Latest from PC Gamer in Bitcoin

NY governor orders a pause on large AI data center construction, to ensure that 'when companies succeed because of New York, New Yorkers succeed too'

Andy Edser — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 14:25:11 +0000

New York State governor Kathy Hochul has announced a year-long moratorium on new high-powered data centers. The executive order, signed on Tuesday, bars the construction of new hyperscaler data centers using 50 megawatts or more of power for up to one year.

The pause would allow state agencies to craft regulations around upcoming projects in regards to their potentially harmful effect on local communities, including water usage, noise, and power concerns (via CNBC).

"As data center development threatens to hike up utility bills, deplete our natural resources and create uncertainty for New Yorkers, it’s my responsibility to take action and lead," said Hochul. "New York will lead the way in creating the strongest standards in the nation for data center development, ensuring that when companies succeed because of New York, New Yorkers succeed too."

According to The City Reporter, while New York is yet to find itself a major part of the data center boom, around 30 projects that could become possible data centers requested connections to the power grid between 2020 and 2025.

This, among several upcoming planned data center projects, has sparked concerns from authorities and local groups that the state's infrastructure is ill-equipped to deal with a vast number of potential new data facilities, particularly as the state's average residential electricity price has risen nearly 68% since 2019.

(Image credit: Meta)

The executive order also calls for the state Department of Public Service to create an environmental impact statement for evaluating upcoming data center projects, including their effects on water and air quality, energy, and water use while the moratorium is in place.

The governor has also directed Empire State Development, New York's economic development agency, to "issue a Community Investment Framework (CIF) within 60 days, which will provide clear guidance to local entities to help them negotiate community benefits as part of any large-scale data center deal." The framework would also include provisions for "local infrastructure improvements, child care investments, and direct financial support for their community."

Among other measures, governor Hochul is also said to be pursuing legislation to repeal sales tax exemptions for "massive data centers across the state."

The move comes amid various US lawmakers attempts to introduce similar data center construction moratoriums on a state level, as local residents continue to protest data center construction across the country, citing many of the same concerns in regards to noise, energy, water usage, and climate effects.

(Image credit: AMD | ZT Systems)

Earlier this year, US senator Bernie Sanders announced a bill calling for a nationwide pause on data center construction, echoing many of the same points.

According to a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll, only one in three Americans surveyed approved of the fast pace of data center construction, and most would oppose building one in their own community. Responding to governor Hochul's announcement, data center operator Digital Reality told Reuters: "We're committed to working with policymakers on solutions that support responsible growth, but a one-year pause isn't the right approach."

Meanwhile, NTT Global Data Centers CEO Doug Adams told the outlet: "The heightened scrutiny reflects a desire for greater understanding of how data centers impact local communities. We welcome that conversation."

Someone is trying to use lost property 'finder' laws to gain legal ownership of 39,069 Bitcoin wallets, with just one of them being worth nearly $6,000,000,000

Jacob Fox — Thu, 28 May 2026 13:29:58 +0000

Sometimes someone does something that makes you think, 'Why the hell had no one tried this before?' That's the question that crossed my mind when I learned about 'Noah Doe', a (presumably) placeholder name for a man who is trying to get the New York courts to officially recognise him (and the other plantiff companies) as the owner of 39,069 seemingly abandoned Bitcoin wallets worth billions of US dollars.

Doe's complaint, brought to my attention by International Cyber Digest on X, was filed at the start of this month (PDF warning) in the New York Supreme Court. The suit makes the case that Doe should be given legal ownership of the seemingly abandoned wallets because the correct procedures were followed to attempt to "return" the virtual wallets to their owners under the city's law.

In normal circumstances—with, say, a regular physical wallet—if enough time passes without anyone claiming ownership and the correct procedures are followed, including trying to get it back to the original owner, the "finder" can then usually become the new legal owner.

Using an "algorithm" that he cooked up, Doe found 1,544 Bitcoin wallets in December 2024, 546 in March 2025, and 39,911 in April 2025. These were then whittled down a little as some were in fact demonstrated to not be abandoned by their owners. The addresses of all 39,069 remaining seemingly abandoned wallets are listed in the court document under Exhibit 1.

All wallets were "dormant or inactive for at least five years and apparently abandoned", and in each case there was a full year of efforts to identify and notify any owners of the wallets. With each batch of wallet discovery Doe handed over a USB stick containing the addresses to the police department as lost property. Some months later, the police would return the drive.

(Image credit: da-kuk via Getty Images)

Doe's efforts to "return" the wallets included having "strategic consultant" Salomon Brothers help come up with a plan to reach out to any owners. A cyber/blockchain expert would also review the wallets and assist with contacting any potential owners.

"The expert confirmed that the Found Wallets validly exist on the blockchain, contain digital assets, and have been dormant or inactive for at least five (5) years."

On the back of this, Doe added a message as a token into the transaction records, directing potential wallet owners to a webpage giving wallet holders 90 days to say they are the owner. And after this, they put out a press release to try to reach any of the wallet holders that way, too.

So it seems due diligence was definitely done, but that doesn't mean it will be a straightforward decision given the uniqueness of the situation here.

(Image credit: Getty Images / Anna Barclay)

What's particularly noteworthy about this case is that one of the 30-odd thousand wallet addresses is the Mt. Gox hack wallet (1FeexV6bAHb8ybZjqQMjJrcCrHGW9sb6uF) containing about 80,000 Bitcoins worth almost $6 billion USD today. This wallet is the destination for Bitcoin that was stolen from the Mt. Gox exchange back in 2011, and has been untouched ever since given it's been watched the world over for any activity. That wallet is listed as the very first one of the thousands in Doe's court doc—perhaps the list is ordered by value.

Some online have already been speculating whether Doe perhaps already had access to some of these wallets and is just trying to make it 'legal' to use them. Or, Doe could be waiting for a time when he will be able to use advanced tech (such as quantum computing) to gain access.

One thing that crossed my mind is what would happen if Doe is granted legal ownership and then somewhere down the line an original owner of one of the wallets finds their private key and uses it. Would this mean Doe is now being stolen from?

It's a ridiculous thing to ponder, and surely something that won't come to pass because one would like to assume the court will throw this case out, not least because it's hard to reason that the Bitcoin wallets are actually located in New York at all. But I'm not a lawyer, so I can't make any definite claims here. It will be interesting to see exactly how the court handles it, as it could set precedents for the future regarding blockchains and digital wallets.

'The company’s current business model is unsustainable': CEO of Bitcoin ATM operator blames increasing regulation for bankruptcy

Jess Kinghorn — Mon, 18 May 2026 15:05:06 +0000

Founded in 2016, Bitcoin Depot was once North America's largest bitcoin ATM operator. Now, the Georgia-based company has voluntarily filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. This raises many questions, from 'how did we get here?' to 'and what exactly does an ATM for cryptocurrency do?'

Putting it simply, whereas a traditional ATM dispenses physical currency, a bitcoin ATM doesn't dispense anything but can be used to facilitate blockchain transactions. These machines can incur pretty steep fees on top of the actual transaction, though not even these have been able to keep Bitcoin Depot afloat.

Bitcoin Depot announced today that the company's assets are to be sold, and operations wound down via bankruptcy proceedings due to an increase in regulation. CEO Alex Holmes said, "States have imposed increasingly stringent compliance obligations for [Bitcoin Teller Machine operators], including new transaction limits, and in some jurisdictions, outright restrictions or bans on BTM operations, and operators have faced increasing litigation and regulatory enforcement."

As such, the company's ATM network of more than 9,000 machines is already offline. "These developments have materially affected Bitcoin Depot’s business and financial position," Holmes added, "Under these circumstances, the company’s current business model is unsustainable."

The company had recently reported a year-on-year 49.2% decrease in revenue for the first quarter of 2026, going from making a profit of $12.2 million to reporting a loss of $9.5 million (via Coin Desk). You don't need me to tell you that's a rapid decline.

But it's not just fresh regulation creating a challenging landscape—there's a lawsuit too. Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird has filed a suit against both Bitcoin Depot and another cryptocurrency ATM operator, CoinFlip. The suit alleges that the companies failed to sufficiently protect Iowans from crypto scams, and that "both Bitcoin Depot and CoinFlip profit directly from Iowa scam victims by imposing excessive, and often hidden, transaction fees."

US victims lost nearly $21 billion to cybercrime last year, with the FBI claiming that crypto and AI complaints are among the costliest. To get a smidge more specific, $333 million of that was the result of bitcoin ATM scams alone. With that in mind, greater regulation makes sense, and I certainly won't be shedding a tear over any Bitcoin teller machine operators going under as a result.

Owner of $400,000 in bitcoin was locked out of their account a decade ago and they just used Claude to get back in

James Bentley — Fri, 15 May 2026 10:30:35 +0000

You may think getting locked out of your account because you've forgotten the password is annoying, but have you ever gotten locked out and lost almost half a million dollars in the process? That's what happened to X user @cprkrn, when they stored five bitcoin ($402k at the time of writing) in an account in 2015 and forgot how to get back in.

As reported by Tom's Hardware, cprkrn used Anthropic's AI model, Claude, to get access again. After using 'like 7 trillion passwords ', they found a password that happened to be the one before the current one.

Thinking they had no way back in, they reportedly dumped their college computer into Claude, which found an old wallet file that, once decrypted, got them into their account.

This computer had a mnemonic device that they seemingly didn't spot, and Claude put that together with the rest of their account details to get into the account. The LLM didn't hack into the account, or anything so elaborate, it just found the pieces to get into the account, lost in an old computer.

If you're wondering how and why they lost their password for an account that is so valuable, they were apparently "Locked out 11+ years because I got stoned and changed the password."

I tried like 7 trillion passwords lmfaoFound this old pneumonic a few weeks ago that ended up being the old password before I changed itThought I was screwedLast ditch effort dumped my whole college computer into ClaudeIt found an OLD wallet file that the pneumonic…May 13, 2026

There's an ironic silver lining here, in that we don't know if cprkm would have held onto the bitcoin so long if they hadn't lost access. According to the account history, 5 bitcoin were purchased on April Fools' Day in 2015. By this point, the cryptocurrency was worth around $245. Now, one bitcoin fetches $60,000. That's a fair jump in value, though it is down from its peak of $90,000 in October, 2025.

Still, cprkrn would have been aware that they had somewhere close to half a million dollars in a locked account for years now. They report that dumping their computer into Claude was their 'last ditch effort' to get the account back.

You may be wondering what they plan on doing with all that cash now that they finally have it back. Their answer? Asking electronic artist and DJ Deadmau5 to play at their wedding. I suppose there are technically worse ways to spend the money.

A renowned New York Times investigative reporter thinks British cryptographer is Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto, said cryptographer says no

James Bentley — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 14:30:42 +0000

Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous name of the inventor of bitcoin, has never been publicly unveiled. The New York Times believes it may have finally nailed the right guy, but said guy says it's not him.

In a video report from the New York Times, investigative reporter John Carreyrou argues it is British cryptographer Adam Back. A member of the cryptography group Cypherpunks, CEO of blockchain company Block Stream, and inventor of Hashcash, Back is fairly well-known in the crypto scene.

The first bit of evidence is a nitpick of grammar. Carreyrou says both Back and Nakamoto are "pathologically incapable of using hyphens correctly" and that "they tended to hyphenate compound nouns, which you're not supposed to do, and to not hyphenate compound adjectives, which you are supposed to do."

He also notes that, in a Cypherpunks list back in 2004, Back uses the term 'partial pre-image', and Nakamoto appears to have used that same phrase in 2008. Carreyrou reports using AI to analyse a database of over 30,000 users who could be Nakamoto, and it labelled Back's grammar as the closest to the Bitcoin creator.

Carreyrou notes that Adam Back is the first person Nakamoto spoke to, via email. He also argues that Back's own paper lays out principles found in the Bitcoin white paper a decade later, and Back started to talk about Bitcoin when Nakamoto went silent in 2011.

(Image credit: BlackJack3D via Getty Images)

Satoshi Nakamoto also references Adam Back's Hashcash in Bitcoin's foundational white paper. Carreyrou states that Back was patient and polite with him when they first met, but he 'went dark' after Carreyrou asked Back to provide the metadata of his interactions with Nakamoto.

"Looking at all the evidence I've collected over the past 18 months, I became more and more convinced that they were actually emails Adam Back had sent to himself. "

Carreyrou says, "Adam's chalked all of this up to one big series of coincidences"

i'm not satoshi, but I was early in laser focus on the positive societal implications of cryptography, online privacy and electronic cash, hence my ~1992 onwards active interest in applied research on ecash, privacy tech on cypherpunks list which led to hashcash and other ideas.April 8, 2026

Adam Back has since taken to X to share his side of the story and to deny the allegation. (Via The Guardian). Back says, "I'm not Satoshi, but I was early in laser focus on the positive societal implications of cryptography, online privacy and electronic cash, hence my ~1992 onwards active interest in applied research on ecash [and] privacy tech on Cypherpunks list which led to hashcash and other ideas."

Back argues that Carreyrou's findings are an example of confirmation bias, and that one would naturally link comments together when lots of people have a similar interest, He continues to argue that the rest is simply a "combination of coincidence and similar phrases from people with similar experience and interests - inference Satoshi needed specific skills and experience to discover bitcoin, where myself and others got 'so close yet so far' in design discussions the decade before."

Back claims "I also don't know who Satoshi is, and I think it is good for Bitcoin that this is the case" and that he prefers to look at Bitcoin as something that was "discovered". He seems to prefer the idea of no one really knowing who invented Bitcoin, and it's hard to say if that's something someone who invented Bitcoin would say or not.

Google says quantum computing will crack bitcoin cryptography sooner than expected, estimating a 10% chance of 'Q-Day' by 2032

Jeremy Laird — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 13:45:35 +0000

Google published a whitepaper yesterday that dramatically pulled in the horizon on bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Google Quantum AI researchers claim that cracking the cryptography protecting many major coins, including bitcoin and ether, could require a quantum computer with fewer than 500,000 physical qubits, something in the order of 20 times lower than previous estimates, Forbes reports.

Indeed, one of the paper's co-authors, Justin Drake, has concluded that the timeframe for "Q-Day", the hypothetical moment when a sufficiently powerful quantum computer becomes capable of breaking the public-key encryption algorithms that underpin much of modern digital security including cryptocurrencies, could arrive much sooner than previously thought.

Today is a monumentous day for quantum computing and cryptography. Two breakthrough papers just landed (links in next tweet). Both papers improve Shor's algorithm, infamous for cracking RSA and elliptic curve cryptography. The two results compound, optimising separate layers of…March 31, 2026

"My confidence in Q-Day by 2032 has shot up significantly. IMO there's at least a 10% chance that by 2032 a quantum computer recovers a secp256k1 ECDSA private key from an exposed public key," Drake said on X.

To put all this into at least some kind of context, Google's current most powerful quantum device, the Willow chip, has 105 qubits, while IBM's Condor processor was the first superconducting qubit processor to surpass 1,000 qubits, notching up 1,121 qubits.

However, the simple qubit count can be a somewhat misleading metric. Google's 105-qubit Willow is in many ways more capable than systems with far more qubits, because it achieves fidelities of 99.97% for single-qubit gates, 99.88% for entangling gates, and 99.5% for readout across its entire 105-qubit array.

According to Google, a computer with 1,000 low-quality, error-prone qubits can easily be outperformed by one with 100 highly reliable ones. As a consequence, the quantum computing industry is shifting to measuring logical qubits or error-corrected groupings of physical qubits as a more meaningful measure.

It's also important to understand that Q-Day doesn't mean that all digital security is immediately toast. Broadly, there are two kinds of cryptography. Public-key cryptography relies on mathematical problems (factoring huge numbers, discrete logarithms and so on) that quantum computers can solve via Shor's algorithm. This is what Q-Day would actually represent.

Then there's symmetric encryption and hashing, including AES and SHA-2. Those are vulnerable to Grover's algorithm, which effectively halves the security strength rather than dismantling it entirely. In that scenario, for instance, AES-256 encryption would be degraded to AES-128 levels of security. What's more, using longer keys in the first place would restore protection.

All of which means that Q-day would be less an instant end to all encryption and more a case of game over for public-key cryptography while everything else gets a little weaker and faces a painful but plausible migration to longer keys.

If this is what 105 qubits looks like... (Image credit: Google)

As Forbes reports, "Google’s whitepaper points out that cryptocurrencies are uniquely exposed among systems that rely on this type of cryptography. Blockchains use elliptic curve keys that are almost an order of magnitude smaller than RSA keys at comparable security levels, meaning a smaller quantum computer can crack them.

"And unlike traditional finance, which layers multiple safeguards, blockchains offer no recourse against fraudulent transactions. One forged signature could mean irreversible theft."

Indeed, Google's new paper, which is titled "Securing Elliptic Curve Cryptocurrencies against Quantum Vulnerabilities," does rather put a different spin on the company's declaration, which we reported on recently, that it is effectively prepping for the "quantum apocalypse" and planning to move over to post-quantum security measures by 2029.

