United States Senator Edward Markey and Representative Jared Huffman announced March 3 that they would reintroduce the Crypto-Asset Environmental Transparency Act in Congress. The move comes ahead of a Senate hearing on the environmental impact of crypto mining, which Markey will chair on March 7. Markey and Huffman first introduced the bill in December, in the previous Congress. Sen. Jeff Merkley acted as cosponsor in the Senate. The bill would require crypto mining companies to disclose emissions for operations that consume more than five megawatts of power and require the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to head up …

Bitcoin (BTC) miners consume massive amounts of energy to secure the network and process transactions. While the network offers many benefits, like banking the unbanked, Bitcoin’s energy consumption is a controversial topic for critics. However, new solutions are emerging to reduce the environmental impact of Bitcoin mining. The Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance estimates that the Bitcoin network currently consumes about 109.34 terawatt-hours (TWh) per year. Bitcoin miners use this energy to generate hash keys. When they guess the correct key, they receive BTC as a reward for their contribution to securing the network. Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance The …

A former facilities worker who allegedly set up a secret cryptocurrency mining operation inside a Massachusetts school’s crawl space is due for arrest after missing a scheduled court hearing to answer to charges. Nadeam Nahas was scheduled to be arraigned on Feb. 23 facing charges of vandalizing a school and fraudulent use of electricity, according to media reports. JUST IN: an ex-town employee is accused of running a "Cryptocurrency mining operation" out of Cohasset High School. pic.twitter.com/cdBlMIxnnH — whalechart (@WhaleChart) February 24, 2023 A default warrant is a type if warrant issued by courts when a person fails to appear …

A cryptocurrency mining rights bill with laws that would prohibit the discrimination of crypto miners is one step closer to fruition after passing the Montana Senate. The proposed laws would enshrine a “right to mine digital assets” and would prohibit “discriminatory” electricity rates being charged to crypto miners, protect mining that occurs “at home” and strip local governments of the power to use zoning laws to stop crypto mining operations. It also prohibits additional taxes on the use of crypto as a payment method and would consider “digital assets,” inclusive of cryptocurrencies and nonfungible tokens (NFTs), as “personal property” alongside …

Blockchain technology is often a valuable tool in solving various business challenges due to its ability to create secure, trusted, and transparent data sources and has gained traction across industries as businesses seek efficiency and cost reductions. Daniela Barbosa, the Executive Director at the open-source blockchain development firm the Hyperledger Foundation, spoke to Cointelegraph about how blockchain for enterprise is transforming global markets and industries. Barbosa noted blockchain technology has already demonstrated its value in various enterprise use cases, such as provenance tracking, logistics, and cross-border payments. By providing efficiency and cost-saving solutions while saving time and labor, enterprise blockchain …

The launch of Bitcoin Ordinals back in January created a stir within the crypto community on their place within the Bitcoin (BTC) ecosystem. Users are debating whether they offer new use cases for Bitcoin or if it takes away from the initial peer-to-peer cash system vision of BTC. No matter the community sentiment on the Bitcoin NFT issue, this did not stop Bitcoin mining firm Luxor Mining from acquiring OrdinalHub, the primary platform for Bitcoin NFTs. The announcement came on Feb. 20, saying already 150,000 inscriptions have been made, a 15000% increase from the beginning of the month. Luxor highlighted …

In January 2023, during the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) annual conference in Davos, Switzerland, Jaime Leverton, CEO of Hut 8, a crypto mining entity that trades as a public company, sat down with me for a fireside chat at the Crypto Summit on the Promenade. Leverton outlined some of her views on the recent shakeout in the cryptocurrency market and reflected on how Bitcoin (BTC) mining fares during the current turbulent period for the industry. Throughout 2021 and 2022, the crypto industry experienced significant growth, followed by bear market struggles, bankruptcies and job cuts. Leverton took on the position of …

As artificial intelligence (AI) rapidly works its complex magic on one sector of the economy after another, there is an increasingly pressing need for compute resources to power all this machine intelligence. Training a model like ChatGPT costs more than $5 million, and running the early ChatGPT demo, even before usage increased to its current level, costs OpenAI around $100,000 per day. And AI is more than just text generation; applying AI to practical problems across multiple industries requires similar large neural models trained on a diversity of data types — medical, financial, customer information, geospatial and so forth. Moving …

A recently introduced Illinois Senate Bill has been ridiculed by the crypto community over its "unworkable" plans to force blockchain miners and validators to do "impossible things" — such as reversing transactions if ordered to do so by a state court. The Senate Bill was quietly introduced into the Illinois legislature on Feb. 9 by Illinois Senator Robert Peters but appears to have been only recently noticed by Florida-based lawyer Drew Hinkes who discussed the bill in a Twitter post on Feb. 19. The bill titled the “Digital Property Protection and Law Enforcement Act,” would authorize the courts — upon …

Mining refers to the process of verifying and adding new transactions to a blockchain network, such as in the case of Bitcoin (BTC) or other cryptocurrencies. The economics of mining refers to the economic incentives and costs associated with the mining process, as well as its impact on the broader economy. The economics of crypto mining are driven by a variety of factors, including cryptocurrency prices, mining difficulty, hardware costs, energy expenses, block rewards and transaction fees. This article will explain economics of mining, including costs, revenues and market trends. Cryptocurrency mining costs The costs associated with cryptocurrency mining can …

Bitcoin miner CleanSpark is growing its mining capacity in the United States, with the purchase of 20,000 new Antminer S19j Pro+ units for $43.6 million. The acquisition is expected to boost the company's computing power by 37%, and brings the total number of miners purchased during the bear market to 46,500 units. According to a statement on Feb. 16, CleanSpark will pay $32.3 million for the machines after applying coupons, at a 25% discount or a total price per terrahash of approximately $13.25. The Pro+ rigs are 22% more productive than its previous models and are planned to be delivered …

The launch of Bitcoin nonfungible tokens (NFTs) — known as Ordinals — has tipped the number of non-zero Bitcoin addresses to a new all-time high of 44 million, according to crypto analytics platform Glassnode. In a Feb. 13 report from Glassnode, the firm explained that for the first time in Bitcoin’s 14-year history, a portion of network activity is being used for purposes other than peer-to-peer monetary Bitcoin (BTC) transfers: “This is a new and unique moment in Bitcoin history, where an innovation is generating network activity without a classical transfer of coin volume for monetary purposes.” Glassnode explained that …