Cryptocurrency & Mining News - Page 56

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".