Of course, for now this is just a prediction. Nobody has yet built a quantum machine with anything close to even the substantially reduced qubit count mooted in the new Google paper. But Q-Day does seem to be the opposite of many future technologies like fusion energy and a cure for cancer.

Instead of remaining slightly out of reach, always roughly the same way off into the future, Q-Day and the presumed demise of bitcoin seems to accelerating towards us.

That dude from The Big Short says crypto experienced a 'collateral death spiral' as bitcoin hits a 16-month low, while other analysts predict worse to come

Andy Edser — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 16:44:46 +0000

I'm writing about cryptocurrency again, which means bitcoin's either gone massively up in value, or it's in the middle of a, err, "significant downturn."

Well whaddaya know, it's the latter. The world's most headline-friendly cryptocurrency dropped in value below $70,000 per coin on Thursday for the first time since 2024, with its losses overall this year totalling more than 20 percent. The reasons why are complicated, but famous hedge fund manager Michael Burry has some ideas.

You know, the guy portrayed by Christian Bale in 2015's The Big Short. Burry took to his paid subscriber Substack page to declare that crypto was experiencing a "collateral death spiral", thanks to "sky high leverage" on crypto exchanges due to rising metal prices, which in turn meant that "as the crypto collateral fell, the tokenized metals had to be sold" (via Coindesk).

To understand what's happening here, I need to explain tokenised metals, so strap in. According to information I learned this morning (I have so little interest in crypto it's physically painful), tokenised metals are essentially blockchain representations of assets like gold, platinum and silver.

They can be full asset-backed tokens, where each one corresponds to a specific amount of valuable metal in a vault, fractional ownership tokens, where investors can own fractions of a large reserve, or commodity-linked digital securities, where the tokens are linked to derivatives, or revenue-sharing agreements tied to metal production or sales.

(Image credit: Velischuk via Getty Images)

Apparently, at least. Anyway, tokenized silver futures are said to be particularly volatile at the moment, due to supply constraints and increased demand, and the price of silver had already risen by over 157% over the course of 2025. Traders bet on silver going up and up, and… you can probably guess what happened next.

Silver values plunged (as did gold), positions automatically closed, and bitcoin sank with it. Albeit, with silver outpacing the famous cryptocurrency on its way down. "It was reported that tokenized silver futures liquidations actually exceeded bitcoin liquidations on one crypto market, called, ironically, Hyperliquid", said Murray. Ho ho ho.

As crypto and financial markets are fiendishly difficult to analyse, it's very likely not the only reason why bitcoin took a tumble. However, tumble it has, and where bitcoin goes, the rest of the crypto market has a tendency to follow. As of the time of writing, bitcoin is currently falling below the $68,000 mark, with more than $1 billion worth of crypto positions liquidated over the past 24 hours.

(Image credit: Getty Images / Anna Barclay)

And according to John Blank, chief equity strategist at Zacks Investment Research, bitcoin could go a lot lower yet. "Generally speaking, a bitcoin winter is 12 to 18-months long. These are well understood technical features," said Blank, speaking to CNBC. So, at $76,000 [per bitcoin] from $125,000, which was the peak, we can get to $40,000."

"We can get there very quickly, or more likely, we can get there over the next six to eight months."

Long gone are the days when crypto was considered a pure speculative investment for tech nerds, as the cryptocurrency market as a whole is now a big mainstream financial deal, and increasingly linked to real-world assets with real-world effects. And while I'm the complete opposite of an expert on this topic, I can tell you this seems like a bad thing. Or good, depending on your position on crypto. You decide.

Jailed British hacker who hijacked X accounts including Apple, Bill Gates, and Barack Obama—then used them for a 'double your money' Bitcoin scam—has to hand back $5.4 million in ill-gotten crypto gains

Rich Stanton — Mon, 17 Nov 2025 18:01:56 +0000

A Brit who hacked multiple high-profile Twitter / X accounts in 2020, and who was extradited to the US and jailed in 2023, has now been ordered to hand over £4.1 million ($5.4 million) in ill-gotten crypto gains (thanks, BBC).

Joseph O'Connor, now 26 years old, hijacked over 130 accounts, including those of Apple, Uber, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Barack Obama, and Kanye West. Alongside other hackers, three of whom have been charged, they then impersonated the companies / individuals in question and used the accounts to promote a classic "double your money" scam.

The hijacked accounts would send tweets asking followers to send Bitcoin to digital wallets, promising that the money would be doubled and returned. An estimated 350 million Twitter users viewed these dodgy tweets and, over 15-16 July 2020, a total of 426 transfers totalling 12.86 Bitcoin was made to the wallets. This would have been worth around $110,000 in 2020: now the value would be more like $1.2 million.

The hack itself, as they often are, was more down to social engineering than cyber genius. The group persuaded a handful of Twitter employees to hand over their internal login details, through which they gained access to the site's admin tools. From here they were able to access internal controls and gain fraudulent access to the accounts in question.

(Image credit: Thianchai Sitthikongsak/Getty)

O'Connor is currently serving a five year sentence in the US, but this new asset seizure was led by the UK's Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), which has managed to recover 42 Bitcoin and other assets from the fraudster. Obviously this is a higher value than the Twitter hack alone: the CPS says its investigators believe that the additional Bitcoin was also obtained through hacks, adding the detail that O'Connor carried these out with other young men he'd met through Call of Duty.

"Even when someone is not convicted in the UK, we are still able to ensure they do not benefit from their criminality," said Adrian Foster of the CPS Proceeds of Crime Division.

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$6.7 billion in bitcoin scored in 'single largest cryptocurrency seizure in the world'

Jacob Ridley — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 10:05:32 +0000

One bitcoin could be a life-changing amount of money to someone: valued at around $113,000 a pop, give or take the whims of the market at any one time. And the market just might have something to react to with this story: a woman has been arrested by London's Met Police for stolen bitcoin valued at—gulp—$6.7 billion or thereabouts.

The woman, Zhimin Qian, also known as Yadi Zhang, also allegedly known as "the goddess of wealth" by some, plead guilty to two counts in Southwark Crown Court, related to the acquisition and possession of criminal property (via BBC News). The assets in question: 61,000 bitcoin.

61,000 x 113,000 = 6.893 billion dollars. The value has shifted a little since the Met made its calculations, but that's bitcoin for you. Six months ago a single bitcoin was worth less than $100,000. Six years ago it was around $3,000.

Qian is said to have received the bitcoin from large-scale fraud in China, with over 128,000 victims pouring their cash into Qian's investments. Qian then stored the stolen assets in bitcoin, which has had a pretty good year. Qian is then said to have moved to the UK and attempted to launder the assets by purchasing property with assistance from another, Jian Wen.

You might wonder why Qian moved the money from high-earning bitcoin into measly London property. Well, besides the never-ceasing London property boom, the Met had already tracked the movement of cryptocurrency wallet containing 150 bitcoin (around $16 million today) connected to Jian last year as a part of this same investigation. So, all these wallets might not be the best long-term storage for stolen goods, especially as recent events have shown investigators are getting ever-better at tracking down stolen funds.

Wen was sentenced to six years and eight months imprisonment for their part in the operation back in May, 2024. Qian is awaiting sentencing.

There have also been various thefts of wallets in recent months and years, such as a $1.5 billion bitcoin heist from Dubai-based crypto firm Bybit. So, even if you evade the law, will you evade other nefarious actors? Property is much harder to hack, you know, and Jian had property in both London and Dubai, according to a report from the Crown Prosecution Service earlier in the year.

"This is one of the largest money laundering cases in UK history", said Will Lyne, the Met's head of economic and cybercrime command.

“Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are increasingly being used by organised criminals to disguise and transfer assets, so that fraudsters may enjoy the benefits of their criminal conduct," Robin Weyell, deputy chief crown prosecutor for the CPS, said.

The Met also worked with Chinese law enforcement in both Beijing and Tianjin throughout the investigation.

"Through a meticulous investigation and unprecedented cooperation with Chinese law enforcement, we were able to obtain compelling evidence of the criminal origins of the cryptoassets Qian attempted to launder in the UK."

(Image credit: Google)

If there's one thing that seems constant throughout most cryptocurrency heists, hacks, and seizures, it's that the numbers keep going up. A few years ago we'd be surprised by the theft of a few hundred million dollars worth of coins, but as the value of many cryptocurrencies has increased, so have the totals.

The Met is claiming this recent case to be the largest cryptocurrency seizure in the world, though that depends on whether you go by value or number of coins. There was a larger seizure late last year, 120,000 bitcoins stolen from the Bitfinex exchange. Those were seized by the US Department of Justice.

The then-deputy attorney general, Lisa Monaco (yes, the now-Microsoft exec that Trump wants to get rid of), claimed it to be the largest in US history at the time. It was worth around $4.5 billion then. So, technically, the Met's seizure is bigger by value, though that 120,000 bitcoin haul would now be worth, er, a little over 13 billion dollars and counting. But who's counting, eh?

You can now buy a trip to space on Jeff Bezos' unfortunately-shaped rocket with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, bringing the finest human endeavours full circle

Andy Edser — Wed, 20 Aug 2025 10:41:46 +0000

Should you wish to emulate the achievements of the great Katy Perry, William Shatner and others by taking a trip on one of Blue Origin's rockets beyond the Kármán line, I have excellent news—you can now pay for the experience with cryptocurrency.

Shift4 Payments, a self-described "leader in integrated payments and commerce technology", has announced it's been working with Blue Origin to use its seamless payments technology to allow would-be space travellers to pay with Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, USDT and USDC for a trip on one of the company's New Shepard rockets. The system is said to be up and running as of last week, marking a brave new frontier of crypto and space tourism combined.

“Our mission has always been to revolutionize commerce by simplifying the transaction process, and we’re thrilled to now extend that vision beyond Earth,” said Shift4 CEO Taylor Lauber. "This partnership will enable adventurous travelers to book the adventure of a lifetime, no matter their preferred payment method - all with a simple, frictionless experience."

Blue Origin is currently taking bookings for one of 1,000 places aboard said rocket, promising that you'll "return to Earth, forever changed". The New Shepard spacecraft allows travellers to float about in relative comfort inside one large crew capsule, roughly 62 miles above the planet's surface, before gently descending back down to terra firma with the help of some substantial parachutes.

It's not known exactly how much a single flight costs, but the booking form states that a (refundable) $150,000 deposit is required to begin the order process, so I imagine it's not exactly cheap. Still, if you made out big in the last crypto boom, it might be something on your bucket list—and previous celebrity travellers appear to have enjoyed the experience immensely, so it's probably worth a punt if you've got the spare virtual cash rattling around in your digital wallet.

(Image credit: SpaceX)

Of course, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin is not the only contender vying for your space tourism cash. Virgin Galactic, Richard Branson's spaceplane-based competitor, allows you to join a waiting list for future flights, said to cost $450,000 a seat in boring old regular money. Elon Musk's SpaceX, meanwhile, offers yet another mysterious booking form on its website, although there are no known space tourism flights currently in operation.

Russia's Soyuz programme has previously allowed private individuals to book a seat on one of its spacecraft, although it's not currently offering bookings, instead focusing on professional crew rotation runs to the International Space Station.

So, it looks like Blue Origin might be the fastest way to get yourself above the planet for a good old stare at its dying ecosystems from above, and now you can use internet funny money to pay for the experience. Much of which, it must be said, was likely generated through the very power-sapping mechanisms that helped contribute to its downfall in the process. Lovely.

A mysterious crypto account bought $54,000 worth of bitcoin in 2011 and sold it all for $9.6 billion this week, which means they can now afford one Big Mac a day for 4,971,897 years

Andy Edser — Tue, 22 Jul 2025 15:38:22 +0000

I never bought into the bitcoin boom, at least back in the day. In 2011, many would have told you your trousers were on backwards if you dropped over 50 grand on the then-ailing cryptocurrency, and I listened to said trouser-judgers. Crypto was a flop, bitcoin was dead in the water, and many of us (including this intrepid writer) were openly scoffing at the idea it would ever be worth serious cash.

Well, more fool me, because one mysterious trader appears to have made off with a staggering amount of profit. As spotted by X user @kkashit_yt, one "whale" (as I believe is the common parlance) bought 80,000 bitcoin in 2011 and sold it all this week for $9.6 billion (via Tom's Hardware). Must be nice.

2011 wasn't the best year for bitcoin, as it started out with a valuation of around 29 cents a coin, rose to the dizzying heights of $19.02, and closed out the year at $4.21. You'd have to be truly committed to the idea to spend the equivalent of $77,435 in today's money on an investment that volatile, but our mysterious trader appears to have taken the bet and won.

A $9.6 billion payout equates to roughly a 17,777,677% ROI overall, which simply dwarfs every other investment opportunity you could think of over the same time period. The largest publicly documented stock market ROI is believed to be a 25-year investment in Monster Beverage Corp., which between July 1, 2000 and June 30 of this year is said to have delivered a 145,503.31% return with an annualised growth rate of 33.82%.

The second? Nvidia, somewhat predictably. Given its massive valuation rise in recent years, a 25-year investment in Nvidia stock would have netted you a 59,556.46% price return over the same period.

Still, think of what $9.6 billion could buy you. If you were that lucky trader and you happen to be reading, allow me to present you with a selection of things you could do with your newfound riches:

Develop between five and nine GTA 6 iterations
Fund the production of Spiderman 2, 32 times over
Buy one Big Mac a day for 4,971,897 years
Commission nineteen versions of Jeff Bezo's superyacht (he'll be so pleased)
Or you could run OpenAI for a year

So, it's not like your options are limited. Bitcoin has experienced a remarkable boost in value in 2025, rising 27.23% since July 2024 to its current price of $119,096 at the time of writing.

No wait, $119,345. Sorry, that should have been $119,079. Wait, it's more like… you get the idea. It's still a pretty volatile investment even at this mature stage of the market, although the Trump Media and Technology Group recently declared it owns $2 billion of the stuff. What it plans to do with it is anyone's guess. Money making money? I'm lucky if mine makes toast.

A crypto wallet browser extension has been quietly wearing out some user SSDs at a rate of 5 MB/s: 'That's about 500 GB per day!'

Jacob Fox — Tue, 22 Jul 2025 14:17:52 +0000

There are many things that have kept me from joining the crypto hive-mind up until now: mild scepticism, lack of knowledge, confusion, laziness. I never pegged SSD longevity as being on that list, though. Until now, that is, because one popular crypto wallet extension is apparently writing an inordinate amount of data to and from some users' SSDs.

According to CoinTelegraph, which received comment from Consensys, the company that developed the MetaMask crypto extension, some users have experienced "unusually high disk activity" when using the app:

"While browser extension wallets do regularly write state to disk, which is expected behavior, we’ve taken note of a recent observation shared by a small number of MetaMask users who reported unusually high disk activity."

A fix is apparently in the works and is "being released imminently."

A user report gives an idea of just what "unusually high" might mean. They explain that "after a fresh install of a Chromium-based browser (Opera, Chrome, Edge) and installing MetaMask", there was a continuous 5 MB/s of data writing occurring on the SSD.

"That's about 500 GB per day!"

Apart from presumably slowing down other reads and writes from the disk while these transfers are happening, the main issue with this is drive longevity. Flash cells in SSDs have a pretty limited number of times they can be written to or read from before they go kaput. That's why when an SSD is wiped this doesn't reset all data cells but essentially tells the drive controller to act as if there's nothing in them and can read and write over them at will.

For reference, my Lexar NM790 2 TB SSD has write endurance of 1,500 TBW. It would take about 3,000 days, or just over eight years, for the malfunctioning app to exhaust the drive's endurance at 500 GB per day. But that's just using the app alone, not including other reads and writes (plus TBW is more of an endurance estimate than an accurate measurement).

Writing upwards of 175 TB of data over the course of a year is certainly not nothing, and that's what this app seems to be doing with some users' drives.

I suppose this is just another aspect of entering the world of crypto to take into consideration. And it's a world I'm sure many more people will be looking to step into given Trump's new GENIUS Act that aims to formalise some stablecoin regulations (these are coins that have a stable value because they're pegged against the dollar or other assets). Crypto-linked stocks are seemingly already on the rise.

If you are considering dipping your toes in, just do your due diligence not only with which coin you pick, but also which platforms and apps you use.

This $24 Lucky Miner USB stick is a 210.7 trillion-to-one lottery ticket where the prize is a single BTC

Hope Corrigan — Tue, 13 May 2025 04:42:24 +0000

"I'd enter the national lottery but the odds are just too good." If this sounds like you, I've got good news: Now you can purchase a new high-tech kind of lottery ticket with even worse odds of mining a bitcoin than you will get for winning your country's lottery. Truly we are living in a future, indeed.

