Cryptocurrency & Mining - Page 6

Family Guy star Seth Green has reportedly paid a massive sum of money to an individual for the return of his star in his upcoming TV show.

At the end of May, Green announced that the star of his upcoming TV show "White Horse Tavern" had been stolen from him through a phishing scam. The star of the show is Bored Ape Yacht Club #8398, or Fred Simian, who Green said was "literally kidnapped" days before he was meant to reveal the show to the world. Bored Ape #8398 wasn't the only NFT that was stolen from Green, as two Mutant Apes and one Doodle NFT were also stolen.

Now, according to reports from BuzzFeed News, the stolen star was purchased from the scammer for approximately $297,000 worth of Ether by an unnamed wallet that is reportedly Green's. If true, it means Green has paid not only a large sum of money for the original purchase of the NFT but also nearly $300,000 to retrieve it.

Bitcoin's price continues to operate in the $28,000 to $32,000 range, but some analysts believe there is something in store for Bitcoin throughout the summer.

As reported by CoinTelegraph, social media analyst Wolf has provided correlated evidence that if the S&P 500 flips its 21-month exponential moving average (EMA) support and continues an uptrend, Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency market as a whole will follow in an upwards fashion as well. Wolf explained that Bitcoin slowly follows behind then S*P, but if the stocks 21EMA is held, Bitcoin is due to "recover pretty soon".

Furthermore, commentator Bob Loukas took to Twitter to give his point of view on the cryptocurrency market, saying that the coming summer in crypto will likely be "boring," as the "heavy selling is done" and now is the "period where only smart money accumulates". Loukas added that now that all of the "weak hands have turned over, higher prices will be needed," and a new cycle can start. Loukas projects that the new cycle will begin later in 2022.

The Bored Ape Yacht Club recently announced that it has fallen for a hack that has resulted in hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of NFTs being stolen.

The Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) took to its Twitter account to announce that its Discord servers suffered from an exploit that Fortune reports were a phishing attack. Hackers reportedly got a hold of Boris Vagner's Discord account, who is the community manager for Yuga Labs, the developers behind projects such as Bored Ape Yacht Club. The hackers used Vagner's account and posted links into the official BAYC Discord channel and the metaverse project called Otherside.

Yuga Labs confirmed that the hack occurred and that approximately 200 ETH worth of NFTs were stolen. One Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT and two Mutant Ape tokens. Notably, this isn't the first time Yuga Labs has been hacked, and expensive NFTs have been stolen. Only in April this year, the Bored Ape Yacht Club Twitter account announced that the BAYC Instagram account had been hacked. Hackers used a phishing scam to steal 91 NFTs worth approximately $2.8 million.

Chipotle has announced it will be adopting cryptocurrency payments across thousands of its stores throughout the United States.

The massive Mexican-style fast-food chain announced that it will be accepting cryptocurrency payments through the digital payment platform Flexa, which supports nearly 100 different cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. Reports indicate that Chipotle will be accepting payments via the Flexa app across its 3,000 restaurants.

According to a Medium article by Flexa, in celebration of Chipotle adopting digital currency payments, Flexa will be giving everyone 10% off their next Chipotle order through the Flexa app. For individuals interested in claiming their free 10% off, you will need to download the Gemini or SPEDN app, head to your nearest Chipotle restaurant, and proceed to pay with the app.

A new report from Reuters has revealed that Russia is open to accepting Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies for international payments.

Since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine, which resulted in contracting heavy sanctions from numerous countries that condemned the Russian Federations' actions, the Russian economy has been crippled, and officials are looking at alternative ways of keeping it afloat. There have been rumors of Russia accepting Bitcoin as a form of payment, but now we are hearing from the First Deputy Governor of The Central Bank of the Russian Federation, Ksenia Yudaeva, who said Russia's bank is open to implementing digital currencies.

"In principle, we do not object to the use of cryptocurrency in international transactions," said Yudaeva. Notably, that open-mindedness from Russian bank officials only stretches so far as Yudaeva and other banking officials still believe that adopting Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies comes with considerable risk to Russia's financial infrastructure that may negatively impact Russian citizens.

