrency technology that has largely been demonstrated and central banks, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

A new report published to the IMF website outlines an argument that the monetary system of the future should include the technical capabilities demonstrated by cryptocurrency, but be grounded in the trust of central banks. The report was written by executives from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and stated that any legitimate transaction that is carried out in a cryptocurrency is better with central bank money, specifically Central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).

The IMF report points out many flaws of the cryptocurrency industry, writing that its "neither stable nor efficient", hardly regulated, and all of its participants aren't "accountable to society". Adding that the crypto industry is plagued with frequent fraud, theft, scams, and it propagates concerns regarding market integrity. Despite its shortcomings, the cryptocurrency industry has demonstrated incredible technology that the IMF recognizes is necessary for the monetary system of the future.

The founder of Turkish crypto currency exchange, Thodex, has been arrested in Albania after fleeing the country in 2021 with $2 billion with of cryptocurrency and now he faces 40,564 years in jail.

Faruk Fatih Özer, the founder Thodex, is one of the most infamous crypto scammers after screwing around 400,000 customers of Thodex, running away with around $2 billion in various cryptocurrencies. Özer was arrested in Albania after fleeing authorities for over a year, where Interpol identified him using biometric results.

Thodex staff were detailed when Özer went missing, with executives of the company as well as founding members of Thodex each looking at 40,564 years in jail. That's a lot of time. I wonder if you could play every single game ever made, and watch every single TV series and movie in that time. Anyway, in 2017 the company had 700,000+ clients from Turkey that allowed them to protect their money through investing into cryptocurrency -- in exchanges like Thodex -- against the decline in their national currency: Lira.

Meta is fully adopting digital collectibles such as NFTs, according to a recent announcement on the company's website.

On Meta's Newsroom website, the company outlined its continued plan to adopt digital collectibles across Facebook and Instagram, with Meta writing as of August 29 that it's begun giving users the ability to post digital collectibles that they own across both Facebook and Instagram. Additionally, the company wrote that it will be allowing Facebook and Instagram users to connect their digital wallets once to either application, which will enable the user to share digital collectibles across both platforms.

Meta's digital collection adoption plan has been rolling out for quite some time, with the company announcing on August 4 that it expanded into support for digital collectibles to 100 more countries, ushering in support for popular digital wallets such as Coinbase Wallet, Dapper, and more. As reported by TechCrunch, Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg began talking about NFTs coming to Instagram in March 2022, and now they have been rolled out to US-based users.

Police have arrested a 17-year-old high school student that used Bitcoin to pay for fake bomb threats to be sent to a local high school.

Joseph Garrison admitted that he was responsible for the bomb threats, and according to Fox47, authorities analyzed the students' digital wallets and found that there were multiple payments right before the bomb threats were issued. The teen used paid an online contact that specialized in threat calls and took Bitcoin as payment.

The calls were made to Vel Phillips Memorial High School from February 28 to March 4, but after the analysis of Garrison's digital wallets, it was discovered he made payments before threats were made to several different schools, some outside of Wisconsin.

BlackRock has announced that it opened up a spot Bitcoin private trust for its U.S. institutional customers, marking a pivotal moment in the adoption of cryptocurrency by legacy firms.

Five years ago, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink described Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency industry as an "index of money laundering". His opinion later changed in 2020 when he said that the cryptocurrency industry is a "global market". Fink and the world's largest asset management firm, has seemingly fully accepted the new industry even further by opening up a spot Bitcoin private trust that seeks to track the performance of bitcoin, less expenses, and liabilities of the trust.

The event of BlackRock taking a bigger step into the cryptocurrency market comes after the asset management firm announced a partnership with U.S. cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, with the new collaboration planning on offering institutional clients access to cryptocurrency trading and other related services. For more information on this story, check out this link here.

James Howells claims he was one of the first five people running the Bitcoin algorithms, and since 2013 he has been searching for a hard drive that he mined 7,500 Bitcoin on for next to nothing.

The British computer engineer recently sat down for an interview with James Hammond, where he recounted his journey of recovering a computer hard drive worth more than $150 million at the current price of Bitcoin (approximately $23,000). Howell accidentally threw out the hard drive and has been searching for it ever since, with many requests made to the local Newport government to dig through its landfill site. All of his requests so far have been denied, but a new one may be considered with the inclusion of artificial intelligence.

Howell's plan includes human sorters, Boston Dynamics "Spot Dogs", automated sorting systems paired with a special conveyor belt, and an artificial intelligence system that is believed to significantly speed up the identification process. This method would take anywhere between nine to twelve months to complete and would cost an estimated $11 million. Howell also believes a scaled-down model of the same design could be created for $6 million, but would take up to 18 months to complete.

The co-founder of the second largest cryptocurrency, Ethereum, has commented on the metaverse and what companies are currently developing.

Vitalik Buterin took to his personal Twitter account to state that the metaverse "is going to happen," but none of the current projects being developed by big-name corporations such as Meta, formerly Facebook, will go anywhere. Notably, Buterin explains that there isn't yet a unanimous definition for "metaverse" as he believes it's still "far too early to know what people actually want". Furthermore, Buterin wrote that "anything Facebook creates now will misfire".