Tom's Hardware explains that the Lucky Miner SOLO-LV02 is a USB stick that's only purpose is to have a chance at mining some crypto. The stick goes for about $24 USD on AliExpress or $34 on Amazon, or a couple of lotto tickets, and once delivered to your door is a dedicated crypto cracker.

The little dongle has a USB Type-C connection that draws a single watt of power to run. Once it's been set up and connected to Wi-Fi, then all you need to do is make sure it has that teeny tiny bit of power and forget about it. The Lucky Miner will continue to tick around in the background attempting to mine a BTC.

In the current state of things, mining bitcoin with even a purpose built rig is a pretty lofty dream. It's to the point now where mining BTC is simply beyond unprofitable, so for $24 you're basically buying a wish, dream, in a little USB stick. Thanks to the sluggish hashrate, you're looking at odds of about 210.7 trillion-to-one of mining a single BTC. That's over the course of a year left running.

The odds of winning most national lotteries are around 300 million to one. This makes your chances about one million times better than having a Lucky Miner produce a single BTC. It's almost convincing me to buy a lotto ticket.

The USB stick does have some charm to it beyond being very bad at mining crypto. It features a 1.9-inch colour TFT display which could be put to use with that basically unused likely ESP32 chip, like what's powering this funky 90s style PDA, to play Doom on, the old one of course. Doom: The Dark Ages probably needs something a bit heftier. It even has two buttons for controls, and that handy Type-C connector.

Forget mining, get the Lucky Miner for a fun gaming project and pick yourself up a lotto ticket on the side, you know, just in case.

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Bitcoin mining now just totes unprofitable, costing over $137,000 to mine just one BTC in the US and near $200,000 per coin in Germany

Hope Corrigan — Tue, 29 Apr 2025 09:11:32 +0000

As I wipe the dust from my coffin I arise to tell you all that I was there when they first started mining the cryptocurrencies from the bowls of the digital frontier. I was there early enough to look at my old rig and wonder if it was worth setting up to see if it could score a few coins over the course of a month or so. I've known a few people who did things like acccidentally throw away drives full of BTC. I even knew people who got in early and cashed out fast, otherwise known as 'bastards'.

Since its early days, crypto has been, to put it politely, an absolute shitshow of cryptoglogical proportions. Even when it was somewhat viable to put your rig to work it'd still be a long haul of wait and see before you might eventually unearth yourself a coin here and there. And of course your old GPU has been worked into dust and your power bill has skyrocketed for the trouble.

For those reasons it's been a long time since I considered mining Bitcoin as a viable investment, and it looks like the landscape is finally shifting to meet my preconceptions. Even specialists such as CoinShares (via Overclockers) are starting to doubt this business investment, despite it recently reaching an all time high price.

New data tells us that mining a single Bitcoin or one BTC costs the largest public mining companies over $82,000 USD, which is nearly double the figure it did the previous quarter. Estimates for smaller organisations say you need to spend about $137,000 to get that single BTC in return. BTC is currently only valued at $94,703 USD, which seems to be a problem in the math department.

These costs can even get worse depending on the country you're doing your mining. Germany is typically considered to be one of the worst places to mine BTC from a profit perspective. It costs around $200,000 USD to mine a single coin there.

So why would anyone be mining BTC in this day and age? Well the main reason, other than perhaps dim hopes that they'll strike it rich, is about technology. Currently optimising farms to mine faster on lower power has been the goal. Plus seeking out places where electricity is cheaper to try to maximise those gains.

Once you've got these incredibly efficient, and hopefully relatively power friendly setups in place, you've not only dropped your potential mining overheads but you likely have a computation setup that could complete other tasks. This makes it an attractive option for larger companies who may look to lease their mining operations for other computations when they're unable to make money from mining. Then they can swap back if and when the market picks up once again.

For now the big takeaway is that mining crypto isn't going to be viable for individuals, possibly ever again. With huge centres being setup in key positions you just won't be able to beat out the larger companies acting here. Any new coin that comes up they can point their rigs to it and begin the process all over again. It's almost like you're better off using your sweet rigs for gaming, not crypto mining, just like the good lord intended.

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Man who chucked $750 million of bitcoin into a dump now wants to buy the whole dump

Jeremy Laird — Tue, 11 Feb 2025 12:31:21 +0000

In 2013, a British IT specialist James Howells somehow conspired to throw a hard drive containing 7,500 bitcoin into a municipal dump. Back then it was worth less than $1 million. Now that same bitcoin stash is worth about $750 million and Howells wants to buy the entire landfill site.

Obviously, the idea is to recover the drive. Perhaps equally obviously, Howells himself doesn't have the resources to buy the landfill site from the local government council in Newport, Wales, who currently own it.

Howells says he, "would potentially be interested in purchasing the landfill site ‘as is’ and have discussed this option with investment partners and it is something that is very much on the table.”

It was in November of 2013 that Howells realised his mistake made earlier that summer. Ever since, he's been battling to be given access to the landfill site to search for the drive.

Howells escalated his efforts to recover the drive in 2023, threatening to sue the council for half a billion dollars in damages. That was followed last year by an attempt force a judicial review of council's decision to deny access to the site.

Late last year at a preliminary court hearing, Howells' lawyers argued that the location of the drive had been narrowed down so a small section of the site and recovering it would not require widespread excavation.

However, Newport council lawyers said Howells had no legal claim and that, "anything that goes into the landfill goes into the council’s ownership.” Moreover, the council claims that, "excavation is not possible under our environmental permit and that work of that nature would have a huge negative environmental impact on the surrounding area."

In the event, the judge sided with the council and Howells' claim was dismissed. But with so much money potentially at stake, perhaps unsurprisingly Howells isn't giving up.

Notably, Howells' story seems to have drifted over the years. Early media reports including the one linked above quote Howell explaining how he threw the drive away following an office clean up. "You know when you put something in the bin, and in your head, say to yourself 'that's a bad idea'? I really did have that," he's quoted saying in 2013.

More recent reports have shifted the narrative, Howells being said to have "placed" the drive in a black plastic bag in the hall of his house, only for his then partner to have mistaken the bag for trash and disposed of it.

That shift in narrative may have legal ramifications. Perhaps if Howell can show the drive was never meant to have been disposed of, it will help his cause. For now, it clearly hasn't, as the courts won't hear his case in full whatever his original intentions with the drive.

In the meantime, Newport council does not appear to be interested in selling the site to Howell and his purported investors. Where it all goes from here, who knows. But as long as bitcoin's price keeps on soaring, this surely won't be the last we'll hear about this lost digital treasure. There's nearly a billion dollars supposedly sitting in a dump and that's going to be very hard to ignore.

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Bitcoin hits a new all-time high, $Trump is stymied by $Melania, and I'm over here having a full-blown existential crisis

Andy Edser — Mon, 20 Jan 2025 15:36:29 +0000

What year is it? Because I was reliably informed this was 2025, but it appears I should be expecting a new lockdown at any moment. Bitcoin has surged to its highest all-time price, Donald Trump is about to step into the White House once more, and meme coins are battling it out for market share—except this time, the chief proponents are none other than the incoming president and first lady.

US president-elect (quite possibly actual president by the time you read this story) Donald Trump launched $Trump over the weekend, a meme coin co-ordinated by CIC Digital LLC, a Trump-affiliated organisation that has previously played a part in handling hot-ticket consumer items like Trump-branded shoes and NFTs.

The price of $Trump rocketed to nearly $15 billion in overall market cap, before nosediving off a cliff down to almost eight billion dollars by Sunday evening, and now appears to have evened out to between nine and eleven billion dollars total value overall.

That has also probably changed by the time you read this. Crypto is volatile, you say? No one's more surprised than me.

However, a contributing factor to $Trump coin's recent stumbles seems to have been the launch of $Melania, a meme coin released by first lady to-be Melania Trump on Sunday, the day before Trump's inauguration. Speculation suggests that investors dropped off the Trump-train in favour of hedging their bets with his wife instead, causing a dip in uptake of the gold-toilet-enthusiast's crypto token.

BREAKING: Donald Trump’s memecoin, $TRUMP, crashes over -40% as Melania Trump launches her own memecoin.This is beyond insane. pic.twitter.com/6Oj2GGqjqFJanuary 19, 2025

Meanwhile, bitcoin has hit an all-time high of $109,000 per token, thanks to a so-called "god candle" that sent the previously-beleaguered coin soaring to new heights. What with the new president now seemingly a fan of the crypto market (after previously labelling bitcoin a "scam" and expressing distrust of cryptocurrency as a whole), it seems the market is reacting to the idea that the incoming administration may be on the cusp of legitimising crypto in ways previously thought unlikely.

Sorry, I zoned out for a second there and thought about the infinite possibilities of multiverse theory, as we appear to be in the worst one. Anyway, the really important question here is what this means for us PC gamers, or at least I'm making it the most important question for the sake of my sanity.

A new crypto-mining boom affecting GPU prices, perhaps? Well, who knows at this point. Certainly, crypto mining is still very much a current issue, although it comes in many forms, as even a Raspberry Pi can be cattle-prodded into mining crypto (badly).

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Many coins are now Proof of Stake but there are enough mineable (Proof of Work) coins on the market that, given the crypto upsurge as a whole, it's not entirely unthinkable that demand for crypto-crunching hardware might put a squeeze on graphics card stocks once more. It's in the realms of possibility at least, although it seems very unlikely at this point.

Energy costs are a massive factor, for one. And bitcoin isn't mined on GPUs anymore (at least at scale, thanks to the rise of ASICs), although that's not ruling out the possibility that a new proof-of-work, GPU-friendly coin may rise, kraken-like, from the depths of our greatest fears.

A lot of things are possible from this point forward. That's the takeaway. It's a brave new day for the world's biggest superpower, and, it seems, a brave new day for cryptocurrency too.

Man on hopeless quest to recover $600 million of Bitcoin from landfill is finally told by the High Court to quit it, says he's 'very upset'

Rich Stanton — Mon, 13 Jan 2025 16:14:19 +0000

A UK High Court judge has dismissed a man's attempt to sue Newport council over a long-lost hard drive containing Bitcoin, which should be the full stop on a rather farcical saga that's been running for years. James Howells is a computer engineer who got in on Bitcoin early and mined approximately 7,500 Bitcoin from 2009. Then he forgot about it, and his former partner dumped the hard drive containing the Bitcoin wallet in 2013.

Oops! With Bitcoin's price having risen spectacularly since those days, it is estimated that the hard drive now contains $598 million worth of Bitcoin, with Howells claiming it could be worth as much as $1 billion next year.

Howells has been pursuing Newport City Council, which operates the tip site, since 2013. After initially trying to outright sue for access to the site, in recent years he's also tried a more softly-softly approach, offering the council 25% of the haul's value if they'd let him look for it.

In the latest hearing, Newport council asked the High Court to strike out Howells' legal action, which demanded he be given the right to access the landfill or receive £495 million ($601 million) in compensation. But Judge Keyser KC shut it all down, saying the claim had no "reasonable grounds" and there was "no realistic prospect of succeeding if it went to trial."

Howells told the BBC he was "very upset." He went on to say that he'd "been trying to engage with Newport City Council in every way which is humanly possible for the past 12 years" and this was "a kick in the teeth." Then he got a bit conspiratorial and woe-is-me about the whole thing.

"It's not about greed, I'm happy to share the proceeds but nobody in a position of power will have a decent conversation with me," said Howells. "This ruling has taken everything from me and left me with nothing. It's the great British injustice system striking again."

While it's hard not to feel a small pang of sympathy for Howells, he was trying to set a pretty crazy legal precedent: That something disposed of as trash in a landfill remained his property, and it was Newport Council's responsibility to help him find it. Representing the council, James Goudie KC argued that under existing laws the hard drive became the council's property when it entered the landfill, and Howell's inducements were just trying to get the council to "play fast and loose" by "signing up for a share of the action."

Goudie also pointed out the environmental impact of excavating 11 years of putrescent waste, allowing millions of tons of methane and CO2 to escape into the atmosphere, and breaching the council's obligations in this area.

The landfill in question holds more than 1.4m tonnes of waste, though Howells reckons he's narrowed the hard drive's location to an area consisting of 100,000 tonnes. But even then, the chances of this thing surviving in any usable form where the Bitcoin could be recovered seems remote at absolute best: It's in all likelihood a hunk of corroded metal, and has been for years.

North Korean hackers are said to have stolen $1,300,000,000 in crypto in 2024, an estimated 61% of the total funds swiped this year

Andy Edser — Mon, 23 Dec 2024 16:48:54 +0000

If you've experienced a crypto-jacking from an online exchange in the past twelve months, there's a decent chance your cyber cash may have been the victim of a North Korean hack. That's according to a report from blockchain analysis company Chainalysis, which says that a massive $1.3 billion worth of stolen internet funny money this year can be attributed to the actions of state-sponsored North Korean hackers.

"In 2023, North Korea-affiliated hackers stole approximately $660.50 million across 20 incidents; in 2024, this number increased to $1.34 billion stolen across 47 incidents—a 102.88% increase in value stolen" says the report (via Bleeping Computer).

A number of large scale hacks are primarily to blame, according to the report, although small scale attacks appear to also be on the rise.

Notable high-profile incidents in 2024 attributed to North Korean-sponsored hackers include a $50 million heist of Radiant Capital, "a cryptocurrency that operates on an omnichain money market, aiming to consolidate fragmented liquidity across various blockchain protocols."

Yep. Anyway, Chainalysis says that while the number of crypto thefts overall is the highest its ever been this year, with 303 major incidents reported, 2022 still remains supreme when it comes to most money stolen, with a staggering $3.7 billion in crypto estimated to have been lost.

Regardless, that $1.3 billion figure accounts for 61% of the $2.2 billion total of funds stolen from crypto platforms in 2024, according to the report.

Most of the incidents were said to occur between January and July, when 72% of the total yearly value was pilfered. The analysts noted that DPRK-associated hackers conducted more frequent attacks than average over the year as a whole, which may indicate more capacity to execute large-scale attacks than years previous.

Earlier this year, it was reported that CoinStats, a cryptocurrency portfolio management app with over 1.5 million users, suffered a security breach that compromised 1,590 crypto wallets. The attack was blamed on North Korean hackers, specifically the Lazarus hacking group, a shadowy organisation said to be made up of an unknown number of individuals allegedly working for the government of North Korea.

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The group has previously been blamed for multiple online crimes, including a $12 million cyber heist from the Bandcom Del Austro in Ecuador, and an attack on the Bangladesh Bank in which 35 fraudulent transactions were issued via the SWIFT network to transfer close to $1 billion in funds.

Only five of the transactions were successful, but it still amounted to $101 million being transferred to accounts traced to the Phillipines and Sri Lanka.

Still, it seems that groups like Lazerus are zeroing in on the once-again-booming cryptocurrency market. Is this the point where I remind you that crypto is still the wild west, and your money is better kept in... ah forget it. If the headline hasn't convinced you by now, not much else will. Happy holidays, everyone. Stay safe out there.

Man who lost £500 million bitcoin fortune to bin day is fighting for a chance to find it in court, after more than 10 years in a landfill

Jacob Ridley — Wed, 04 Dec 2024 12:29:26 +0000

James Howells is someone we've reported on a few times in the past. Back in 2013, Howells had a significant collection of 7,500 bitcoin stored on a hard drive. That collection ended up in the trash and subsequently taken to a local landfill. For over 10 years it's sat somewhere in the midst of that pile of waste—now Howells is taking his local authority to court to get it back.

Even at the time of the bitcoin's disposal it was worth a pretty penny—today it's worth around £500 million.

That's a sum of cash that would be undeniably difficult to just let go of. Though the promise of such a booty has also become a powerful tool in earning Howells help from various legal teams and data recovery engineers—reportedly working pro bono for a slice of the bitcoin millions.

The case is currently being fought at Cardiff civil and family court, which is dealing with Newport City Council's bid to ditch the case before it reaches a full trial. Howells wants to take the case to court to retrieve what he believes is still his legal property.

James Goudie KC representing the authority suggests (via The Guardian): "Anything that goes into the landfill goes into the council’s ownership."

Meanwhile, Dean Armstrong KC representing Howells said (via the BBC): "we seek, plainly and candidly, a declaration of rights over the ownership of the bitcoin."

Armstrong also noted the search would be a "precise excavation" of a "small area which we have been able to identify."

There's a lot of, probably fair, references to 'needles in haystacks'. Though Armstrong also argues they've whittled down the haystack to a much smaller haystack and would be able to identify a smaller location where they believed the drive to be.

Ahead of the case, a Newport City Council spokesperson said (via South Wales Argus): "The council has told Mr. Howells multiple times that excavation is not possible under our environmental permit, and that work of that nature would have a huge negative environmental impact on the surrounding area."

Howells, of course, disagrees with this statement, saying he has a team ready to go that could excavate a landfill within environmental guidelines and at no cost to the public, which has been another concern in this case. The council argues even dealing with Howells' claims are costing the taxpayer money, and Goudie adds "Bitcoin enthusiasts are not above the law."

