Cryptocurrency & Mining News - Page 5

Following the massive downfall of the world's second-largest cryptocurrency exchange, FTX, prominent figures in the cryptocurrency industry are informing asset holders to seek self-custody of their assets.

The collapse of FTX has caused ripple effects throughout the cryptocurrency market, the price of Bitcoin immediately saw a heavy hit, with the world's most valuable digital asset falling to the $15,000 range, a price that it hasn't been since November 2020. This massive decline in price came after confidence was completely lost in FTX as it was discovered the cryptocurrency exchange was mishandling users' funds.

The stake was further driven home for FTX users when it's now former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) announced that the company has filed for bankruptcy. With the collapse of FTX came major concern about the stability of other cryptocurrency exchanges such as Binance, Kraken, and the many more that are out there holding thousands of user funds.

In response to the downfall of the second-largest cryptocurrency exchange FTX, Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, has made a new pledge to its users.

According to Binance co-founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao, the cryptocurrency platform will be working toward being more transparent about its cash reserves and what assets its wealth is stored in. A report from Bloomberg revealed that Binance holds approximately $74.7 billion across several different assets, with 40% of its total reserves being in its own native cryptocurrency and stablecoin - Binance USD (BUSD) holdings $23 billion and Binancecoin holdings being $6.4 billion.

The cryptocurrency exchange also holds about 10.5% and 9.8% of its total reserves in Bitcoin and Ethereum, respectively. The announcement from Binance's CEO comes only days after rival cryptocurrency exchange FTX filed bankruptcy over the crashing of its native token FTT which was caused by Binance selling off large portions of its holdings. The sales caused FTX's token value to plummet, which caused more market panic among holders, further amplifying the selling pressure. This mass panic led to FTX having to pause withdrawals from the exchange.

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.