United States-based energy producer Exxon Mobil has reportedly been running a pilot program aimed at using the energy from excess gas to power crypto mining rigs — and it may be expanding its operations to four other countries. In a Thursday report, Bloomberg said Exxon Mobil had inked a deal with Crusoe Energy to use excess gas from oil wells in North Dakota to run Bitcoin (BTC) miners. The project reportedly uses 18 million cubic feet of natural gas per month — roughly 0.4% of the oil giant’s reported operations in the state, producing 158 million cubic feet of natural …

Stronghold Digital Mining (SDIG), a crypto mining company in Pennsylvania, is turning waste from old power plants into energy to power hundreds of Bitcoin mining rigs. The company collects coal refuse, a leftover waste material from the process of coal mining, and burns it in what it says is an emissions-controlled environment at its energy generation facilities. Coal refuse can cause a raft of environmental problems, such as water and air pollution, and acid mine drainage, the acidic water which comes from coal mining operations. Collecting this waste and safely disposing of it while generating power for crypto mining is …

Bitcoin (BTC) set a new all-time high for hash rate last week, but opinions are divided as to whether the uptrend can continue. In a Twitter debate on March 21, Preston Pysh, host of The Investor‘s Podcast, eyed changing behavior in Bitcoin‘s hash ribbons metric for signs of a new hash rate “lull.” Questions over “lull” in hash rate after record highs Bitcoin has overcome considerable odds over the past year to see the processing power dedicated to mining — hash rate — reach a giant 222 exahashes per second (EH/s) this month, according to estimates from monitoring resource MiningPoolStats. …

Proof-of-work (PoW) crypto mining won’t be banned in the European Union — not this year at least. That’s the conclusion from last week’s closely watched committee vote in the European Parliament (EP). A last-minute amendment presented by an ad hoc coalition of social democrats and Greens would have established a de facto ban on proof-of-work mining — the type of consensus mechanisms used by native cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) — has been decisively rejected. The crypto community can breathe easily, but some still worry that the industry’s problem with its energy-intensive consensus protocols remains. “My first reaction …

Buying a Coinbase stock (COIN) to gain indirect exposure in the Bitcoin (BTC) market has been a bad strategy so far compared to simply holding BTC. Notably, COIN is down by nearly 50% to almost $186, if measured from the opening rate on its IPO on April 14, 2021. In comparison, Bitcoin outperformed the Coinbase stock by logging fewer losses in the same period — a little over 30% as it dropped from nearly $65,000 to around $41,700 What's bothering Coinbase? The correlation between Coinbase and Bitcoin has been largely positive to date, however, suggesting that many investors consider them …

Bitcoin (BTC) has been trapped in a symmetrical triangle for 56 days and the trend change could last until early-May, according to price technicals. Currently, the support level stands at $38,000, while the triangle resistance for daily close stands at $43,600. Bitcoin mining up, retail interest down The week started with a positive achievement for the Bitcoin network as the Lightning Network capacity reached a record-high 3,500 BTC. This solution allows extremely cheap and instant transactions on a secondary layer, known as off-chain processing. After cryptocurrency mining activities were banned in China in 2021, publicly-listed companies in the United States …

The energy usage and environmental impact of Bitcoin (BTC) mining have been frowned upon and been under the scanner by various international financial institutions. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) mentions how Bitcoin mining consumes “vast amounts of computing power and electricity.” Bitcoin mining is an energy-consuming process, as it is a proof-of-work (PoW) blockchain network that involves providing cryptographic proof to the network that a quantified amount of a specific computational effort has been used. The information used to verify this is stored in a block to be accepted into the network by other participants. Elon Musk, one of the …

Bitcoin (BTC) miners are holding more and more Bitcoin while “relentlessly expanding” their operations in 2022. A report by Arcane Research indicates that publicly listed Bitcoin miners are “constantly looking for expansion opportunities,” as they “plan to increase hashrate faster than the whole network in 2022.” 44.95% of the global hash rate derives from North American miners, according to the latest figures from the Cambridge Bitcoin electricity consumption index. With the massive projected increases in target hash rate among the publicly traded Bitcoin miners, it's "likely to increase." Jaran Mellerud, an analyst for Arcane Research, told Cointelegraph that “most publicly …

Canadian cryptocurrency miner Hut 8 posted mixed financial results on Thursday, as revenue and mining profitability soared while overall net income declined — underscoring a volatile end to the year for Bitcoin (BTC) and the broader digital asset market. The Toronto-based company, which trades publicly on the Nasdaq and TSX, saw its revenues surge to $45.69 million (C$57.901 million) in the fourth quarter of 2021, up from $10.25 million (C$12.986 million) the year before. Full-year revenues were $137.1 million, up 326% compared with 2020. Despite generating a large profit from mining activities, the company posted an overall loss of $0.53 …

A former blackhat hacker who goes by the name Gummo online claims to have amassed around $7 billion worth of Bitcoin (BTC). Despite a flood of positive comments and posts relating to his interviews with the Soft White Underbelly YouTube channel — which has 3.18 million subscribers — information about Gummo is scarce elsewhere, which could either be by design or suggest that a large pinch of salt may be required when listening to his extravagant claims. He said that he has been working in the field for more than 30 years, and while he started hacking for illicit reasons …

The Financial Monitoring Agency of the Republic of Kazakhstan reported earlier today that 55 illegal mining farms “voluntarily stopped their operation” due to an enforcement campaign by the regulator, and another 51 entities’ operations “were terminated.” The enforcement operation targeted illegal mining operations that compromised the nation’s energy network. The Agency called for developing a clear regulatory approach to crypto mining in its release. According to the release, not only had all the targeted operators frozen the mining process, but they also dismantled the rigs and removed them from the “places of deployment.” The release mentioned a number of high-profile …

After Bitcoin (BTC) faced its third consecutive rejection, investors became more confident in adding altcoin positions. For the leading cryptocurrency, the path to $50,000 appears more challenging than previously expected. According to Euronews Next, on March 14, the European Union rejected a proposed rule that could have banned the energy-intensive proof-of-work (PoW) mining algorithm used by Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Several EU parliamentarians have been pushing to ban PoW mining over energy concerns. In terms of performance, the aggregate market capitalization of all cryptos was relatively flat over the past seven days, registering a modest 0.4% gain to $1.77 trillion. …