Howells had previously offered to give the council £50 million if he discovered the hard drive and could recover the bitcoin fortune. At that time, it was worth about half of what it is now. Bitcoin's value has surged massively in recent months as investors try to rally the cryptocurrency (if you can even really call it that anymore) over $100,000. They have not succeeded yet and Howells' lost fortune has not yet become a lost billion.

A single bitcoin is currently worth around £75,000 ($96,000). Back in 2013, a single Bitcoin was worth around 1/1000th of that.

The judge has not yet passed a judgement on whether this initial case will go to a full trial—probably wise to weigh up the options.

Here's a diagram from Seagate from one of its newer Exos hard drives. Just note, this is using a Mach.2 design that's a lot newer than what was around in 2013, though the core concept hasn't changed massively. (Image credit: Seagate)

Though you have to wonder what sort of state a hard drive would be in after 10 years being buried in a dump.

There's surely some argument to be made that, after a time, the trash becomes almost an insulating layer on itself. Layers of layers of trash protecting the bitcoin millions like layers of pasta sheets protecting a lasagna's meaty filling. Though you dread to think of the oozes and gunks in any city's landfill site. Even with the best recycling systems in the world (Wales is pretty good on the ol' recycling front) some perishable goods must've gotten through into that landfill over 10 years.

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But doth a goo ruin a hard drive?

While generally seen as more susceptible to complete malfunction in a user's PC compared to a more modern solid state drive, that's largely because the HDD has a spinning platter with moving parts. A solid state drive is, you guessed it, solid. A HDD's spinning bits might break, but you don't need those to work to recover the data remaining on the drive.

The outer casing of a hard drive could be ruined, even the head damaged, and a professional might be able to do a good job of getting some of the stuff of it. Especially a drive that's not been actively wiped. It all depends on the type of hard drive it is, how many platters it uses, and if any or all of the platters have been significantly damaged. Only the bits without damage can be recovered but that's still potentially a whole lot of usable data.

The good news is, a hard drive is a pretty robust design—a big metal box surrounding layers of platters that sort of protect one another—again, like a lasagna—so maybe Howells and his team of pro bono experts are in with a chance. Now to find and prove in law that he still owns it—does one own their trash once the binmen take it away?

US hacker sentenced to five years in the slammer for laundering the proceeds of nearly 120,000 stolen bitcoin worth $10,800,000,000 at today's prices

Andy Edser — Fri, 15 Nov 2024 13:21:02 +0000

Cyber heists have lost some of the romance of the old-fashioned kind, haven't they? Give me a stripey sweater and a swag bag any day of the week.

Still, they appear to be far more lucrative than your old-fashioned Dog Day Afternoon histrionics, as a US hacker has just been sentenced to five years hard time for his role in the theft of 120,000 bitcoin, which would equate to just under $10.8 billion's worth of the cryptocash today.

Ilya Lichtenstein pled guilty to money laundering charges brought against him for the 2016 Bitfinex cryptocurrency hack, in which nearly 120,000 of precious Bitcoin was swiped off the exchange over the course of more than 2,000 fraudulent transactions (via BBC News). Lichtenstein is said to have enlisted the help of his wife, Heather Morgan, to launder the ill-gotten gains using a variety of methods, but both were apprehended in 2022.

The couple utilised a complicated network of fictitious online accounts, automated transactions, and dark web marketplaces to convert the cryptohaul into what they hoped would be untraceable funds, including exchanging a portion of them for gold coins.

Morgan herself seems to have been less than discrete about her ballooning income, as she posted multiple hip hop videos under the alias Razzlekhan, calling herself "the infamous crocodile of Wall Street" who's "more fearless and shameless than ever before."

Morgan is currently out on bail and is scheduled to be sentenced on November 18.

At the time of the theft, 120,000 bitcoin would have been worth around $71 billion, but thanks to the, err, unpredictable nature of the crypto market, it was worth more than $4.5 billion at the time of the couple's arrest. That figure has ballooned since the most recent Bitcoin price surge, and at the time of writing would be worth approximately 10.8 billion dollars.

That may have changed by tomorrow, or indeed in the next five minutes. Crypto be crazy, y'all.

Quite the lucrative haul then, and they would have gotten away with it too if it wasn't for that meddling, err, US government. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said at the time of the arrests that the financial seizure was the biggest in the history of the US Department of Justice.

It just goes to show, crime doesn't pay. Or rather it might, briefly, before the full weight of the DOJ comes tumbling down on your heads and your wife's hip hop career starts going viral for boasting about your financial prowess. There's probably a lesson to be learned here, but I'll be darned if I can find it.

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Top bitcoin analyst says Trump's win is 'not the main story' behind recent bitcoin price surge, and why it will rise again in four years

James Bentley — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 17:21:08 +0000

On Tuesday, November 5, the price of bitcoin hit just shy of $70,000. On Monday, November 11, mere days later, that price now sat under $90,000, the highest figure bitcoin has ever been at. Though you may attribute this to Donald Trump winning the 2024 United States election, and it certainly helps, there's seemingly a much bigger picture.

First, it's worth noting that Donald Trump is seemingly responsible for an initial surge, and surrounding factors made that surge much higher. Donald Trump said in October that he wants to make America the "crypto capital of the planet", even taking crypto donations for his campaign trail.

He spoke positively at a bitcoin conference in June this year, which is in stark contrast to when he told Newsmax cryptocurrencies' value was "highly volatile and based on thin air" just before urging that the United States should highly regulate it back in 2021. His newfound support for cryptocurrency, when paired with the very vocal backing of Elon Musk, who is himself a backer of cryptocurrency, choreographs that his cabinet will be favourable to it.

However, Jesse Myers, the founder of OnrampBitcoin, which offers bitcoin financial services, suggests that this recent growth is related to post-halving, the act of halving the amount of bitcoin generated daily. As this figure goes down, the incentive to mine goes down with it, effectively enforcing a level of scarcity for the coin.

This is intended to be a countermeasure to broader inflation trends and is part of the coin's purpose to be used as an actual currency. There are only 21 million total bitcoins that can be mined, with just shy of 20 million of them already being found, so post-halving stops the world from getting to the collective number quicker.

Speculative trading on this coin specifically is partially responsible for the astronomical figures we tend to see the coin go for, as those who hoard the coin see its value go up and potential entrants to the market are put off doing so.

Importantly, this post-halving happens every four years, and bitcoin has seen a sudden spike a few months after post-halving every single time. Trump's win seems to have led to a surge but that surge has only spiked as high as it has thanks to the ongoing scarcity of the coin.

Post-halving also happened in April 2020, when we saw the sharpest percentage spike in price since the start of the coin. So, regardless of who wins the presidential race in 2028, it is likely to do the same.

Hacker accused of manipulating Bitcoin prices with a fake SEC tweet was arrested after allegedly searching 'what are some signs the FBI is after you'

lincoln.carpenter@futurenet.com (Lincoln Carpenter) — Thu, 17 Oct 2024 21:56:01 +0000

On January 9, 2024, a now-deleted tweet from @SECGov, the X account of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, declared that the SEC had granted "approval for Bitcoin ETFs for listing on all registered national securities exchanges," causing the price of Bitcoin to jump by more than $1,000. The SEC, however, had done no such thing. As SEC Chair Gary Gensler tweeted minutes later, the SEC's X account had been hacked; the fraudulent tweet was posted as part of a scheme to manipulate Bitcoin prices.

The hacker responsible for that scheme, according to the FBI, is Eric Council Jr., a 25-year-old Alabama man who was arrested earlier today under allegations of working with co-conspirators to take unauthorized control of the SEC X account with a SIM swap (via The Verge).

According to the indictment filings, Council—aka "Ronin," aka "AGiantSchnauzer," aka "@Easymunny"—allegedly worked alongside other hackers to gain access to the personal information of a federal employee with access to the @SECGov account. Council then used his convenient ID card printer—something only upstanding citizens have in their homes—to print an ID card pairing his face with the federal employee's personal info.

The indictment says that, fraudulent ID in hand, Council went to an AT&T branch where he managed to obtain a SIM card linked to the victim's phone number, allowing him to initiate the account recovery procedures for the victim's social media accounts. With those 2FA recovery codes now being sent to Council's SIM-swapped phone, he was able to access the @SECGov account and tweet a false announcement to juice Bitcoin prices.

In other words, Council allegedly committed like, four other crimes before things had even reached the "tweeting to manipulate markets under the guise of the federal agency meant to prevent market manipulation" stage. If I was running Bitcoin scams at 25 years old, I would maybe have set my sights a little lower than the US federal government, but I guess I don't have @Easymunny's edge.

What's particularly delightful about Council's accused misdeeds is what he got up to after the SEC hack went down. After returning the iPhone he'd allegedly bought for the sole purpose of SIM-swapping (instead of throwing it into a lake like any sensible person would), the indictment says Council started searching terms related to the hack, including:

"SECGOV hack"
"telegram sim swap"
"how can I know for sure if I am being investigated by the FBI"
"What are the signs that you are under investigation by law enforcement or the FBI even if you have not been contacted by them"
"what are some signs that the FBI is after you"
"Verizon store list"
"federal identity theft statute"
"how long does it take to delete telegram account"

It's unclear whether these alleged searches contributed directly to Council's eventual arrest, but if you're considering searching "am I about to be entirely hoisted by the crime I may or may not have committed," I would advise against it. If you have to ask, you probably won't like the answer.

Also, you don't need to phrase your Google searches like questions. It's fine.

Magic's most-valuable card hits an absurd $3 million after 'private sale', some call shenanigans, no one knows what's real, but what's true is it was bought with bitcoin

Rich Stanton — Tue, 07 May 2024 20:13:31 +0000

In January 2021, Magic: The Gathering had one of those moments that went mainstream. The sale of a single Black Lotus card, an extreme rarity from the game's first-ever set of cards, reached a final amount of $511,100 in an eBay auction. Previous examples of the Alpha Black Lotus (the first series of MTG cards is called the Alpha series) had gone for as much as $250K, but this more than doubled the record and the general reaction was of astonishment. Not that Magic: The Gathering cards can be valuable, that's long-established, but that a single card could ever be worth half-a-million dollars plus change.

That particular trade was given legitimacy by the organiser, trading card investment firm and exchange PWCC, which regularly handles sales across various CCGs for high-value cards. But now an Alpha Black Lotus has apparently been sold, per the Certified Guaranty Company (CGC), for 3 million dollars. This sixfold jump in value, nevermind the headline figure, has the community in a mix of shock, disbelief, and wondering just what the heck is up.

The news initially came from an Instagram post by CGC, which is a company in Florida that specialises in grading cards. Grading is a key part of any collection or sale, in which an independent expert assesses the condition of a given item and assigns it a description-slash-value that reflects this: in the case of CGC, the numerical scale tops out at 10. Here's the company's statement:

"An Alpha Black Lotus, graded by CGC Cards, just fetched a jaw-dropping $3 MILLION, making it the highest-priced Magic: The Gathering card ever sold! Its sky-high price demonstrates the high value collectors place on CGC Cards' Pristine 10 grade."

The "Pristine 10 grade" is as good as you get but, even then, the $3 million price tag is remarkable. The seller was Adam Cai of Pristine Collectibles, and CGC notes it broke various records for cards it has previously certified, including "a 1952 Topps #311 Mickey Mantle Type 1 graded CGC 8 that realized $1,253,185 in a SCP Auction in December 2022."

"This is one of the most amazing Alpha Black Lotuses I've ever seen," said Cai, perhaps unsurprisingly. "It would undoubtedly be the centerpiece of anyone's TCG collection."

The previous record for a Magic: The Gathering card may seem close to that, the $2 million paid for the "One Ring" card from the Lord of the Rings crossover set by rapper Post Malone. But in this case there is literally one copy of that card in existence and a celebrity apparently worth over $50 million decided he wanted it: it's the definition of a one-off valuation.

On the other hand there are multiple copies of the Black Lotus out there, albeit in varying conditions, and in theory that should keep valuations within a range of each other and count against gigantic spikes like this.

Magic?

Some sense of uneasiness permeates the reaction of Magic fans to this news. Redditor CardOfTheRings accuses CGC of "trying to legitimize their second rate grading service with a publicity stunt," reasoning that no one would pay this value when there are "records of similar quality BGS cards capping out at ~500,000." Many others express similar sentiments less politely, with some calling it "blatant laundry", which is meant not in the sense of money-laundering but in terms of artificially pumping up card values to inflate the market more generally.

But CGC is a long-established force in grading, best-known for having the world of comics collecting in a vice grip, with a long-term interest in trading cards (initially sports-related), that in recent decades has been moving hard into CCGs. It is regarded with suspicion by some card collectors, and has had its moments of controversy in grading decisions: a recent example saw a YouTuber's "factory damaged" Pokemon cards graded incorrectly, when in fact the owner had damaged the cards themselves. Such "gotcha" moments aside though, this is a huge and generally reputable company that the majority of the card-collecting market is willing to trust.

And then there's the real kicker. While the buyer was initially anonymous, now they have an Instagram page, and have been posting photos showing, among other highly sought-after cards, the Black Lotus in question. Benjamin.be styles themselves as a "Grail collector" has interests in other card games outside MTG, including Pokémon, and told Kotaku he reckons this Alpha Black Lotus is among "the top two in existence... there are only two pristines, a BGS 10 and this CGC pristine 10."

The buyer

Benjamin's pride and joy. These are the grails from each of the top three TCGs in existence, Pokemon: TCG, MTG, and Yu-Gi-Oh!, all graded CGC Pristine 10. From L-R: Charizard Holo #4, Alpha Black Lotus, and the Legend of Blue Eyes White Dragon 1st Edition. (Image credit: Benjamin.be)

I reached out to Benjamin, who's amused that I begin by highlighting the community's suspicions of shenanigans. "When I bought the $90k serial Luffy card, people called it shenanigans also," says Benjamin via DM. "And that was only $90k. High-end Magic cards go for a lot more than people realize. They don't trade often and prices aren't publicized."

I ask Benjamin about these levels of card trading where sales tend to be private and publicised only in rare cases. One can understand this at a simple level: most people don't want to advertise to the world they have a small and portable asset worth millions.

"Most things super high end and illiquid don't go on public auctions because they won't do well," says Benjamin. "The seller needs to find that one buyer that values it correctly. There may not be a second buyer that has the means and the desire for that item. Auctions would require at least two people to bid it up. The market for a high-end piece like this is just very thin."

It is clear that Benjamin collects cards at a rarefied level, and they use the example of another Black Lotus purchase that was never publicised, but beat the world record at the time. "I bought a Lotus BGS[-graded] 9.5 three years ago for $880k and that was never publicized, so the public only knows about a Lotus selling for ~$500k."

As for this current purchase in that context: "This Lotus I got is much better than my previous Lotus, hence the higher price tag," says Benjamin. "It's also only the second pristine Lotus, so that added some value also."

Nevertheless some have an issue with the grading, and that seems to bubble under all the other community talk about this trade. Benjamin acknowledges "CGC has a reputation problem, but I do like them a lot. I think they are more consistent and fair than the other grading companies." As for CGC using the sale as a publicity tool, they're totally cool with it. "I’m sure CGC is ecstatic about this transaction and announcing it helps them," Benjamin told Kotaku. "They did ask me for permission to do it and I was fine with it. I do like CGC a lot and hope they do well."

As far as the wild value attached to the card, the buyer is phlegmatic. "It’s really hard to price these high-end cards, but I feel like $3m is about right. Maybe I did overpay a bit, but I'm not buying to flip it. In the long run, it should do fine."

What exactly the $3 million fee consists of was my big question and, when some suspected something was off about this, there is one thing they got right: the crypto factor. "The card was paid in BTC with 2 payments," says Benjamin, "late last year and this year."

A $3 million price tag is one thing but paid in bitcoin is another: BTC remains by far the most stable and valuable crypto-asset in the market, but is still subject to the volatility of the crypto landscape generally. Many will consider this a Luddite perspective, of course, but it feels hard to draw a 1:1 equivalence between bitcoin value and US dollar value.

Benjamin adds that this deal is part of a wider goal to build a CGC-graded set of the "Power Nine", rare and OP cards from the first Alpha MTG set that include the Black Lotus. They've already completed their Beckett Grading Services-graded Power Nine set, you see.

This is card collecting at at a scale where the sums involved seem unfathomable at times: a funny world where condition and rarity mean a single trading card, to some anyway, is on paper worth as much as a mansion. This collection is a thing of true beauty, and who knows what drives someone to these things.

Benjamin calls themselves a "Grail collector", invoking the mythical treasure that over history has been sought by everyone from the Crusaders to Monty Python, and perhaps in an era defined by pop culture it makes sense to create our own relics, to imbue them with mystical status and value. I doubt anyone's going to start praying to Holo Charizards or seeking life advice from the Black Lotus flavour text. But whenever these grails are invoked, somehow, plenty of us genuflect at a distance.

