Items tagged with bitcoin
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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Early in January, JP Morgan predicted Bitcoin's future price could surge upwards to $146K a coin with a market cap of around $2.6 trillion, which would rival gold as an alternative form of investment. Of course, this theory hinged on the speculation that volatility would decrease and that private companies would latch onto the coin and propel it to those impressive numbers. Barring the volatility which remains to be seen, we may be witnessing the first steps in the skyrocket of Bitcoin, as Tesla reported that it invested $1.5 billion into the cryptocurrency. Over the past few weeks, Tesla fans and customers have requested that Elon Musk accept Bitcoin payments for vehicle purchases....
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The graphics card shortage we find ourselves in this year is at least partially caused by cryptocurrency miners snagging mass amounts of cards with bots, or by other means. That sort of GPU gluttony does not come without consequences, however, as Iran is now finding out. With over a dozen large crypto-mining operations based in Iran, the power needed may have caused blackouts across the middle-eastern country. Since mid-January, it seems that rolling blackouts have plagued Iran, but this is not a new occurrence for the people. However, this is on top of the coronavirus battle, U.S. sanctions, and other issues that put the country under stress, and people are looking to place blame. According...
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German authorities are sitting on a cryptocurrency gold mine that was obtained from a convicted fraudster. In this case, the man was sentenced for secretly installing cryptocurrency mining software on victims' computers, during which he managed to amass over 1,700 Bitcoin. Luckily, German police managed to capture the man, and he served two years in jail for his crimes. But in addition to capturing their suspect, the authorities also took possession of his digital wallet. The only problem, however, is that the man has so far refused to give up his password, even after fully serving out his jail term. “We asked him but he didn’t say,” said a prosecutor working the case in a statement...
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Bitcoin continues to reach new heights, climbing to nearly $40,000 at the time of this writing (after reaching $20,000 a month ago), and who knows where it will stop. In the short term, maybe it reaches $50,000 by the end of the month. Looking down the road, however, at least one investment bank believes it could eventually climb to a staggering $146,000, putting it in contention with gold. In a sense, Bitcoin has become the modern day gold rush, only instead of mining dirt, savvy users dig it up on PCs and specialized ASIC hardware. Some choose to mine other forms of cryptocurrency and trade it for Bitcoin, while others simply invest real currency into the ballooning digital currency. And they...
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Back in late 2017, it looked like Bitcoin was on track to breach $20,000, but it did not quite get there. Even worse for Bitcoin investors, the digital currency went on a downward spiral of sorts as the crypto-market as a whole softened—by February 2018, it had dropped to below $7,000. And now? It has finally cracked the $20,000 mark in a remarkable surge, and who knows where it will stop. At the time of this writing, Bitcoin is trading at $20,737.03. This is the first time it has ever poked through the $20,000 mark. Its value has just about tripled in 2020. This does not take away from the fact that cryptocurrency is highly volatile—it reinforces that notion. But it also underscores...
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Believe it or not, Bitcoin at the time of this writing is trading at $19,330.80, and will be probably be even higher by the time I finish writing this article. Why is that? Good question, and nobody seems to have a definitive answer. Perhaps there is no single explanation, and this is just how it goes with the volatile cryptocurrency market. Bitcoin is the digital currency that put cryptocurrency on the map. It also contributed to the GPU shortage that is not unlike the one we have now (just for different reasons), because everyone and their uncle was snatching them up to mine. And when mining largely switched to specialized ASIC hardware, Ethereum stepped in, which people mined and trade for...
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When cryptocurrency is stolen, it tends to vanish into thin air without no obvious means for recourse. It would typically involve moving the currency across many accounts and disbursing it, so it is slowly spread out. It seems that the hackers that stole over $1 billion in Bitcoin from Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht were not wise enough, however. The U.S. Justice Department recently announced that they had seized the cryptocurrency from the unnamed hacker. Before 2013, the Silk Road was the underground market on the dark web. Illegal drugs, weapons, and other illicit things were sold using Bitcoin as the main currency. It was optimal as it was hard to track due to its decentralized design....
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Remember when you could not find a mid-range or high-end graphics card to save your life, because the cryptocurrency miners were hogging them all? Things changed when mining in large part shifted from GPUs to specialized ASIC hardware, the cryptocurrency boom came to an end. Well, sort of. Bitcoin has held strong, and it also just got a boost from PayPay, which announced it will be accepting cryptocurrency payments in the near future. Wild times, folks. It is an interesting move, in part because cryptocurrency mining and trading has not exactly been a mainstream topic this past year. PayPal seems to be showing up late to the party, but is evidently confident that the crypto scene has legs, particularly...
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Sometimes, news reports regarding free money can sound a bit too good to be true – especially anytime cryptocurrency is involved. That was most definitely the case when we first heard about Satoshi’s Treasure, which is an online scavenger hunt that will net the winner a sweet prize worth $1 million in Bitcoin. The $1 million scavenger hunt first kicked off back in April, but along the way, there have been side quests with additional payouts in Bitcoin. Today, a fourteenth clue that will lead to the jackpot prize has been released, and it is worth an additional $70,000 in Bitcoin. The key to unlock this side quest is found in the image below: (Click to Enlarge) The clue provided...
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The cryptocurrency market is full of peaks and valleys but at the moment, it appears that Bitcoin has hit a peak. Bitcoin surged past $11,000 USD for the first time in a year. The value of Bitcoin has jumped by 13% in the last 24 hours. Although the cyrptocurrency’s value dropped slightly once the heat of the excitement wore off, it is currently sitting pretty at roughly $10,600. Other cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum have also hit a ten-month high. Bitcoin reached an all-time high in December 2017 at nearly $20,000. Its value dipped by 74% at the beginning of 2018, thanks to a slew of cryptocurrency regulations. A Bitcoin was only worth roughly $3,100 at the end of December 2018, but...
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