Items tagged with bitcoin
Though cryptocurrency mining is becoming less profitable by the day, those who still have the hardware may as well use it. However, it sucks up a lot of energy and dumps a lot of heat, which suspiciously looks like a marijuana grow house, as it turns out. Earlier this month, police in London were tipped off to a building within the Great Bridge Industrial Estate, Sandwell. Using drone surveillance, police saw a characteristic heat signature and people regularly going in and out. Therefore, when the police raided the location on May 18th, they were expecting a cannabis farm, but that is not what they found. Upon entry, they saw shelves full of up to 100 application-specific integrated circuit...
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China is one of the largest cryptocurrency mining countries in the world, in part due to its sheer population, cheap electricity, and easy access to electronics. This year, Bitcoin and other large cryptocurrencies took off alongside new coins like Chia, which saw immense popularity in China. Now, the Chinese government has cracked down on cryptos overall, and miners are pulling out of the country, leading to a sharp price slump across the board. Will this trend continue, or will cryptocurrencies recover in traditional fashion? Last Friday, Chinese Vice Premier Liu He announced a crackdown on Bitcoin mining and trading to “fend off financial risks.” This announcement came just...
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It has been a tumultuous week for cryptocurrencies as many of the major coins have taken a nosedive off a cliff, such as Bitcoin sitting at $34,000 at the time of writing. As this is happening, many crypto exchanges, like Binance and Coinbase, are feeling the pressure and may be struggling for it. Citing issues like network congestion and partial outages, these companies temporarily paused transactions, either by choice or involuntarily but have now restored some service. Earlier this morning, Coinbase faced “intermittent downtime” on its platforms, tweeting that some customers were “experiencing some issues with logging in, seeing their balances, and trading.” The initial...
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Over the past two weeks, Colonial Pipeline has been battling a ransomware attack that crippled fuel flow to the eastern seaboard. This was supposedly not intended to be as catastrophic as it was, but the hacking group behind the attack, DarkSide, has quite a bit of experience in ransomware. The group has reportedly extracted approximately $90 million in Bitcoin from 47 different cryptocurrency wallets, with many more victims opting not to pay the ransom. Ransomware is becoming a highly profitable business model for hackers, and even more so when “Ransomware as a Service” (RaaS) is implemented. DarkSide is an example of this model, wherein there is a ransomware developer who oversees...
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Meme coins have been on the rise, with Dogecoin taking off and other cryptocurrencies attempting to follow suit. This has caused some trouble for the rest of the cryptocurrency world as fees have gone up and the legitimate cryptocurrency market is diluted. Now, one of the cofounders of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, has donated $1 billion in meme coins to a COVID-19 relief fund for India, which may have rippling effects. While Buterin donated quite a bit to other charities, the big donation of the bunch is 500 Ethereum, and a whopping 50 trillion SHIB worth roughly $1.14 billion at the time of the transaction was sent to the India Covid-Crypto Relief Fund. The founder of this fund, Sandeep Nailwal,...
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Tesla founder Elon Musk ruffled some feathers on Twitter by announcing that Tesla is no longer accepting Bitcoin currency. Just hours after the tweet went out, Bitcoin's value plunged 17 percent from around $54,800 to $45,700. It has since regained some of its value, but the cryptocurrency is still down more than 10 percent in 24 hours as investors mull the implications. The announcement comes less than two months after Musk tweeted out, "You can now buy a Tesla with Bitcoin" in the United States. At the time, Musk said Tesla would also accept Bitcoin from outside the US sometime later this year. And back in January, Tesla had invested $1.5 billion in Bitcoin, according to its annual 10-K report...
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As we reported over the weekend, Ethereum has seen a monumental rise in value during the opening months of 2021. Ethereum kicked off the new year valued at $730 and this morning surpassed the $3,000 mark to hit $3,148 (as of this writing). To put this performance in perspective, just a week ago, Ethereum was sitting at $2,500. However, the cryptocurrency likely won't stop here as deVere Group CEO Nigel Green predicts that we could see another massive surge. According to Green, Ethereum could pass $5,000 within the next week. While that comment may have seemed like an outlandish prediction just a few months ago, the current cryptocurrency boom takes a bit of the edge off the skepticism. "Ether...
