Electric Capital co-founder and partner Curtis Spencer implied that the Bitcoin network may owe its continued existence to the grace of world governments. In a panel at the Collision web summit on Tuesday, Spencer said lawmakers are the ones giving Bitcoin (BTC) a chance to grow by not imposing harsher restrictions on mining operations in their respective countries. The Electric Capital executive was speaking on the state of investing in cryptocurrency in 2021, alongside Michael Jordan of Galaxy Digital, Kartik Talwar of A Capital, Ash Egan of Accomplice, Tara Tan of IDEO CoLab Ventures and moderator Min Teo of Consensys. …

Canadian Bitcoin mining firm Bitfarms has updated its plans for expansion in South America, revealing it has secured an eight-year contract to draw up to 210 megawatts, or MW, of electricity for $0.022 per kilowatt-hour, or kWh. According to an April 19 announcement, Bitfarms has made significant progress in solidifying the terms for its Argentine operation since first signing a non-binding memorandum to build a 60 MW power plant in October 2020. In addition to expanding securing a 250% increase in power capacity and agreeing to a 10% increase in electricity pricing, Bitfarms revealed it is in advanced discussions with …

Popular crypto market analyst Willy Woo noted reports identifying the blackouts were published late last week, with the power outages occurring to facilitate safety inspections in response to a recent flooding accident at a local coal mine that saw 21 miners temporarily trapped underground after power and communications went down. According to the Cambridge Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index, or CBECI, Xinjiang represents nearly one-quarter of the global hash rate. The analyst noted that yesterday saw the largest daily drop in total Bitcoin network hash rate since November 2017, with hash rate plummeting from 172 million terahashes per second to less …

Bitcoin (BTC) has seen a classic indicator of a coming bull run pass a historic milestone as miners commit more and more resources to its future. According to data from on-chain monitoring resource Glassnode on Friday, Bitcoin’s network hash rate has passed total exahashes per second for the first time in its history. Hash rate underscores miner commitment Coming as a spike in a long-term uptrend, crossing the significant boundary means that the hash rate has doubled in under nine months. An estimate of the computing power dedicated to the network by miners, the hash rate has traditionally acted as …

The crypto markets in South Korea have long stood out from the rest of the world, and a lot of this has to do with the “Kimchi premium,” which often causes Bitcoin (BTC) to trade on local exchanges at much higher prices than what’s seen elsewhere. Now, one cutting-edge platform is aiming to capitalize on the fervent interest for digital assets in the country, with an ambitious expansion of its services that sit at the crossroads between cryptocurrencies and gaming. GamerHash says it has already amassed more than 570,000 users in three years and is now planning to make inroads …

Cryptocurrency mining rig manufacturer Bitmain announced the pending release of a new Ether (ETH) miner on Friday. The Antminer E9 model is an application-specific integrated circuit chip that will run on the Ethereum blockchain’s Ethash algorithm. No official release date has been announced for the E9 yet, however, the machine’s arrival may not be as impactful as first suspected. The rig faces competition in the form of Nvidia’s CMP (Cryptocurrency Mining Processor) range of GPUs designed specifically for crypto mining. Meanwhile, Ethereum’s scheduled move away from proof-of-work to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism could mean the E9’s utility will be short-lived. …

The hashing power of top Bitcoin mining pools located in Northwest China appears to have plummeted due to a regional blackout to enable safety inspections. The news was reported by Wu Blockchain, the author of Chinese crypto newsletter Wublock, who noted significant drops in the hash rate of several major pools — with Antpool crashing 24.5%, Binance Pool dipping 20%, BTC.com falling 18.9% and Poolin dropping by 33%. The hashrate of Bitcoin mining pools plummeted in 24 hours. Antpools fell by 24.5%, https://t.co/1YRYr58dLy fell by 18.9%, Poolin fell by 33%, Binance pools fell by 20%. The reason is that Northwest …

It was a relatively quiet week in China’s blockchain space as events were overshadowed by the surge in the BTC price and the Coinbase direct listing in the U.S. Many locals reacted with surprise to the news, showing that exposure to cryptocurrencies is still relatively isolated in the world’s most populous country. Many netizens responded skeptically to the Coinbase story, with news aggregation account “Jiemian” on Weibo calling Bitcoin a scam, highlighting its connection to terrorists, and encouraging investors to stick to China’s A-shares. (For a quick comparison, the Shanghai composite index is down 2.13% this year, while Bitcoin has …

After four months of closure, Iran’s largest Bitcoin mining facility is set to resume its operations. According to a report by IranWire, the decision to restart operations at the Bitcoin mining farm was due to massive financing put up by Chinese backers. Located in Rafsanjan, a city in the Kerman Province of southeast Iran, the Bitcoin (BTC) mining farm was at the center of controversy earlier in 2021. Back in January, the authorities in the province ordered the closure of the mining hub amid sweeping electricity blackouts in Iran. Indeed, the Rafsanjan Bitcoin mining center reportedly consumes 175 megawatt-hour of …

Mike Colyer, CEO of Foundry Digital — a crypto mining subsidiary of Digital Currency Group — believes mining Bitcoin could eventually help the world transition to green energy. Speaking at the Crypto Mining Forum online event on Tuesday, Colyer said he believes that as major energy companies see the economic benefits of mining cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC), it may lead to a restructuring of both capital and operations. Calling Bitcoin mining "a great stabilizer" for the power grid, the Foundry Digital CEO said the technology could become a "bridge between the current energy production and a world where 100% of …

Nvidia said the positive performance of its various market segments has seen the company revise its initial forecasts for the first quarter of fiscal year 2022. The company made this known during its annual investor day on Monday, revealing the total revenue for quarter one is already tracking above the $5.30 billion forecast included in its previous end-of-year earnings call. This positive market performance has also extended to Nvidia’s graphics processing unit sector, with the company raising its first-quarter revenue estimate for its cryptocurrency mining processor, or CMP, product threefold to $150 million. Indeed, as previously reported by Cointelegraph, Nvidia …

Pennsylvania software firm Integrated Ventures has announced the purchase of 4,800 Bitcoin (BTC) mining rigs from Chinese manufacturer Bitmain. The deal is worth just over $34 million and will see 400 of Bitmain’s Antminer model S19J’s delivered to Integrated Ventures each month for the next year. Integrated Ventures partnered with Wattum Management, a mining solutions provider, to carry out the deal, with Wattum expected to help host and manage INTV’s mining operations. The mining rigs deliver 100 terahashes each, giving IV close to 0.5 million TH/s by the time the full shipment of mining rigs is delivered in 2022. Based …