Iceland's prime minister favors farming over finance as Bitcoin miners feast on the island's cheap power

Chris Szewczyk — Mon, 25 Mar 2024 03:37:36 +0000

Whether you're a Bitcoin maximalist, you think it's a giant scam or you fall somewhere in between, what's not up for debate is that Bitcoin mining uses a lot of energy. In order to keep costs as low as possible, miners look for cheap energy. The lower the energy costs, the greater the profit. And there are few countries with energy costs as low as they are in Iceland. The exploding demand for cheap power means Iceland has become a global hub for Bitcoin mining, and that's something Iceland's Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir is not happy with.

In an (paywalled) interview with the Financial Times (via crypto.news), Jakobsdóttir outlined her vision to pivot away from mining towards more efficient uses of energy, particularly food production. She mentioned corn in particular, as the island country imports over 50% of its vegetables and nearly 100% of its grain.

As its name suggests, I wouldn't expect fields full of sun-kissed crops to thrive in Iceland, but it is blessed with access to affordable and renewable energy in the form of hydroelectric and geothermal power. If harnessed and allocated properly, one can imagine the country being able to boost food production without too much difficulty.

But in order to do that, other market sectors have to compete with the voracious appetite of Bitcoin miners, who are preparing for the upcoming mining reward halving event, which is estimated to occur around April 20. That means miners are seeking to lower costs in the face of lower rewards, making Iceland even more attractive for large scale miners.

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As Bitcoin increases in value and it becomes more profitable to mine, it's hard to see demand for electricity to power mining farms decreasing anytime soon.

Iceland sits atop the Mid-Atlantic ridge. It's been in the news in recent months thanks to a series of volcanic eruptions. This gives it access to vast amounts of renewable energy, but that means little if mining demands continue to increase at the expense of other sectors of the economy—and households.

Iceland's concerns are just one piece of a growing problem. Increased energy demands can stress local power grids, raise electricity prices and of course, it's horrible for the climate. A report from the US Energy Information Administration cites a study by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance that says Bitcoin mining alone is responsible for nearly 1% of global energy consumption, or as much as the entire countries of Greece or Australia.

If Bitcoin continues its upward price trend, energy consumption, sustainability and the local impacts of mining in Iceland and elsewhere are going to become ever more urgent topics of discussion.

UK police bust a fast food worker turned £3 billion bitcoin scam member on a £7.5 million money laundering charge

Nick Evanson — Fri, 22 Mar 2024 15:14:26 +0000

It's not every day that you read that a five-year investigation to crack an illegal operation involving billions of pounds worth of bitcoin was solved thanks to the excessive spending habits of an ex-takeaway worker, but that's exactly what's recently happened. The person in question has been found guilty of laundering 150 bitcoins, worth a mere £7.5 million, but the UK's Metropolitan Police ultimately seized a staggering total of 61,000 cryptocoins.

Details of Jian Wen's conviction (via The Guardian) highlight that she originally lived and worked in a Chinese takeaway restaurant in Leeds, UK, before becoming involved in a complex and large scale cryptocurrency scam, which involved using illegally-gained bitcoins to pay for expensive houses and luxury items.

In 2017, Wen was tasked with acting as an employee of an international jewellery business, and initially rented a property in London (apparently worth £17,000 per month) and from there, she travelled the world, using the cryptocurrency to attempt purchasing further properties in London and Dubai, as well as expensive jewellery in Zurich. She even used them to pay for private school tuition fees for her son.

However, in the UK, there are laws that basically go along the lines of if you're moving or spending very large amounts of money, you also need to be able to prove exactly where that cash has come from. In Wen's case, she attempted to pass the money-laundering checks by claiming it was all earned from bitcoin mining.

Her claims weren't believed, the authorities were alerted, and ultimately she was arrested and convicted on a money laundering charge, over 150 bitcoins worth £7.5 million. However, in the investigation, the police seized a total of 61,000 bitcoins, all stored in a multitude of devices, which is worth over £3 billion at today's prices.

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While the crypto-scam has been broken, the primary ring leader has yet to be caught, and it's thought that the operation was part of a larger investment fraud scheme, taking place in China. If you are wondering what will ultimately happen to all those bitcoins, the UK's Crown Prosecution Service is working on a so-called civil recovery investigation, with the aim of the cryptocoins being forfeited.

Keen followers of cryptocurrency will know that it's a favoured means of laundering money, in the world of fraudsters and scammers, but this particular story shows that the scale of it all is perhaps beyond most folks' understanding.

Who is Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin? It's not Craig Wright according to a UK judge

Chris Szewczyk — Tue, 19 Mar 2024 00:01:15 +0000

The identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, is the biggest mystery in the crypto world. There's been a lot of speculation as to who the person or persons behind the first and most valuable crypto really are—and there are a few claimants too. The most publicized of whom is Australian academic Dr Craig Wright. However, after years of litigation, a UK high court judge has ruled that Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto.

The lawsuit was brought by a conglomerate of cryptocurrency companies called the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA). It sought a judgment preventing Wright from continuing to claim he was Satoshi Nakamoto, and using this recognition to expand his influence over the sector.

Reporting from The Guardian includes quotes from Jonathan Hough KC, a lawyer representing COPA. He argued that Wright’s claim that he created Bitcoin and wrote its whitepaper was a “brazen lie and elaborate false narrative supported by forgery on an industrial scale”. He also added “there are elements of Dr Wright’s conduct that stray into farce.”

The group argued Wright's supporting evidence included provably forged documents, backdated edits and even traces of ChatGPT usage, even though ChatGPT was not released until years later.

The judge overwhelmingly agreed, unusually issuing a verdict immediately after the conclusion of the case. According to court reports, Justice Mellor said “I’m prepared to say this: Dr Wright is not the inventor of bitcoin" and "Dr Wright is not the author of the bitcoin white paper and he is not the person who adopted the name Satoshi Nakamoto.”

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Wright has spent years claiming he invented Bitcoin, fighting lawsuits across different jurisdictions. One of the well-known examples involved defending against a fraud lawsuit filed in 2018 by the estate of Dave Kleiman, a US computer scientist. Kleiman died in 2013 and some even suggest he could be Nakamoto himself. Wright lost the lawsuit and was ordered to pay $100 million in damages.

Well over a decade has passed since Satoshi Nakamoto's last publicly known message was posted to the Bitcointalk forums. The message gave no hint that he would be going anywhere. Did he die? Did he wish to step away in order to promote decentralization? Or was "Satoshi Nakamoto" a group that subsequently disbanded?

Satoshi Nakamoto leaves behind dormant wallets estimated to contain as many as 1.1 million Bitcoins. That amounts to some $75 billion at Bitcoin's current price. If Wright was Satoshi Nakamoto, accessing those early coins would have strengthened his case immensely. He never did.

We may never know who the real person or persons behind Bitcoin are, but if Justice Mellor's judgment is the final word, the saga of "Faketoshi" is done and dusted.

US SEC begrudgingly approves Bitcoin trades but warns investors it's a 'speculative, volatile asset that's also used for ransomware, money laundering, sanction evasion, and terrorist financing'

Rich Stanton — Thu, 11 Jan 2024 14:36:59 +0000

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has approved Bitcoin exchange-traded products (ETPs) following years of opposition—though not without stern warnings about the "myriad risks" of investing in cryptocurrency. The news was greeted with enthusiasm by crypto-lovers and has led to a minor spike in Bitcoin's value, with one Bitcoin being worth around $44,000 on 8 January and at the time of writing just over $47,000.

The approval relates specifically to 11 spot Bitcoin ETPs, asset portfolios which can be purchased by anyone from ordinary investors to 401(k)s to pension plans. This is for sure a big push into the investment mainstream, and comes after the SEC resisted various earlier efforts to approve Bitcoin trades because of the potential for fraud and market manipulation. This has led to various court cases between the SEC and crypto firms, most of which have gone against the SEC, a particularly notable example being last year's victory for Grayscale (a Bitcoin trading firm that wanted to offer an ETP) in which the ruling called the SEC's reasoning arbitrary.

The SEC's approval should therefore be seen as something of a begrudging one, and the statement issued alongside it does nothing to dispel that interpretation. "Though we’re merit neutral, I’d note that the underlying assets in the metals ETPs have consumer and industrial uses," said SEC Chair Gary Gensler, "while in contrast bitcoin is primarily a speculative, volatile asset that’s also used for illicit activity including ransomware, money laundering, sanction evasion, and terrorist financing.

"While we approved the listing and trading of certain spot bitcoin ETP shares today, we did not approve or endorse bitcoin. Investors should remain cautious about the myriad risks associated with bitcoin and products whose value is tied to crypto."

ETPs tend to be marketed as high-risk investments with the potential for big rewards, so this won't necessarily surprise anyone. The spot Bitcoin ETPs will be trading in Bitcoin throughout its myriad price fluctuations, but investors are betting on the performance of the overall package (ETPs themselves are traded on the stock exchange) which will include multiple other adjacent assets.

Perhaps most importantly for the average investor, none of this involves buying Bitcoin directly: So no dealing with the myriad of questionable crypto exchanges and no need for a crypto wallet.

The news was expected to cause a jump in Bitcoin value, though this happened pre-announcement thanks to the SEC mistakenly announcing the news early on X. Before the official announcement on January 10, the SEC's X account published a post announcing the news just after 4pm ET on January 9. Within 15 minutes it had been deleted and chair Gary Gensler issued a retraction claiming the account had been "compromised" and the tweet was "unauthorised" (hmm). Either way the cat was out of the bag.

Bitcoin's current valuation of $47,200 is a way off its historical high in late 2021, when it peaked at one Bitcoin being worth around $65,000, but that high was swiftly followed by a collapse in value in 2022 (as low as $16,400) in what was generally an awful year for crypto. Bitcoin is the first and remains the most famous cryptocurrency, and its performance is intimately linked to fluctuations in the wider industry (not least because many other crypto assets try to link themselves to Bitcoin).

It is fair to say, however, that we've travelled a long way from the ideals of Satoshi Nakamoto, the nom de plume of Bitcoin's unknown creator. Bitcoin was announced to the world in 2008 alongside a white paper setting out the idea of a decentralised financial system where people dealt with each other directly without the need for middlemen and financial institutions. Companies like Blackrock frenziedly trading Bitcoin bundles on the US stock exchange ain't exactly that.

So, you're telling me that US crypto mining used more power last year than ALL THE COMPUTERS?!

dave.james@futurenet.com (Dave James) — Thu, 04 May 2023 14:10:57 +0000

This graph seems so unbelievable it makes the thing a little hard to parse. But basically, cryptocurrency mining in the US sucked down more energy that every computer in the entire country. Every. Single. Computer.

Yes, even Macs.

Hell, at 50 billion kWh, crypto mining in the US almost used more power than all the televisions. And there are quite a few TVs in the States, in case you'd forgotten.

I've seen all the stories about cryptocurrency mining using more power than [insert country here], and those stats are always pretty astounding. But they always relate to the entirety of the global crypto network, or just the bitcoin mining around the world. And it's quite easy to insulate yourself against such broad terms.

But when it's just about the output of a single country—albeit the single largest contributor to the bitcoin mining industry—to me it seems to hit home much harder.

This all comes from a White House report on the proposed Digital Asset Mining Energy (DAME) excise tax which uses the graph above to highlight just how much power the useless endeavour actually uses. And it's not just the fact it's using a lot of energy and therefore causing a huge amount of carbon emissions, crypto firms can cause the energy prices of the surrounding area to spike for normal citizens, too.

All for the pursuit of "digital assets whose broader social benefits have yet to materialize."

Here's the full image with all the caveats:

(Image credit: The White House)

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The cryptocurrency mining figures in the graph have been estimated using both global crypto energy usage and the United States' share of bitcoin and ethereum mining until 'The Merge' happened. In fairness, as an estimate, the graph shows the potential variation in the overall number, so it could actually be in the low 30 billions kWh used (which still puts it above all those computers) or up to the high 60 billions kWh.

That upper limit then puts it in the same ballpark as the power drawn in total by every light in the entire country for 2022.

Every other thing on that list has at least some benefit, whether in terms of business or merely societal, but neither bitcoin nor ethereum contribute anything for the harm they cause, even now the latter is not actually mined.

It's surely unsustainable, and hopefully punitive taxes such as the DAME levy will make it so unprofitable to mint useless digital assets that the industry grinds to a halt. But maybe that's just me on my crypto high-horse. Maybe one day it'll actually be worth all the damage it's wrought. Though I kinda doubt that.

Biden proposes heavy tax on cryptocurrency miners for 'the harms they impose on society'

Jacob Ridley — Thu, 04 May 2023 12:17:00 +0000

The Biden administration has proposed a new tax intended to make cryptocurrency miners pay society back for the damage they cause. That's actually how the White House puts it, with the so-called DAME tax intended to encourage actually talking specifically about "the harms" such crypto companies can inflict on society as a whole.

"Currently, cryptomining firms do not have to pay for the full cost they impose on others, in the form of local environmental pollution, higher energy prices, and the impacts of increased greenhouse gas emissions on the climate," the White House says of the proposal.

"The DAME tax encourages firms to start taking better account of the harms they impose on society."

DAME stands for Digital Asset Mining Energy, and the DAME tax would force "firms" to pay a tax equal to 30% of the cost of the electricity they use in cryptocurrency mining. Which would undoubtedly eat away at profits massively, if not entirely, and likely make the whole venture practically pointless. Note the use of the terminology there, however: "firms."

Currently the tax appears to be more of a drive to impose the levy on large mining operations over at-home prospectors. But then there's hardly any of the latter left.

The reason being that these cryptomining operations not only require massive amounts of electricity, but also increase risks of local authorities over-provisioning for demand that may come and go rapidly, increase prices for others in the area, and suck up what green energy capacity there might be.

"Alongside these known costs and risks, cryptomining does not generate the local and national economic benefits typically associated with businesses using similar amounts of electricity. Instead, the energy is used to generate digital assets whose broader social benefits have yet to materialize."

Ethereum, the largest cryptocurrency responsible for most graphics card-based mining, no longer supports the actual process of mining. Ever since "The Merge" late last year, it has shifted from a proof-of-work algorithm, which used mining to verify transactions and generate fees, to a proof-of-stake algorithm, which doesn't.

Essentially, ethereum took matters into its own hands long before the US government did anything about it.

But there is still cryptocurrency mining today, and that's mostly for non-ASIC-resistant cryptocurrencies, such as bitcoin. The bitcoin mining network is in a bit of a lull right now, due to a wider slump in crypto's value, but bitcoin is still expected to suck up plenty of power.

The Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index expects the entire global bitcoin mining network to use a little more power per year at 133 TWh than the country of Pakistan (132.3 TWh) and just a touch less than Ukraine (134.3 TWh).

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The CBECI's regional power data only goes up to January 2022, but at that point in time the US was the single largest bitcoin mining region globally, following a dramatic dropoff in China due to strict local mining legislation.

The White House offers up an idea of US-based cryptocurrency mining power usage. Using data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration and U.S. Office of Science and Technology Policy, some of which are estimates, US crypto power usage was expected to exceed all power usage by computers in 2022. Let that sink in.

The Biden administration expects the DAME tax, which is only a proposal today, would raise $3.5 billion in revenue over 10 years. Though, clearly, that will massively depend on what cryptocurrency mining will be left operating over that time.

Intel quietly ditches its Bitcoin mining chips

Jeremy Laird — Wed, 19 Apr 2023 10:37:02 +0000

Intel has announced that's its Blockscale 1000-series Bitcoin mining chips are toast and won't be replaced with a new generation. The news comes just a year after the first Intel Blockscale processors hit the market.

Speaking to Tom's Hardware, Intel said the move was part of a broader focus on its IDM 2.0 strategy, which has seen Intel tightening its belt and focusing on core operations and products.

Several business units have been closed, wound down or sold off as a consequence, including Optane memory products, its whole SSD division, 5G modems and more. Suffice to say, even before IDM 2.0 Intel had something of a track record for dabbling in new markets only to abruptly exit just as the endeavour seemed to be taking off.

According to the Intel "end of life" notice for its Blockscale products, existing customers have until October to place a final order for Blockscale 1000-series chips. But thereafter, the entire family of mining chips will be goners and the final batch of Blockscale chips will ship in April 2024.

Intel hasn't specifically said that it will never produce a new family of mining chips in future. Instead, nothing new is officially planned and Intel will "monitor the market" for opportunities.

Intel's Blockscale chips were said to be very competitive in performance terms. Designed to accelerate SHA-256 processing for proof-of-work applications, Intel said Blockscale is good for 580 giga-hashes per second. That, apparently, is very much in the same ballpark as existing players in the mining chip market.

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Intel also offered relief from the volatile Chinese market for mining chips, which fluctuated dramatically depending on the price of cryptocoin and thus demand for mining chips.

But Intel's exit from the market itself probably reflects the volatile nature of crypto mining. Intel's timing with its initial Blockscale chips a year ago was unfortunate, coming as it did just as Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency prices were crashing.