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Gamers looking to purchase a current-generation graphics card from NVIDIA or AMD at MSRP have found the task damn near impossible. There are several reasons for this phenomenon, including the immense performance that these graphics cards provide in games; the resulting demand from gamers eager to get their hands on one; and the meteoric rise in the value of cryptocurrencies. One cryptocurrency that has been on an incredible run during 2021 is Ethereum, which is at an all-time high. Ethereum is currently sitting at just over $2,900 in value, a nearly 4x increase since the start of 2021. Bitcoin sharply increased its value over the past four months as well. The dominant cryptocurrency entered 2021...
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When we hear of ransomware attacks, it usually involves high-value targets, such as the recent $50 million attack against Apple supplier Quanta. This time, a ransomware gang took a different approach and targeted consumers and small businesses using QNAP devices and subsequently encrypted their files. In just five days, the gang managed to collect $260,000 in Bitcoin for unlocking all the devices they took hostage. On Monday, a ransomware operation called Qlocker kicked off, exploiting new vulnerabilities in QNAP NAS devices and leaving users to wake up to their files being locked up. The ransomware gang behind this pulled it off by scanning the web for connected QNAP devices and then locking...
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When people think of cryptocurrencies, they typically think of the big players like Ethereum or Bitcoin, both of which hit new heights this year. Besides these two major cryptos, there is a whole world of alternates out there that people have created, including a smaller meme-coin called Dogecoin. This coin was previously lower than a penny earlier this year and then shot up to $0.43 yesterday, so what exactly is going on here? Dogecoin is a cryptocurrency created by engineers Jackson Palmer and Billy Markus back in 2013 as a fun poke at the other cryptocurrencies coming up at the time. The Doge mascot, according to KnowYourMeme, is "a slang term for 'dog' that is primarily associated with...
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It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that cryptocurrencies are soaring to new highs. The valuation increases have also brought in a wealth of individuals and companies looking to cash in by mining for cryptocurrencies like Ethereum with GPUs that gamers would have otherwise bought. The huge cryptocurrency run culminated today with a cumulative valuation topping $2 trillion. Not surprisingly, Bitcoin and Ethereum make up the bulk of that $2 trillion figure, with the former hitting a 24-hour high of $58,243 with a total market cap of $1.10 trillion. Ethereum, on the other hand, had a 24-hour high of $2,118 with a market cap of $244.38 billion. Rounding out the top five cryptocurrencies...
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A fraudulent app in Apple's App Store enabled a scammer to swipe $600,000 worth of Bitcoin from an iPhone user, depleting him of his life savings that he hoped would salvage his dry cleaning business. It's an unfortunate situation that both serves as a cautionary cryptocurrency tale, and highlights a need for better vetting of mobile apps. That latter part is an admittedly difficult task. There are nearly 2 million apps in the App Store, and new ones are being added all the time. There is a process developers have to go through. Even so, malicious apps sneak through, some of which contain malware, and others designed to trick users into forking over their cryptocurrency details. Sadly for Phillipe...
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Cryptocurrency is slowly but surely growing in popularity with a broader global audience. Now that Elon Musk has begun to accept Bitcoin for Tesla purchases, that trend is only going to continue. As such, PayPal is jumping on the bandwagon of accepting crypto as a payment method for anything. Perhaps people will finally convert and have a use for all that Dogecoin they bought this year. Announced today, PayPal’s “Checkout With Crypto” feature will allow users to use their cryptocurrency at millions of businesses that support PayPal payments in the coming months. This builds on PayPal customers’ ability to buy, sell, and hold cryptocurrency with their PayPal wallets, allowing...
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Most people would never consider trying to mine Bitcoin (or any cryptocurrency) on an original Game Boy, a handheld console released by Nintendo over three decades ago. But would it be a feasible mod if someone paired a Game Boy with Raspberry Pi Pico, which is less than a year old? The answer is still no, but someone did it anyway. For the most part, Bitcoin miners have turned their attention to specialized ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuits) hardware these days. These devices are capable of mining north of 100 terahashes per second (100TH/s). Remember that figure, because we are going to circle back to it in a moment. But first, let's talk about the Game Boy mod. YouTube user "stacksmashing"...