For those wondering, Facebook changed its name to Meta back in October last year and has been pushing into the virtual reality space for quite some time, with the company purchasing Oculus in 2014 for $2 billion. Since the acquisition of Oculus, Meta CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg has been touting the metaverse as the future of technology adoption, with Zuckerberg stating last year that he believes the "metaverse is the next chapter of the internet".

The price of Bitcoin has seen some growth, with the world's most valuable cryptocurrency moving up from the $20,000 price point to its current position of $23,000.

If you haven't been following the cryptocurrency market, the price of Bitcoin has been in decline since it reached its all-time high of $69,000 back in November 2021, and now traders are seeming a flicker of hope as it seems the price is climbing. One analyst named TechDev has put forward his prediction for Bitcoin's price over the coming months, and it's citing the price trend of the digital asset from 2011 to 2027.

TechDev points to the True Strength Index (TSI), which is a metric that is used to determine how much of the cryptocurrency is overbought or oversold. The analyst states that the downtrend traders are currently experiencing is on track with past years of Bitcoin bear markets (where the price goes down), and that by 2023 the top price of Bitcoin will fall between $80,000 and $120,000.

As the price of Bitcoin continues to teeter around the $20,000 mark, it was revealed that Elon Musk's Tesla has sold the majority of its BTC holdings.

Tesla announced that it had purchased a whopping $1.5 billion worth of the world's most popular cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, back in February 2021 while simultaneously announcing it would be working towards accepting BTC as a form of payment for its vehicles.

The announcement caused the price of Bitcoin to skyrocket, and when Musk pulled back from integrating BTC, much of the positive sentiment surrounding Musk and Tesla flipped to negativity as the price of the world's most popular cryptocurrency began to tumble.

The creator behind one of the biggest games to ever come out, Minecraft, has taken a firm stance on adopting Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) and the blockchain.

Minecraft developer Mojang has taken to the Minecraft website to discuss NFTs and blockchain integration with their community, writing that the studio wished to provide players with some transparency and clarity about what's to come.

According to the article, Mojang wants Minecraft players to continue to have a "safe and inclusive" experience, and to ensure that standard is maintained, the developer has chosen not to allow any blockchain technologies to be integrated inside the Minecraft client or server applications.

The world's largest NFT marketplace has fired 20% of its staff following a crypto market downturn and wider economic problems.

The news comes from OpenSea CEO Devin Finzer, who took to Twitter and Discord to explain that the company will be letting go 20% of its staff and that each employee fired from their position will receive a "generous severance". Notably, Finzer says that the reality OpenSea is facing is a "crypto winter" and broad "macroeconomic instability," which references rising interest rates, the war in Ukraine, and more factors that are causing fear, uncertainty, and doubt to plague the global economy.

TechCrunch has learned that 230 employees will be let go from OpenSea and that all of those employees will receive health insurance "into 2023", as well as 12 weeks of severance. Finzer explains that OpenSea has made the decision to run leaner to give it "multiple years of runway" that will, according to Finzer, put the company in a position to bear the weight of crypto winter scenarios presenting themselves. Adding, "Winter is our time to build".

Energy authorities have requested Texas residents to reduce energy consumption to prevent blackouts following temperatures of more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

A Texas heatwave has caused a major strain on the electricity grid, causing state energy officials to ask Texas residents to reduce energy consumption to stop blackouts and power outages. Notably, Bitcoin mining companies have voluntarily halted operations, which has freed up approximately 1,000 megawatts of power, per the Texas Blockchain Council. The volunteer halting of mining operations has given back 1% of the grid's total electricity capacity.

Furthermore, Lee Bratcher, the president of the Texas Blockchain Council, said there are also other reasons that miners are stopping operations as the price of electricity severely increases when there is high demand. According to Bloomberg, cryptocurrency miners in Texas have increased energy costs by up to 6 gigawatts by the middle of 2023.

Reports indicate that cryptocurrency investors that have felt the wrath of the market downturn are going to an online screaming therapy group.

The Guardian has reported that several thousand cryptocurrency investors are banding together in a group called the "Bear Market Screaming Therapy Group", run by the founder named Giulio, who refused to provide his last name. Giulio spoke to the publication and said that the Telegram group has many members who are simply crying, sobbing, expressing grief or howling at their investment loss. According to Giulio, he "decided not to ban them. I felt bad".

The group currently has 3,315 members and is an example of the extreme pain some cryptocurrency investors feel as the price of Bitcoin barely holds on to the $20,000 price point. The world's most valuable cryptocurrency collapsed in June by diving by 47% to the current average price point of approximately $20,000, which has led to groups such as the Bear Market Screaming Therapy Group forming as investors didn't withdraw before the downward began.

Bitcoin's price has been on a slow decline since November last year, when it reached its current all-time high of $69,000.

The price of Bitcoin has been trickling down for all of 2022, but fell off a metaphorical cliff in June when it dived by 47% to reach the $20,000 price point. With many investors and traders pulling their money out of the seemingly collapsing market, the price is still continuing to decline, causing fear-uncertainty and doubt to plague the space.

According to a recent report by Bloomberg, which surveyed 950 Wall Street investors, the price of Bitcoin is more likely to fall to $10,000 than to rally back up to $30,000, says 60% of those investors. The remaining 40% of surveyed investors believe that Bitcoin is more likely to have a slight bull run-up to the $30,000 mark.