It's possible PR concerns played a role, too. Intel marketed Blockscale as capable of being run in 256-chip arrays consuming nearly 4,000W of power. At the time, Intel said it was "committed to advancing blockchain technology in a responsible way." But it's arguably not a good look facilitating the huge amount of power being burned mining cryptocurrency.

Of course, Bitcoin pricing has rebounded of late. So it's not impossible that Intel could revise its position. But producing a new family of Bitcoin-specific ASICs would not be the work of a few months. So, any new products are likely years away, should they appear at all.

If you thought things couldn't get stupider, someone just held a CO2 reader up to a PC to prove 'bitcoin mining has zero carbon emissions'

andy.chalk@pcgamer.com (Andy Chalk) — Tue, 11 Apr 2023 21:23:31 +0000

Bitcoin mining company Riot Platforms recently shared a video claiming that its crypto mining operation "has zero carbon emissions," and if you think that's ridiculous, wait until you see how it reached that conclusion.

The astonishing claim was made in a video posted to YouTube and Twitter which begins with a man in a helmet and hi-vis vest walking through thin, patchy Texas scrub as he tests the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. "We've got lots of plants here," he says, which is the first obvious lie, because quite clearly there are not a lot of plants anywhere nearby. "These plants are consuming CO2 and emitting oxygen, which is fantastic. When we measure CO2 out here, we're in the green. There are very low levels of CO2."

At that point, the man in the helmet says that the test is "a great way to establish a baseline," which will be compared to the CO2 readings inside: "If the number does not go up, then the mining rigs are not emitting CO2."

This is where I first started feeling confused. Surely the man in the helmet was not going to take his tester into the mining facility and hold it up to a bank of rigs to see how much carbon dioxide they're kicking out, because that would make no sense. It would barely even qualify as sane. Yet that is exactly what he does.

"Outside, we were at 455 parts per million of CO2," he says, with a completely straight face, after moving indoors. "Inside, we're at 428 parts per million of CO2. So CO2 levels actually decrease a little bit by entering this bitcoin mining facility."

But lo! Perhaps you still have doubts. To reinforce his point, the man in the helmet relocates to an air-cooled mining facility and conducts another test, finding 452 parts per million CO2 in the air. Even more impressively, he conducts yet another test at the exhaust area of the mining rigs, and gets identical results.

"I think the science is conclusive," the man in the helmet says. "The data shows bitcoin mining does not emit any CO2."

The video is way too late to be an April Fool's gag—it was posted on April 10—and there's absolutely nothing to suggest that it's anything but serious. It's possible that I'm falling victim to Poe's Law here, the famed internet adage stating that "without a clear indicator of the author's intent, any parodic or sarcastic expression of extreme views can be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of those views." But I can't shake the feeling that the video was posted unironically, not because Riot Platforms believes any of that nonsense, but because it wants to take advantage of viewers who don't know any better.

The video was shared on the same day that Riot Platforms posted a furious reply to a New York Times report entitled "The Real-World Costs of the Digital Race for Bitcoin," which dug into the outsized demands that large-scale bitcoin mining puts on the power grid and the negative impacts on the environment that result. Riot Platforms' response characterized the report as "politically driven" and said it was "full of distortions and outright falsehoods," while making the same ridiculous claim as the video.

"To be clear, our bitcoin mining operations do not generate any greenhouse gas emissions, similar to any other data center for Facebook, Amazon or Google—yet we have been singled out," Riot Platforms said. "Our data center uses electricity from the Texas grid, which is the cleanest and most renewable energy-sourced grid in the United States.

"This reporting appears to be driven by fringe political interests, but we will not be deterred from our core mission of helping to build a global, universally accessible network for Bitcoin and supportive, resilient communities where our operations are located."

Believe it or not, this isn't the first time bitcoin miners have played this kind of idiotic linguistic stick-and-move to defend their crappy pseudo-industry. In a letter sent to the US Environmental Protection Agency in May 2022, the heads of numerous crypto-mining companies made the same claim, stating that "bitcoin miners have no emissions whatsoever." That letter at least conceded that emissions were generated "at the power generation source upstream from the datacenters," but then asserted that somebody was going to use that power anyway, so it might as well be crypto miners.

Nic Carter of venture capital firm Castle Island Ventures, one of the top signatories of that letter, told the New York Times that he was playing a "language game" with the EPA because—much like Riot Platforms—he felt the bitcoin mining industry was being unfairly singled out for its grotesque, rapacious, and utterly pointless abuse of the power grid.

But playing those games in a letter to the head of the EPA, who at least in theory will know better than to fall for it, is a far cry from doing it in a statement meant for public consumption, particularly when you know full well that much of that public doesn't have an understanding of what bitcoin is, how it's generated, or how much power is being used to mine it. It is grossly dishonest at a bare minimum.

Sooner or later, as this ridiculous nonsense gains increased attention, I expect Riot Platforms will release another statement saying the whole thing was just a joke, obviously, and that the press is either too stupid to get it, or too humorless to appreciate it. My preemptive response: It's a joke alright, but not the funny kind.

Crypto lenders are suffering as bitcoin miners are unable to pay back gigantic loans

jorge.jimenez@futurenet.com (Jorge Jimenez) — Tue, 06 Dec 2022 20:24:41 +0000

Things don't appear to be getting better for the cryptocurrency scene following the collapse of FTX. According to a report from Bloomberg, bitcoin mining companies are unable to pay back millions of dollars in loans, leaving their lenders stuck with thousands of mining rigs.

Ethan Vera, COO of Luxor Technologies, told Bloomberg that miners ended up "dictating a lot of the loan terms" as crypto mining boomed, and they offered the mining rigs they bought with the loans as collateral. So, if they couldn't repay the loans, they simply gave up the machines. Machines, by the way, whose value dropped at least 85% from just last month, according to the reporting. Ouch.

At its height, the crypto lending industry Bloomberg estimates that "as much as $4 billion" worth of mining equipment has been financed. As profits soared as the price of Bitcoin went up, and more loans were issued, and as Matthew Kimmell, an analyst at CoinShares, put it to Bloomberg, “There hasn’t necessarily been the best due diligence on whether a miner was credit-worthy or not."

One of the biggest lenders, the publicly traded NYDIG, stands to lose hundreds of millions of dollars as multiple borrowers, such as Iris Energy, who secured a $108 million loan, are expected to default. The bankrupt BlockFi owes the firm $54 million. Another borrower, Stronghold Digital Mining, returned "around 26,200 mining rigs" in August, Bloomberg says to get rid of its $67 million NYDIG debt.

Crypto-mining service firm, Luxor Technologies, told Bloomberg that private companies count for "75% of the computing power for the entire Bitcoin network." And as private companies aren't obligated to disclose any losses to the public, even more defaults are expected to come.

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The value of bitcoin has been driven down by two recent incidents: The drama at FTX, and its rival currency, Ethereum, switching over to proof-of-stake, ending large-scale GPU mining in recent months. It's down 80% from November 2021.

Ethan Vera, COO of Luxor Technologies, told Bloomberg that for a lot of miners, it's more economical just to step away from these deals than make good with the lenders because they're "focused on how to survive the next six months rather than if they need the lender for the next five years.”

'You won' says CEO of sinking billion-dollar crypto exchange as rescue attempts crumble

Rich Stanton — Thu, 10 Nov 2022 14:58:08 +0000

Crypto is a speculative and volatile industry at the best of times, but this year has arguably been its annus horribilis. The list of incidents could be its own article, but a brief highlights reel would include the $40 billion collapse of Terra, high-profile and high-profit hacks on crypto exchanges, and the ongoing decline of the entire market's value.

Today's addition is another general fall in value of cryptocurrencies, with bitcoin currently having a slight rally but having lost approximately 70% of its value from the same time last year. A metric tonne of other smaller cryptocurrencies (sometimes referred to as "shitcoins") have also plummeted in value.

The reason why is a crypto exchange called FTX which, following rumours it was not in the best financial health, was hit by a run: reportedly $6 billion worth of withdrawal requests over three days. To give an idea of FTX's scale, Reuters estimates that it has handled $626.69 billion in trades this year.

Following the run came the news that FTX's larger rival, Binance, would bail the company out "pending due diligence".

Well, Binance did the due diligence: and decided it couldn't touch this with a bargepole. In a statement Binance said:

"As a result of corporate due diligence, as well as the latest news reports regarding mishandled customer funds and alleged US agency investigations, we have decided that we will not pursue the potential acquisition of FTX.com [...] the issues are beyond our control or ability to help".

As regards the US agency investigations, Reuters reports that the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is looking at FTX's activities. Doubtless even more closely than they were a week ago.

To be crystal clear, FTX has not yet gone bust. But that seems inevitable.

FTX's founder Sam Bankman-Fried was once idolised in crypto circles, as both an entrepreneur and highly successful trader. Bankman-Fried has just posted a lengthy twitter thread in which he says "I fucked up" before going on to blame lots of other factors, and imply some mysterious stranger is behind the collapse. He says "we're spending the week doing everything we can to raise liquidity", but don't hold your breath.

The FTX website now has a red banner at the top saying "FTX is currently unable to process withdrawals. We strongly advise against depositing."

In a sign of just how wild this space is, venture capital firm Sequoia Capital has just written off a $210 million investment in FTX. "Based on our current understanding, we are marking our investment down to $0." $210 million just, poof, gone.

Let's end on the FTX CEO's not-mea culpa. "At some point I might have more to say about a particular sparring partner, so to speak," writes Sam Bankman-Fried. "But you know, glass houses. So for now, all I'll say is: well played; you won."

This is almost certainly a reference to Binance CEO Changpeng "CZ" Zhao, who as well as being behind the mooted rescue package was also arguably the one that caused it. A Coindesk report in early November pointed out a potential misuse of FTT, FTX's own crypto token, in order to inflate the balance sheet of another company, Alameda. To cut a long story short Zhao announced his intention to sell all Binance's holdings of FTT due to "recent revelations that came to light".

Then he had a bit of a public spat with Bankman-Fried, and the price of FTT began to tank, resulting in the $6 billion of withdrawals that put FTX on its knees. This is when Zhao announced Binance had entered a non-binding agreement to buy FTX, before today's U-turn.

It nevertheless seems incredible that the CEO of FTX, which is collapsing because it was found out, would blame this on a marketplace rival selling FTX's own crypto token: but this is crypto.

Funny thing is, immediately after the "you won" Bankman-Fried clearly had second thoughts about calling Zhao out, writing (caps his): "I WAS NOT VERY CAREFUL WITH MY WORDS HERE, AND DO NOT MEAN ANY OF THEM IN A TECHNICAL OR LEGAL SENSE."The real joke of course is on those who trusted FTX, investors large and small, and the wider crypto market which, after a year like this, is looking shaky indeed. Whatever its advocates may say about more utopian ideas of decentralisation, it's clear that speculation and greed are the true heart of cryptocurrency. There will never be a shortage of imaginary assets nor, sadly, those who can be persuaded to buy them.

Over $1B worth of stolen Bitcoin found in popcorn tin

Hope Corrigan — Tue, 08 Nov 2022 04:04:29 +0000

This could be my strong peasant heritage talking, but having a little cash squirrelled away for emergencies is always a good plan. A few bills stashed around the house in sock drawers, the back of a freezer, and in old food tins is fairly common practice for those of us who are ever ready for the proverbial rainy day. Making sure we'll be covered for a few essentials like some emergency food if we ever need is all I've ever been able to spare as far as hidden house money goes, and as it turns out my meagre funds are severely rookie numbers.

As reported by BBC News, $3.36bn USD worth of stolen Bitcoin was seized by the police from one man's home in Georgia last year. The funds were found on devices stored all over his house, which included a safe hidden under the floor, and a good old popcorn tin. According to the US authorities, the net worth made it the second largest seizure in history. That's a Noah's Ark level of preparation for a rainy day.

The home belonged to James Zhong, who pleaded guilty to using a flaw in the now defunct darknet website Silk Road's payment system to steal the money. These are websites that are generally speaking dealing with illicit substances like drugs and other services, and require specific know-how to get to.

Sites like these were often early adopters of crypto currency payments thanks to the promise of further anonymity, so it's no surprise to see names like Silk Road cropping up. Especially when it comes to crypto crime, but lately, scam sites are probably the biggest problems or you can just use malware.

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Zhong committed the crime back in September 2012, when he set up multiple accounts on the website and deposited small amounts of Bitcoin. He then used the exploit to withdraw large sums of Bitcoin quickly from the website. These were then apparently stored in weird places around his home on devices and drives, alongside over $600,000 USD worth of cold hard cash.

For many years the over 50,000 Bitcoin stolen had seemed to just disappear into the ether. While it may only be worth about $1.1bn USD now as opposed to $3.36, that's still a huge chunk of crypto to just stop existing for nearly ten years, which became a bit of a mystery.

While the authorities aren't revealing exactly how they found the money, it's said that cryptocurrency tracking techniques were used to track down the haul. While it might have taken ten years to get to the bottom of it, seeing that money recovered might be a bit of a wake up call for other crypto criminals out there. Especially with Zhong looking to face up to 20 years in prison for his crime.

More than half a billion dollars stolen from world's largest crypto exchange

jorge.jimenez@futurenet.com (Jorge Jimenez) — Fri, 07 Oct 2022 20:33:14 +0000

Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange, had $570 million worth of tokens stolen after hackers found an exploit in the Binance Smart Chain. The company went as far as temporarily halting all trading on its exchange in reaction to the theft, but has since resumed trading.

CNBC reports that hackers made off with 2 million Binance Coins, or BNB, about $570 million in value. Binance initially reported that only $100 million worth of tokens were stolen but later confirmed the larger amount on its blog after an internal investigation.

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao took to Twitter to explain that "an exploit on the cross-chain bridge, BSC Token Hub, resulted in extra BNB." A bridge acts as a go-between so that you can transfer assets from one blockchain to another. Hackers used this exploit to forge transactions, essentially tricking the bridge into moving tokens off-network and into their digital wallets.

Binance worked with several network validators (people or groups who validate transactions on the blockchain) to halt the creation of new blocks and to pause all transactions while the company looked into the security breach.

Zhao said the issue is "contained now" and that "your funds are safe."

An exploit on a cross-chain bridge, BSC Token Hub, resulted in extra BNB. We have asked all validators to temporarily suspend BSC. The issue is contained now. Your funds are safe. We apologize for the inconvenience and will provide further updates accordingly.October 6, 2022

Binance told CNBC that most of the stolen tokens are still in the hacker's wallet and that $100 million was "unrecovered."

Binance says it will be holding an "on-chain governance vote" among validators in the next few days to address issues after the attack, like whether to freeze hacked funds or start a bounty program for catching bugs and hackers. Binance plans to share more information about how it plans to defend its blockchain from future cross-chain bridge attacks. The last time we saw a crypto heist this brazen was in 2021, when someone stole over $600 million in cryptocurrency from the Poly Network and weirdly ended up giving back half of it.

Crypto giveaway scam sites have tripled in a year

Hope Corrigan — Tue, 20 Sep 2022 05:01:38 +0000

Crypto currencies of all varieties are notorious for being incredibly unpredictable and volatile. It's also deeply niche, and especially from the outside it's a difficult market to comprehend. Even a little bit on the inside it can be truly baffling as to how value is attained and assigned, especially with the potential energy costs and environmental offsets it just doesn't make a lot of sense most of the time. This mysterious complexity combined with tantalising promise cultivated by the rise of bitcoin and you have a perfect storm for scams.

Now of course, scams are rife within certain crypto sectors. NFTs in particular are often the subject, whether they're being stolen by scammers or made by them. There have been so many get quick rich crypto schemes that have successfully taken advantage of people, and the internet is really cottoning on. According to Bleeping Computer, fake crypto currency giveaway sites have tripled this year, painting a troubling picture of successful criminals in this space.

The report was published by cybersecurity company Group-IB which found the sites generally target English and Spanish speakers. They will often use deepfakes of celebrities claiming to endorse the product, tricking people into believing the credibility of the site. Group-IB states that over 2,000 domains were registered this year with the purpose of becoming these kinds of crypto scam sites.

The sites are pulling in an average viewer count of about 15,000 each. Of course not all of these people are getting scammed, but even getting those clicks is worrying. There's no way these sites would be so commonplace if they weren't at least somewhat successful. Thanks to how easy they are to set up, and all the tools available to scammers nowadays like deepfakes and rented YouTube accounts, we're seeing three times more of these sites than we did even this time last year.

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It's all being streamlined on forums to the point where people are marketing off their assets to help with scams. Be it the websites, promotional videos, deepfakes, streams, and all sorts. Everything is sold online and even the computer illiterate can purchase a package and have it all basically taken care of with automated toolkits. It's no surprise we're seeing such growth, especially if they're pulling in cash.