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In February, we reported that Tesla went in on Bitcoin, investing $1.5 billion and laying the groundwork to accept payments using the cryptocurrency. Since then, Bitcoin is up over $13,000, which has earned Elon Musk’s company in the neighborhood of $480 million. Now, Tesla intends to increase its amassed wealth by allowing new Tesla purchases to be completed using Bitcoin. In a brief series of Tweets overnight, Musk announced that Tesla is now accepting Bitcoin payments within the US. Later this year, the feature will roll out worldwide so anyone can use their cryptocurrency wallet to make a Tesla purchase. As one astute Twitter user amusingly pointed out, you can now...
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Earlier this month, NVIDIA announced its CMP HX family of Crypto Mining Processors, which are intended for professional miners looking to make some big bucks. This week, we found out that the entry-level CMP 30HX and 40HX feature the Turing TU116 and TU106 GPUs, respectively. Today, VideoCardz revealed that the next step up in the family -- the CMP 50HX -- is also based on Turing, specifically the TU102. The CMP 50HX is thus closely related to the previous generation flagship GeForce RTX 2080 Ti. GeForce RTX 3080 But more interesting is the fact that the top-of-the-line CMP 90HX features the GA102, which means that it's most closely aligned with the current...
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Yesterday, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to go public with class A common stock under the symbol COIN. In the filing, the Delaware-based company listed its risk factors, including the outing of Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonym used by the person or group of people who created Bitcoin. As the filing specifically states, “the identification of Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous person or persons who developed Bitcoin, or the transfer of Satoshi’s Bitcoins” could adversely affect Coinbase. Moreover, it would likely adversely affect the Bitcoin market as well by effectively “centralizing” the coin,...
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One week ago, NVIDIA announced a dedicated lineup of mining GPUs called the Crypto Mining Processor (CMP HX) Series. The company said that the "headless" cards are targeted at the "professional mining" market and that "they don't meet the specifications required of a GeForce GPU and, thus, don't impact the availability of GeForce GPUs to gamers." However, what was unknown was what GPU architecture NVIDIA decided to use for the CMP HX cards. Some code sleuthing through NVIDIA's most recent 461.72 drivers shed some light on at least two members of the CMP HX family. Based on the power consumption figures, the 6GB of memory, and 26 MH/s hash rate, it appears that the CMP 30HX is based on the...
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Overnight and into today, you may have seen #CashAppStealsMoney briefly trending on Twitter with several thousand tweets chiming in. This stems from Imani Gandy, who goes by the user @AngryBlackLady on Twitter, who learned the hard way that CashApp can close your account and keep the cash if you happen to violate the platform's terms of service. Thankfully, CashApp rectified the situation but not before Gandy took to Twitter for multiple hours to get the matter resolved. Yesterday, Gandy had close to $1000 for veterinarian bills and approximately $140 worth of Bitcoin in her CashApp account. Much to her surprise and ire, the mobile payment service sent Gandy an email stating that her account...
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The launch of NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3060 is just around the corner, which means that budget gamers are probably eagerly anticipating an upgrade. NVIDIA first announced its newest mainstream graphics cards in early January, and it will officially launch on February 25th. However, one thing that many people have wondered is just how hard will it be to obtain a GeForce RTX 3060. After all, given its $329 price tag, it's sure to be a hot ticket item. Well, NVIDIA is trying to alleviate at least some demand to make sure that the GeForce RTX 3060 gets into the hands of enthusiasts and not cryptocurrency miners looking to make big bucks on the side. In this case, NVIDIA is altering...
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Bitcoin is still on the rise, having yet again hit a new record high, this time topping $50,000 for the first time ever. It achieved the milestone yesterday morning, before dropping back below the threshold—at the time of this writing, it is trading for a few hundred bucks above $48,000, giving Bitcoin a market cap of over $902 billion. The more Bitcoin climbs, the more attention it garners from investors, despite remaining a highly volatile currency. That applies to cryptocurrency in general, though Bitcoin leads the pack, and has proven to be the most stable of the bunch in the long term (so far, anyway). Of course, things can change in an instant, but consider this—if you had purchased...
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Mastercard is unabashedly planing to embrace cryptocurrency payments, a decision it made after observing people using cards to purchase crypto assets with increased frequency, especially on the heels of Bitcoin's recent surge in value, the company said. It is preparing for a future in which cryptocurrency transactions could become the norm, not the exception. In a blog post on the subject, Mastercard acknowledged this is a "big change that will require a lot of work." Part of that entails figuring out which specific cryptocurrencies to support. Bitcoin is a given, even though Mastercard did not confirm it would be one the currencies supported. But there will be others as well, such as perhaps...
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