The co-creator of one of the world's most popular cryptocurrencies has taken some shots at SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

In a recent interview with Australian publication Crikey, Jackson Palmer, the co-creator of Dogecoin, has gone after Musk with heavy criticisms, describing the billionaire as a "grifter". Notably, Palmer said to the publication that "when Musk was saying something about crypto, I said Elon Musk was and always will be a grifter, but the world loves grifters. They love the idea that they may also be a billionaire one day, and that's the dream he's selling."

Furthermore, Palmer said to the publication that he has directly spoken to Musk after he developed a software script that automatically reported cryptocurrency scams in users' replies. Palmer said that Musk reached out to him to acquire the new script, and it "became apparent very quickly that he didn't understand coding as well as he made out," as he asked Palmer, "How do I run this Python script?"

The zero-emission Bitcoin mining project is a collaboration between Tesla, Blockstream, and Jack Dorsey's Blocks (formerly known as Square).

The new facility will be capable of 30 Petahashes per second and powered exclusively by a 3.8 megawatt (MW) solar farm and a 12 megawatt-hour (MWh) Megapack battery system, provided by Tesla. A recent tweet from Blockstream shows that it has now received a delivery of four Megapack batteries.

Tesla previously invested $1.5 billion into Bitcoin in early 2021 and followed up that move with accepting Bitcoin as a payment option for new vehicles. Within a few days, Tesla reversed this decision, citing concerns regarding the use of fossil fuels and their associated emissions when it comes to powering Bitcoin mining and transactions.

Family Guy star and actor Seth Green recently debuted a new trailer for his new upcoming TV show called "White Horse Tavern" at Gary Vaynerchuk's VeeCon.

Recently taking to Twitter, Green revealed that he has fallen victim to a common phishing scam where he lost one Bored Ape, two Mutant Apes and one Doodle NFT. Not only has Green been impacted monetarily from the scam, but it has opened up a can of worms when it comes to copyright laws as the TV show is based around Bored Ape Yacht Club #8398 (Fred Simian), which Green now no longer officially owns.

Since an NFT is proof of ownership, and Green has now been scammed the NFT, he no longer has the commercial rights to use that Bored Ape as the main character of the show, as the rights have been moved onto the current owner. However, Green has argued that since the "art was stolen" the current owner doesn't hold commercial rights, as would be the case if the transaction was made with real money.

A US regulator has charged two men for being behind a multi-million-dollar cryptocurrency scam that stole funds from more than 100 investors.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has published a new press release that states Sam Ikkurty of Portland, Oregon, and Ravishankar Avadhanam of Aurora, Illinois, have been charged with fraudulently soliciting $44 million from investors as well as controlling and operating a commodity pool that was never officially registered with authorities. Notably, the two individuals scammed investors through asset income funds such as Ikkurty Capital, Rose City Income Fund, and Seneca Ventures.

The two men promoted their scam projects via YouTube videos and directed investors to their website where investors were informed that their funds would be used to generate return-on-investment (ROI) annually. The US regulator explained that instead of directly stealing funds from investors the two individuals "misappropriated participant funds by distributing them to other participants, in a manner akin to a Ponzi scheme."

Microsoft founder Bill Gates has recently participated in a Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA) where he explained why he doesn't hold any cryptocurrencies.

Gates took to Reddit yesterday to answer numerous questions ranging from his philantropy ventures into climate change, vaccines, COVID-19, how young people can impact the world and cryptocurrencies. Gates was asked what he thought about Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, Gates stated that he doesn't own any cryptocurrencies and that he likes "investing in things that have valuable output".

The Microsoft founder explains that companies "valuable output" is based on the product that they make and the quality of it, while the "value of crypto is just what some other person decides someone else will pay for it so not adding to society like other investments." These remarks from Gates about cryptocurrency are hardly surprising as the world's fourth richest individual said in March that if you have less money than Elon Musk and are involved with cryptocurrencies "probably watch out".