So, the simple answer here is don't fall for it. A website claiming to give away free crypto is likely a big enough red flag in and of itself. It's a smart idea to stay away from basically anything promising something for nothing online. If you've got family that might be vulnerable, now might be the time to sit them down and have the talk about internet safety, and celebrity deepfakes.

Reasons to be cheerful: 'GPU mining is dead less than 24 hours after the merge'

Chris Szewczyk — Fri, 16 Sep 2022 08:43:36 +0000

The ethereum merge has finally happened! After years of planning, development, and delays, ethereum’s shift to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism has seeming gone off without a hitch. Ethereum miners have been made redundant, and hopefully, this is the official end of large-scale GPU mining—the bane of PC gamers worldwide—forever.

In the lead up to the switch, miners mostly stopped buying new GPUs, while others dumped their cards on the second-hand market. Both of these are significant factors behind the graphics card price drops that have been happening this year. In fact, many cards have halved in price since the beginning of 2022.

But not all miners are shutting up shop. The ethereum hash rate didn’t drop as much as expected in the days and hours before the merge, meaning many miners were holding out for the last few blocks and rewards up until the last minute. Other miners switched to other coins, hoping to use all of that GPU hash power to snag some easy rewards. However, they’re quickly finding that nothing comes close to the rewards of ethereum.

"GPU mining is dead less than 24 hours after the Merge," said Ben Gagnon of bitcoin miner Bitfarms in a recent tweet. "The only coins showing profit have no market cap or liquidity. The profit is not real."

Ethereum was by far the most profitable proof of work coin. Ethereum classic is the currently best post merge alternative for GPU miners. ETC is a hard fork of ethereum that occurred in 2016 following a factional split and it's seeing an influx of ex-Eth miners over the last 24 hours. But miners hoping to maintain profit levels anywhere near that of pre-merge Eth are quickly being disappointed.

The market cap of ethereum currently sits at around $177 billion, while ethereum classic sits at just over $4.6 billion, so straight away, block rewards are going to be dramatically lower. But that's not the only reason that contributes to lower profitability.

Proof of work algorithms dynamically adjust according to the amount of network hash power. In general, the more hash power there is, the harder it is to generate block rewards. This means that ex-Eth miners looking for easy rewards are going to find it more and more difficult, as more of them switch over.

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According to data from Coindesk, a block reward for ETC mining was 0.0186, or around 70c, but in the hours after the merge, the reward was more like 0.0003, or 11c. One of the few PoW alternatives—ravencoin—saw its rewards fall even further, from $1.77 per block to just 5c. These drops are a result of the networks adjusting their difficulty in response to massive jumps in GPU hash power.

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Though ETC and RVN mining differ for reasons other than just price, both coins are simply not profitable to mine once electricity costs are considered. If you've got massive solar generation, perhaps it might be worth continuing, but miners are going to get more of a return from dumping their mining cards.

We've seen loads of cards on second hand marketplaces, but now the last pre-merge block rewards have been earned, will a real selling flood now begin? As miners discover that their rigs have little to earn, it's probable we'll see some major sales in the coming weeks. Livestreamed auctions anyone?

We're all awaiting the launch of next gen RTX 40-series and RDNA 3 GPUs, but if you could get a genuinely cheap ex mining GPU, would you take the plunge?

Even Google is counting down the hours to the end of ethereum GPU mining

jorge.jimenez@futurenet.com (Jorge Jimenez) — Mon, 12 Sep 2022 18:09:41 +0000

This week, the second largest cryptocurrency, ethereum, is set to transition to a new mining process that will no longer rely on warehouses of energy-hogging GPUs. This process will consume 99.95% less energy than before, according to etherium.org, a website funded by the Ethereum Foundation.

The Merge has been a long time coming for the ethereum blockchain, and Google now has a countdown leading up to the event when you search for 'ethereum merge.' The count is set for less than three days; if everything goes according to plan, this could have a seismic effect on the world of cryptocurrency mining and its environmental impact.

The countdown displays the current difficulty, hash rate, and Merge difficulty. The switch will occur when the current difficulty reaches the Merge difficulty of 58750000 P, which will happen on Thursday at the current rate.

When complete, the process will move the ETH blockchain from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS). Instead of using power-hungry GPUs to verify transactions on the blockchain, it'll use consensus from those with a substantial amount of ETH, aka those with a "stake" in the network.

(Image credit: Ethereum Merge)

According to Digieconomist, ethereum consumes an estimated 83.80 TWh per year—about as much power as Finland uses—under its current system. That number has climbed in recent months after a massive drop off in June. It should see a massive drop following the transition to PoS.

The largest cryptocurrency, bitcoin, currently has an estimated energy consumption of 128.31 TWh per year according to Digieconomist. That represents an all-time low for 2022, but still about as much power as Norway uses. Bitcoin is still a PoW cryptocurrency, and there are no plans for it to switch to PoS like ethereum.

What does this mean for large ethereum mining operations? We could see a flood of second-hand GPUs hitting the market soon, although we still advise against buying them. Some miners will move over to a different coin to mine, like bitcoin, but that would require a whole new investment in custom-made ASICs mining rigs.

The Merge was supposed to happen in June after being delayed again and again since 2019, but we're now in "the final chapter of PoW on Ethereum," says developer Tim Beiko.

'Dr. Bitcoin' says US states 'literally manufacturing felons' as he's literally jailed for financial chicanery

jorge.jimenez@futurenet.com (Jorge Jimenez) — Thu, 08 Sep 2022 16:45:52 +0000

Update: Mark Alexander Hopkins reached out to PC Gamer with the following statement:

"It's important to understand that, to my knowledge, all my clients were engaged in above-board activities exclusively. I paid my corporate taxes on my business, I engaged in extensive KYC, and the vast majority of the allegations made by the DoJ are decontextualized or flat-out falsehood."

Hopkins was recently interviewed by Oto Gomes Crypto and went into detail about his experience. He says it was a mistake to speak to authorities without a lawyer present. He claims that DOJ "spent too many resources coming after as an individual and, oh crap, this guy's not a kingpin. We have to get him for something."

Hopkins maintains that they are "opportunistic" members of the US attorney's office, as well as judges looking to make "careers for themselves that issue harsh sentences."

Original story: Mark Alexander Hopkins, also known as "Doctor Bitcoin" or Rizzn online, pleaded guilty to running an illegal cash-to-crypto conversion business and is now facing up to 15 months in prison.

According to this Cointelegraph article, if you ask Rizzn, he says he's the victim of an "encroaching state war on privacy, and the general brokenness of the criminal justice system" and that "Texas and other states are pushing BTC adoption, literally manufacturing felons."

Rizzn wrote in a tweet thread before going to prison that he didn't know that "Bitcoin p2p is a federal crime punishable with up to five years imprisonment" after he pleaded guilty last June on one count of operation of unlicensed money transmitting business.

In 2019 Hopkin's home was raided for his part in a Nigerian lottery scam, allegedly taking between 500k and $1.5 million from the scammers and converting it to Bitcoin for a fee. Rizzn claims he did not know that his customers were being investigated for a crime when facilitating the transactions. In layman's terms, he pleaded guilty to laundering money for his customers.

Here's the thing that makes this important to pay attention to and resolve: I'm a nobody. I'm not Ross. I wasn't on the dark web. I'm not Edward. I didn't work for the NSA.I'm not Julian. I didn't break national secrets.I'm just a regular bitcoiner caught in the crosshairs.September 4, 2022

However, Rizzn admitted to authorities that he had promised not to get involved in the scammer's business dealings and told them to "circumvent financial institution reporting requirements by keeping deposits under $9,500."

Rizzn also instructed the scammer to lie to financial institutions about the transactions by saying "I’m set up as a marketing company, so tell them you’re paying for a marketing campaign," according to the press release from the US District Attorney's Office in the Northern District of Texas.

"This defendant ignored federal law and allowed fraudsters to use Bitcoin to operate under the radar of law enforcement," said Acting U.S. Attorney Prerak Shah. "We are determined to rid the Bitcoin marketplace of anyone who knowingly helps criminal actors stash illegal profits inside crypto wallets."

The Doctor ended his thread by accusing the state of "constructing felonies for us, and the blockchain has a long memory," as well as the need to "advocate for the sensible government as well as our fellow fallen cypherpunks."

Crypto CEO behind $2.5B 'rug pull' arrested, faces 40,564 years in prison

Rich Stanton — Thu, 01 Sep 2022 15:42:44 +0000

Faruk Fatih Özer, the founder and CEO of the now-defunct crypto exchange Thodex, has been arrested in the Albanian city of Vlorë. Özer fled following the collapse of Thodex in April 2021: he initially claimed a halt in trading was due to cyberattacks, and that investors' money was safe, before disappearing. Almost immediately afterwards, Turkish police arrested dozens of Thodex employees and seized the firm's computers.

It subsequently emerged that, in April 2021, Thodex had moved approximately $125 million worth of bitcoin to the established US crypto exchange Kraken. Given the number of investors in Thodex left with nothing, this looks like straightforward theft from a failing business.

It's not the whole story, either. Cryptocrime analysis firm Chainanalysis addressed Thorex specifically in its overview of 2021, in the wider context of a total $2.8 billion worth of crypto scams over this year being 'rug pulls': wherein a seemingly legitimate business is set up, operates as normal for a while, then suddenly all the money is gone. It's large-scale fraud.

"We should note that roughly 90% of the total value lost to rug pulls in 2021 can be attributed to one fraudulent centralized exchange, Thodex, whose CEO disappeared soon after the exchange halted users’ ability to withdraw funds," says the Chainanalysis report. That works out at an estimate of around $2.5 billion of crypto.

However, other estimates given by Turkish authorities are lower, and as with any crypto story it is hard to work out even approximately what the true value of money lost may have been. Some reports claim Özer fled with 'only' around $20 million worth of crypto and, whatever the total amount lost is, he is not the only Thodex employee accused of wrongdoing.

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Interpol had issued a red notice on Özer in April 2021, which basically means every police force in the world was asked to locate and arrest him. The Albanian minister for internal affairs, Bledar Chuchi, said that the fugitive's identity was confirmed post-arrest by biometric results: Özer had apparently shaved his head. The Turkish government adds that: "The extradition proceedings of Fatih Özer to Turkey were initiated by the Interpol Department of the General Directorate of Security."

Which is bad news for Özer, because this guy is probably going to spend the rest of his life in jail. Six people have already been jailed for their role in Thodex, including family members of Özer, while 20 other prosecutions are ongoing. The Turkish daily Harriyet reports that state prosecutors are out to set an example: "A prison sentence of 40,564 years is sought for each of these 21 people, including Özer, as over 2,000 people are included in the indictment as complainants."

Thodex was founded in 2017, and its initial success was largely down to the wider context of Turkey's state currency, the Turkish lira, undergoing a period of rapid inflation. This led to crypto acquiring mainstream traction in the country as an apparently more safe option than the fluctuating lira. This was particularly the case when it came to protecting savings, to the extent that the Turkish government is currently working on a bill to further regulate the industry, which is due to be passed in the very near future.

It's a sobering reminder that, behind the malfeasance and the big numbers of Yet Another Crypto Scam, this company was not just defrauding big-pocketed investors but ordinary people looking to safeguard their financial future. Now, at least, it looks like Özer and others will face the most serious of consequences.

Cyber criminals demand $10M ransom to release French hospital

Hope Corrigan — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 04:22:42 +0000

Cyber attacks generally speaking are never good, and can potentially ruin lives with stolen data, or locked access to much-needed computers. However, it's a special kind of evil when used against hospitals, disrupting important medical systems.

Unfortunately, attacks like these are not unheard of, and earlier this year the Costa Rican healthcare system was held hostage by crypto-hackers. Now, according to BleepingComputer, an attack is disrupting the Center Hospitalier Sud Francilien in France. The CHSF, which is about 28km (or 17 miles) south of Paris, is currently having to turn patients away and postpone surgeries due to the ransomware.

The 1,000-bed hospital was attacked on Sunday and still hasn't regained control of its systems. This not only affects things like the hospital's business software but also patient admissions and storage, including that of medical imaging. Patients are still being assessed at the CHSF, but many require transfers to other medical centres to get the treatment they require.

"This attack on the computer network makes the hospital's business software, the storage systems (in particular medical imaging), and the information system relating to patient admissions inaccessible for the time being," a translation from the CHSF announcement explains.

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According to French publication Le Monde, the attackers are demanding a $10 million ransom to release a decryption key to free up the hospital's systems. Targeting a hospital for what looks like just the demand of money is just the lowest move, even for ransomware attackers.

Authorities aren't sure who the culprits of the attack are as of yet, but suspect the LockBit 3.5 ransomware is being used. LockBit as an organisation states that attacks on hospitals are not allowed with its ransomware, so if that is the case the attackers might find themselves in trouble from both ends of the law.

Bitcoin mining company recoups $67M in debt selling 26,200 old rigs

Hope Corrigan — Mon, 22 Aug 2022 06:19:28 +0000

The crypto crash early this year hit hard, tanking the value of many coins. Bitcoin miners in particular had it rough with some of the biggest companies losing over $1B during the crash. The massive losses are continuing to be dealt with by crypto companies and lenders, and one has turned to selling off much of its mining hardware to offset the losses. You'll forgive me if I can't quite find the tears.

Tom'sHardware spotted the financial reports for one such company based in the US, called Stronghold Digital Mining. The statement noted that the company had recently managed to sell 26,200 of its mining rigs, recouping $67.4M in debt by doing so.

Given most hardware prices are back down to earthly levels, it's unlikely these second-hand machines were drawing outrageous prices. Especially given how worn out some of these rigs would likely be. Still, it seems a smart move financially for the company, which has managed to free up some cash for other investments during this time.

Stronghold Digital Mining isn't out of the mining game, as the company still retains 16,000 mining machines. According to the report, it's planning to watch the market, potentially buying up new rigs at a better price if possible. For big mining companies like this, it will all depend on the cost of the hardware, efficiency of mining, and power prices.

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This kind of changing strategy sounds a bit risky but Stronghold Digital Mining also owns 165MW of power generation thanks to its Scrubgrass and Panther Creek plants. They burn coal refuse, which is a waste product from coal mining. As for as sustainability goes, this can release a lot of toxins into the environment but when done right can be mitigated.

Since getting rid of those mining rigs, Stronghold Digital Mining is currently selling off excess power generation. With another crypto crash it could be that the power itself is worth more than the machines were mining, or at least enough of a deficit to make the effort and waste involved worthless.

Of course if crypto doesn't recover we could see these kinds of companies dissolve the mining portions of their businesses completely. Please?

The biggest bitcoin miners lost over $1B during this year's crypto crash

jorge.jimenez@futurenet.com (Jorge Jimenez) — Wed, 17 Aug 2022 17:11:23 +0000

The largest trio of publicly traded bitcoin mining companies reported a combined loss of well over $1 billion during the summer, the result of cryptocurrency markets experiencing an unprecedented crash.

The three largest US bitcoin miners—Core Scientific, Marathon Digital Holdings, and Riot Blockchain—reported significant losses in recent quarterly earnings reports (thanks, Bloomberg). Core Scientific took the biggest hit of the three with a loss of $862 million, with Riot Blockchain losing $366 million and Marathon suffering a $192 million loss during the crypto free-fall.

The crash has forced the bigger bitcoin miners to sell off more coins than usual to repay debt and cover operational costs from Q2 into Q3, in hopes of riding out things until things stabilize and recover.

Jaranc Mellerud, an analyst from Arcane Crypto, told Bloomberg, "Public miners are still dumping their bitcoin holdings at a higher rate than their production rate." In June, miners sold 14,600 coins despite only producing 3,900.

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Currently, some bitcoin miners are taking out additional loans in addition to selling off bitcoin to stay afloat. Core Scientific has sold over 80% of its holdings and entered a $100 million stock purchase with a venture capital firm.

Meanwhile, Marathon picked up a $100 million term loan and refinanced an existing $100 million loan. Oh, and it sold nearly $60 million in mining rigs to help pay the debt.

If Riot Blockchain seems familiar, it's because just last week the bitcoin mining company got the state of Texas to pay its electricity bill for a month by mining less bitcoin, making millions in the process.

The crypto crash didn't just affect miners but crypto exchanges as well. Coinbase, the largest US online platform for buying, selling, and storing crypto, reported losses of over $1 billion last quarter. This resulted in Coinbase laying off 18% of its staff in preparation for a "crypto winter."

Texas paid this company to mine bitcoin during an ongoing energy crisis

jorge.jimenez@futurenet.com (Jorge Jimenez) — Thu, 11 Aug 2022 16:29:46 +0000

Riot Blockchain, a bitcoin mining company based in Texas, was able to completely offset the cost of a month's worth of electricity thanks to a state subsidy. It did so by voluntarily turning off some of its miners during the month of July, thus earning millions in power credits for "contributing to power grid stability in Texas."

The company was able to mine about 318 BTC during the month of July, down 30% from last year, and valued at around $6.88 million. This was in addition to the $9.5 million in power credits awarded to them for not drawing power away from an already strained ERCOT power grid. This means the company was able to mine almost $7 million in bitcoin for essentially free for an entire month (via Web3isgoinggreat).

In a press release, Riot Blockchain CEO Jason Les claims that "when applied to anticipated power costs for the month, the power credits and other benefits are expected to eliminate Riot’s power costs for July."

This means Riot was still able to mine millions in bitcoin and have the energy bill for July paid for by Texan tax dollars.

In case you're wondering how much power usage was saved by Riot turning off just some of its miners, the company "curtailed a total of 11,717-megawatt hours in July, enough to power 13,121 average homes for one month."

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Meanwhile, according to this report in the Texas Tribune, Texans are paying at least 50% more in electricity costs this summer as record-breaking temperatures increase demands on the state's energy grid.

"By providing power back into the ERCOT grid during periods of peak demand, the Company estimates that power credits and other benefits from curtailment activities totaled an estimated $9.5 million, significantly outweighing the reduction in BTC mined."

As of 2022, 35% of all bitcoin mining happens in the US, generating about 40 billion pounds of carbon emissions. Estimates say that mining one bitcoin uses the same amount of power consumption as an American household over 50 days.

In April, the company announced plans to upgrade its Corsicana facility into a 1-gigawatt operation in Navarro County. Riot also has a massive 750MW facility in Rockdale, Texas.

With this crypto gift card you'll never be sure if you have $1 or $100 to spend

Jacob Ridley — Fri, 22 Jul 2022 11:50:27 +0000

You may soon be able to give the gift of crypto with a "crypto-linked gift card". It's like a regular gift card, for use with selected retailers, except the recipient will never be sure how much it will be worth one day to the next.

These gift cards are being launched by a company called Giftcoin this August, and essentially each one is a voucher for a big name brand except the value of the card is set by the current value of whichever cryptocurrency is linked to it.

For example, you might buy a Starbucks gift card that's backed by bitcoin, meaning if bitcoin's price goes up, so too does the value of your gift card. $10 could become $100.

But so too could bitcoin's value plummet and your gift card with it: $10 becomes $1. No iced white chocolate mocha for you.

"You don’t have to own any crypto, understand crypto, or have any kind of crypto trading account—nada," Giftcoin says." You can just buy a Giftcoin card and then go shop, and splurge all you like with the extra money the card has earned. Talk about smart shopping."

Providing you earn money on your card, of course. Historically, bitcoin's price has fluctuated massively upwards and then plummeted back down. The price is currently in a dip at around $23,400, down 65% on its highest price to date, $67,000 during this past November.

Starbucks is just an example of what sorts of gift cards could be offered by the company. Target is another that's mentioned in passing. The only one that Giftcoin has seemingly guaranteed itself to offering is a Tesla + dogecoin voucher, as it's promised one of these as a prize to one of its first customers.

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In related news, Tesla just sold off almost all of its holdings in bitcoin, which at the end of 2021 was worth around $2B, despite being a major corporate backer of the cryptocurrency.

According to Giftcoin, this all adds a level of fun to the shopping voucher that is simply unmatched by regular gift cards with a fixed sum. Though personally I don't want to think about a gift card any more than I already have to: spend it and move on. I certainly don't want to have to plan my trip to the shops around whether the volatile crypto market is up or down that day.

"Hmm, can I buy one or two pairs of boxers? Well, Elon Musk just tweeted about the dog coin, best make it three."

Neopets has been hacked and data for almost 69M accounts appears to be up for sale

Katie Wickens — Thu, 21 Jul 2022 14:33:56 +0000

Neopets, a popular virtual pet-keeping browser game born of the late '90s, has been victim of a data breach. Hackers claiming to be behind the attack say they have personal account info of more than 69 million members, along with a bunch of the site's source code, and are willing to sell the data off for a fee.

The browser game has been wracked with cheaters for some time, but this just takes the biscuit. Since the site has begun associating itself with NFTs, it appears to have drawn some unwanted attention. Now, it may have gotten worse, as the company investigates a data breach where customer data may have been taken off its servers. It says usernames and passwords connected to the platform may be affected, but email addresses, Neopets users' ages, genders, countries, birth dates, and even IP addresses are allegedly being auctioned off.

The official Neopets Twitter page has posted a warning to users, with the thread strongly recommending users change their Neopets password, and any accounts that use the same password (we advise you to never use the same password for multiple sites, anyway).

It also notes that the breach is being looked into by a "leading forensics firm," though no name has been given as to which one.

Neopets recently became aware that customer data may have been stolen. We immediately launched an investigation assisted by a leading forensics firm. We are also engaging law enforcement and enhancing the protections for our systems and our user data. (1/3)July 21, 2022

The data appears to have been put up for sale on popular hacking forum, Breached.co (via Bleeping Computer), where one hacker known as TarTarX claims to have live access to the hacked database. For access to a snapshot of the database, the hacker is asking for four bitcoin (approximately $94,500). They note that they are "open to hear offers," and will accept other cryptocurrencies for the data. For an additional fee, they're offering live access to the database.

The validity of TarTarX's claims has apparently been confirmed by the hacking site's owner, pompompurin, who tried creating an account and was promptly sent their data back. What this means is the hacker may well have continued access to the data, so anyone with enough cryptocurrency to blow can allegedly watch people scramble to change their passwords and simply nab them after the fact.

If you head to Neopets' account security page, it confusingly says that "contrary to what many people claim, no one has ever "hacked into our site" and accessed user information, accounts or usernames. The ONLY means by which a user can have his/her [their, actually] account stolen by someone else is when that user inadvertently or intentionally gives out their account password."

"People like to say they have been hacked, as it makes them feel a little better than admitting they have fallen for a scam, or just simply given away their password to the first person that asked them for it. However, there are a number of things you can do to help keep your account secure."

That statement might be a little out of date now.

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After hearing the news, I tried to delete my account through this link, but my initial attempt was met with the message above. I suspect it's something to do with the volume of people likely deleting their accounts right now.

A second attempt then finally allowed me to delete my account, and I'm sorry to be leaving but, and I suspect plenty of people (particularly parents of younger users) will be following suit.

The price of ethereum rises by over 48% but miners are still selling their GPUs. Here's why

dave.james@futurenet.com (Dave James) — Mon, 18 Jul 2022 12:24:23 +0000

In the last week alone, the price of Ethereum has risen by over 29%, and in the last month has gone up more than 48% from its low $994 on June 20 this year. For everyone super-excited about the collapse of cryptocurrencies, specifically those that have held modern graphics cards hostage for the past two years, that's got to be a concern.

But actually it's possibly not worth getting too worried about the supposed thawing of this crypto winter. There's a good chance that the price of ethereum has been rising to such an extent precisely because it will soon not need those GPUs to function as a digital currency. And by soon we're talking about potentially September 19, 2022.

Even though the price has been spiking recently, the number of miners punishing their graphics cards with the ETH algorithm hasn't gone up at the same level. in fact the global ethereum hash rate has effectively stabalised post crash. So yeah, they're still listing their cards on ebay. Or their local equivalent.

The Ethereum Foundation has gone public with an actual proposed date for the ethereum network to turn off the graphics card mines. This is the point where it will switch to a proof of stake (PoS) consensus model as opposed to the current proof of work (PoW) model which demands the use of GPUs to secure the blockchain. This is the same energy-sapping mechanism that bitcoin needs to function, and together the two cryptocurrencies are responsible for carbon emissions of more than 150MT/yr.

Or, the same carbon emissions as a modern, medium-sized country.

The Merge's date was proposed on a consensus developers call, where Ethereum Foundation's Tim Beiko put forward a planning timeline which culminates in a final merge on September 19 after the testing networks have been thoroughly tested and signed off.

It's been a long time coming, and despite there now being a specific date, that could still all change. "Please treat this target with appropriate caution," says Ben Edgington in his 'What's new in Eth2' post about the new timeline.

(Image credit: Coinbase)

What is the suggested timeline for Ethereum's PoS merge?

Goerli/Prater client releases 27th or 28th of July.
Announce 28th/29th.
Prater Bellatrix on the 8th of August
Goerli Merge on the 11th.
ACD 18th August plan mainnet Merge:
- Bellatrix early september;
- Merge two weeks later (week of Sept 19th).

The PoS consensus requires validators, not miners. With each validator staking 32 Eth with the ethereum network for the chance to write blocks of transactions to the blockchain, with rewards for issuing each block.

This shift will cut the energy demands and carbon emissions by 99.95%, according to the Ethereum Foundation, which will immediately negate at least some of the criticism people have about the second largest cryptocurrency. I mean, the merge will effectively remove the biggest issues us PC gamers have with ethereum given that any further price increases won't encourage more mining and we can still expect future GPU releases to go into the hands of gamers.

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Well, so long as ethereum classic doesn't keep rising, that is. That's a cryptocurrency based on the old-school ethereum model and is therefore all about hoarding GPUs and expending offensive levels of energy for an intangible reward.

Like ethereum, ethereum classic has seen its own price rise, growing by 66% in the last month and 51% in the past week alone. They're all still linked to the health of bitcoin as the market leader, and despite the recent price crash it has rallied by nearly 15% in the last month.

So, maybe the whole crypto winter is over, or maybe we're just waiting for an even bigger crypto crash. As ever with cryptocurrencies, who knows? It's all gambling on snake oil after all.

Major cryptocurrency exchange signs $1.4 million deal to help ICE track crypto trades

andy.chalk@pcgamer.com (Andy Chalk) — Thu, 30 Jun 2022 22:28:38 +0000

One of the big appeals of cryptocurrency is anonymity: Unlike actual money and conventional financial transactions, crypto is very difficult to track. Not everyone thinks that's a good thing, of course. In 2018, for instance, Bill Gates said the anonymous nature of crypto was making it more difficult for government agencies to combat criminal activity such as money laundering, tax evasion, and terror funding. The values of Bitcoin and Ethereum also took a big hit in 2021 when the EU proposed new regulations on cryptocurrencies that included the prohibition of anonymous crypto wallets.

According to The Intercept, however, Coinbase—the largest cryptocurrency exchange in North America—has made a deal with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, better known as ICE, that grants the government agency access to a suite of tools used to track and identify crypto users. The report says the arrangement began with the sale of a single software license in August 2021 for $29,000, and then expanded into a second contract worth $1.36 million the following month.

A copy of the contract obtained by non-profit organization Tech Inquiry indicates that ICE has licensed access to multiple analytical and tracking tools for 12 currencies, including Bitcoin and Ethereum, as well as relevant training sessions. Quoted services include:

Blockchain explorer
Multi-hop link analysis for incoming and outgoing funds
Transaction demixing and shielded transaction analysis
Historical geotracking data
Graphical analysis (wallet, transaction, address, transaction + address)
A bunch of other stuff

It sounds comprehensive to say the least, and according to The Intercept, a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request indicated that ICE was not required to sign an EULA that put limits on what it can do with the tools. A Coinbase rep also declined to say whether any limits on analytics usage had been imposed.

The rep did tell the site, however, that none of the tools that it offers for sale provide access to proprietary or internal Coinbase data, pointing to a disclaimer on the Coinbase website saying that information provided by Coinbase Tracer services comes "from public sources and does not make use of Coinbase user data." Coinbase reiterated that message, with emphasis, on Twitter:

2/ Our Coinbase Tracer tools are designed to support compliance and help investigate financial crimes like money laundering and terrorist financing. Coinbase Tracer sources its information from public sources, and does not make use of Coinbase user data. Ever.June 30, 2022

"We want to make this incredibly clear: Coinbase does not sell proprietary customer data," it tweeted. "Our first concern has been and always will be providing the safest and most secure crypto experience to our users.

"Our Coinbase Tracer tools are designed to support compliance and help investigate financial crimes like money laundering and terrorist financing. Coinbase Tracer sources its information from public sources, and does not make use of Coinbase user data. Ever."

It's fair to say that crime is bad and nobody wants to actively support it (or at least, nobody wants to be seen actively supporting it), but even so the reaction to the Coinbase statement on Twitter was strongly negative. Many of the replies are complaints about completely unrelated matters, but among those that stay on topic, there is what could politely be called a substantial level of doubt: Multiple users shared variations of the thought that while Coinbase might not sell user data, there's nothing saying it won't give it away.

"The devil is in the details," one respondent wrote. "If you can't just say 'we're not tracking you' then there is a big problem here."

Another asked—reasonably, I think—why ICE would want access to this kind of data if it couldn't use it to track people.

The reasonable response, I think, is that both things are true: ICE can (and will) use the data to track people, and ICE really is not interested in everyday crypto users, the vast majority of whom are not trying to buy planeloads of Bolivian marching powder. Coinbase's active pursuit of these deals with ICE and other US government agencies may seem particularly noxious to committed crypto users, who tend to roll with a fairly pronounced libertarian streak, but the truth is that crypto-anonymity only goes so far anyway: Converting holdings to an actual currency requires the use of a licensed exchange, like Coinbase, and they're going to play by whatever rules they have to in order to stay in business.

“As explained on our website, Coinbase Analytics, now Coinbase Tracer, is a compliance solution that Coinbase offers to governments, financial institutions, and crypto businesses," a Coinbase spokesperson said in a statement send to PC Gamer. "It enables them to investigate financial crimes including money laundering and terrorist financing.

"All Coinbase Tracer features use data that is fully sourced from online, publicly available data, and does not make use of Coinbase user data."

It's now 'more cost-effective to turn off the mining rig and buy Ethereum'

alan.dexter@futurenet.com (Alan Dexter) — Wed, 15 Jun 2022 12:55:35 +0000

In case you haven't noticed, all is not well in crypto land. Bitcoin is the lowest it's been in two years, and continues to drop. The CEO of Coinbase has warned of a crypto winter and laid off 1,100 staff. The latest news is that the days of profitably mining Ethereum with GPUs could be behind us now as well, depending on where you live and how much you pay for electricity.

Cryptoslate has highlighted the fact that the falling Ethereum price, combined with increasing energy prices, has made it unprofitable to mine the cryptocurrency for the first time since 2020. Basically, you simply won't make money at the current price of Ethereum in most US states given the price of electricity.

To prove the point, they use an overclocked Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 capable of generating 130MH/s, which will net you something like 0.001625 ETH a day. At the time the article was written (that'll be yesterday), Ethereum was sat at $1,250, which equated to $2.03. Today Ethereum has dropped down to $1,108, so you're looking at just $1.80.

"At this point, it becomes more cost-effective to turn off the mining rig and buy Ethereum spot using the money that would otherwise be used on electricity."

Will we see miners moving away from Ethereum? Probably not straight away, as plenty of miners are in it for the long term, but if the price drop continues, then we'd expect to see the Ethereum Network Hash Rate start to drop off even further. Right now it's sitting at the same level it was in March, though that still represents a sharp fall from its recent high back in May.

Obviously, this mainly affects small-scale miners, not the big mining farms that have commercial or industrial energy deals. Still, the general messaging that your money is better spent just buying coins as opposed to trying to mine them is music to our silicon-starved ears.

This "crypto winter" could be perfectly timed for the release of the next-gen AMD and Nvidia cards; unless they're really good at mining of course. Or that results in a glut of second-hand GPUs on the market, leaving a bunch of unsold current-gen stock on the shelves, and the new cards get delayed. Boo.

4 months after infamous Super Bowl ad, Coinbase lays off 1,100 staff

alan.dexter@futurenet.com (Alan Dexter) — Tue, 14 Jun 2022 16:13:11 +0000

Cryptocurrencies are having a shocking time right now. The price of Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and others have all dropped to the lowest they've been in at least the last two years, and the general outlook is grim, too. There are real repercussions coming from this digital turbulence, and you need look no further than Coinbase for proof.

1/ Today I shared that I've made the difficult decision to reduce the size of our team at Coinbase by about 18%. The broader market downturn means that we need to be more mindful of costs as we head into a potential recession.June 14, 2022

Coinbase co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong has taken to Twitter (via The Verge) to announce the company was going to "reduce the size of our team by about 18%, to ensure we stay healthy during the economic downturn." That 18% equates to around 1,100 staff.

Armstrong goes on to say that this was partially down to expanding so quickly over the last two years and that it wasn't operating as efficiently due to the new size. That's a harsh reality for the affected staff, who apparently found out via email as the company "made the decision to cut access to Coinbase systems for affected employees."

In a blog that he links to from his tweet, Armstrong suggests that we are entering a recession and that another cryptocurrency winter was imminent. Having weathered crypto winters before, where trading revenues are down significantly, he sees these layoffs as the best way of preparing for what lies ahead. The layoffs come just a week or so after Coinbase made news for rescinding job offers it had made to numerous applicants, as the cryptocurrency market began its descent.

From a gaming perspective, cryptocurrencies have been a major pain in the butt, responsible for driving up graphics card prices and making it almost impossible to actually buy the likes of the RTX 3080. So while the drop in prices could potentially free up cards, news of people losing their jobs is never welcome.