NVIDIA released the GeForce RTX 3050 8GB and GeForce RTX 3080 12GB graphics cards LHR-locked -- well, LHRv3 or Lite Hash Rate v3 -- and now that's been 90% unlocked.

The current LHRv1 and LHRv2 models are completely unlocked now through software, with no hardware modifications or requirements, with LHRv3 models now 90% unlocked. The LHRv3-based RTX 3050 8GB and RTX 3080 12GB models are based on new versions of the algorithm, but the algorithm has now been cracked to 90% at least.

NiceHash QuickMiner v0.5.4.2 RC requires NVIDIA 512.15 driver (or newer) in order to work, but now if crypto miners (and bigger crypto farms) had a bunch of RTX 3050 8GB or RTX 3080 12GB graphics cards... now they can be unleashed (90% is bloody close to 100% and I'm sure it won't be long until LHRv3 is fully unlocked... give it a few more days).

Russia is making a move to accept Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as a form of payment following harsh international sanctions placed on the nation.

The news comes from Denis Manturov, Minister of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation, who recently spoke at an event called New Horizon, where he explained that Russia is planning on legalizing Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to bolster its economy. Notably, Manturov said that the question is "when it will happen" it's "how it will happen and how will it be regulated". Furthermore, the Russian official said that both the Russian government and Central Bank are on board with the adoption.

Despite Russia's clear motivation toward adopting Bitcoin, the Bank of Russia recently pushed for a complete ban on cryptocurrencies, citing it could undermine the Russian financial system. It seems that tune has been changed since the harsh international sanctions have crippled Russia's economy, with Russia's President Vladimir Putin pleading with financial regulators to come to an agreement on how digital currencies should be regulated.

The future of Bitcoin as a payment network was questioned by FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, who recently criticized many aspects of the digital currency.

The founder and CEO of FTX, which often goes by his initials as SBF, said that Bitcoin has very little future as a payments network due to its inefficiency and high environmental costs associated with its proof of work algorithm. The 30-year-old billionaire went on to say that the BTC network isn't capable of handling thousands/millions of transactions-per-second (TPS), but also mentioned that BTC can be transferred over a layer two protocol such as Lightning.

However, Bankman-Fried also took to Twitter to clarify that criticisms weren't all that he said, as he mentioned that Bitcoin could have a potential future in becoming a store of value. If that were to become Bitcoin's future, the digital currency would change from being viewed as a currency to an asset, similar to how gold is viewed.

A YouTuber has been caught in the middle of a largescale market wipeout where billions of dollars were lost, leaving many investors hamstrung.

YouTuber Olajide Olayinka Williams "JJ" Olatunji, or KSI, took to his "KSICrypto" Twitter account to reveal his investment in the cryptocurrency project LUNA. The YouTuber showcased a $2.8 million investment into Terra Luna, which last week began experiencing large amounts of sell-offs, causing the market cap of one of the top 10 cryptocurrencies in the world to fall from $40 billion in April to $1.6 billion as of May 16.

The value of LUNA dropped dramatically, one coin was worth nearly $100 on May 1, and on May 16, its worth 0.00023c. In the span of 24 hours, 99% of the value of LUNA was wiped away, causing many individuals, such as KSI, to be caught up in the bloodbath of red candles. Many individuals that were either holding LUNA before the crash, or decided to purchase it while it was crashing and weren't able to sell before it was too late have taken to Twitter and other social platforms to voice their losses.

As virtual reality increases in quality through development, it will undoubtedly bleed into other industries other than gaming.

Technology is currently emerging through the gaming industry, and while virtual reality games will no doubt be a very big part of culture in the years the come, the technology has wider applications. NASA has recognized the potential in the technology and has partnered with Fortnite creator Epic Games to issue a "challenge" for game developers.

NASA has challenged game developers to create virtual reality assets with Unreal Engine 5 that are based on Mars. Game developers won't be starting completely from scratch as the MarsXR environment already contains a vast "world" that spans hundreds of miles squared, features day/night cycles, realistic martian weather, gravity, spacesuits, vehicles, and other assets. Developers have the option of using the already supplied assets or adding in their own to create their Mars experiences.

A 25-year-old woman from Texas has claimed that a man she met on Tinder has scammed her out of the fortune left to her by her murdered father.

Divya Gadasalli has told Bloomberg that she received $8 million from her mother's estate following her father's murder in 2015. Gadasalli told the publication that she had fallen victim to a scam called "pig butchering", which involves a scammer emotionally manipulating victims into investing in cryptocurrency projects, the scammer showing the investment is gaining profits, then advises more money should be invested, then the project's account is locked away from the investor or drained entirely.

Gadasalli met Jerry Bulasa on Tinder, and began talking to him for several months. Throughout that time, Bulasa touted to Gadasalli that he was making lots of money through cryptocurrency investments, which Gadasalli said coincides with a time in her life when she was craving financial independence. Gadasalli said to Bloomberg that Bulasa told her she could become a financial hero to her family.

For the very first time in Louisville, Kentucky, a home has been purchased with Bitcoin, making local history in just eight seconds.

A report from The Courier reveals that up until February 2022, there was no record of Bitcoin being used to purchase real estate in the area and that the seller of the property was looking to liquidate several homes to invest in Bitcoin. The buyer contacted the seller and informed him that he was able to purchase the property in Bitcoin, which was later sold for $65,000, according to Ashley Brown, a real estate agent with Louisville-based Homepage Realty.

The buyer spoke to the publication and said, "I'm happy that I can help try and bring this technology to the future. There's so many uses for [Bitcoin], and I think we're at the very, very early stages of it. It'll be interesting to see where it goes." While commission fees, title fees, and recording fees were paid in US dollars, the actual purchase of the property was made through a direct transfer of Bitcoin from one wallet to another, taking about eight seconds to complete and a small fee of $0.70 cents versus a traditional fee of $25-$30.

The world's most popular cryptocurrency is continuing its downtrend in price and has now reached lows that haven't been seen since January 2022.

In late March, Bitcoin recovered in price, hitting just over the $48,000 mark, and maintained the $45,000 to $47,000 range for the first few days of April before it fell off a cliff on April 6 and began a downtrend that brought the price to below $40,000 by April 11. For the majority of April, Bitcoin maintained a side-ways but overall trickling downward trend that has eventuated into a massive sell-off on May 8 that caused the price to plummet to $33,000.

Glassnode, a blockchain data and intelligence provider generating innovative on-chain metrics, published some bearish indicators that may have influenced the now-falling price of Bitcoin. A recent Twitter post on Glassnode Alerts suggests that any Bitcoin whales holding at least 1,000 coins may be leaving the market in preparation for a further decrease in Bitcoin's price.

The Humanity 2.0 Foundation has signed a strategic partnership with Sensorium, a metaverse developer.

The new public-private partnership aims to bring the Vatican's heritage into the digital world by creating a VR and NFT gallery for content from the Vatican. Humanity 2.0 is a non-profit "Vatican-affiliated organization." According to a Sensorium spokesperson corresponding with VICE's Motherboard, "it would be correct to say that the Vatican is entering the metaverse and the world of NFTs."

On Saturday, a new NFT collection launched, and due to the demand for the project, the Ethereum blockchain broke.

The new NFT collection comes from famed developers Yuga Labs, known for creating the extremely popular Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT project. Yuga Labs released a new NFT collection that featured 100,000 land deeds for the upcoming Bored Ape metaverse called "Otherside". With Bored Ape's being the most popular NFTs, the land deed drop from Yuga Labs was expected to have high interest, but very quickly, the developers and users attempting to purchase the land plots learned that there was very high demand on the Ethereum blockchain.

Users attempting to purchase the land plots were met with exorbitant gas fees, which caused many users to be forced into paying thousands in failed transactions. Notably, CNET reports that the Ethereum network was "unstable for hours" following the launch of the NFT collection, and Yuga Labs even took to its Twitter account to announce that the developers "we're sorry for turning off the lights on Ethereum for a while".