Shark Tank and Dragon’s Den personality Kevin O’Leary is taking a stand against what he terms “blood coin,” that being Bitcoin (BTC) mined in China. The investor declared that he would only deal with “clean coin” — coins mined using renewable energy — from now on and suggested other institutions were starting to do the same. O’Leary took aim at the free-wheeling nature of Bitcoin production by pointing out that most other products in the world are manufactured according to institutional and regulatory compliance standards. O’Leary said, during an interview with CNBC: “We have compliance on large institutions, we have …

In the waters off Hong Kong International Authorities on Friday, Hong Kong Customs detected suspicious figures offloading cartons from a fishing boat to a nearby speedboat. While the men successfully fled, the authorities reportedly detained the fishing vessel and found a large batch of apparently smuggled goods: everything from dried shark fins and cosmetics to electronics. Notably, among these goods — worth an estimated $31 million in total — were reportedly a stash of over 300 Nvidia CMP 30HX graphics cards, a new line of GPUs dedicated to cryptocurrency mining, which Nvidia released earlier this year in order to ensure …

According to its latest annual financial report, leading U.S.-based mining firm Riot Blockchain increased its hashing capacity by 460% and more than doubled the amount of Bitcoin held on its balance sheet in 2020. Riot saw a 78% growth in total mining revenues from $6.7 million to $12 million, owing to the increase in operational hash rate from 101 pentahashes per second, or PH/s, as of December 2019 to 566 PH/s as of December 31. While the company said it achieved profitability in the fourth quarter with $3.9 million in net income on a GAAP basis, Riot posted an overall …

Blockcap, one of North America’s fastest-growing Bitcoin (BTC) mining companies, has secured sizable investments from some of crypto’s biggest names, setting the stage for significant expansion in the year ahead. Off The Chain Capital and Foundry Digital, a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, contributed to the $75 million haul, Blockcap announced Wednesday. The funding will go toward scaling the company’s mining operations and promoting the continued growth of digital assets in the United States. Blockcap was founded in 2020 by a group of blockchain veterans. It now commands a fleet of roughly 12,000 machines mining around 7 BTC per day. …

Ethereum Improvement Proposal 1559, set to be bundled together with the “London” upgrade in July, has caused as much excitement as fear and panic. On the surface, EIP-1559 is nothing more than a change in Ethereum’s gas fee structure. And to spice it up, it has also been labeled as Ethereum’s scarcity engine, or burn mechanism, as it will destroy Ether (ETH) used in transaction fees, making the cryptocurrency deflationary, and perhaps more valuable down the line. Related: Ethereum at a crossroads: Ether community turmoil over miner reward fees Curbing Ether’s inflation will make the digital asset as deflationary as …

Canadian-based Blockchain tech company Blockstream announced the launch of a security token backed by the company's mining production on March 29. It offers an alternative to investing in Bitcoin mining stocks, with the company providing non-US qualified investors exposure to Bitcoin mining through the Blockstream Mining Note security token. BMN represents 2,000 terahash per second of hashrate from Blockstream's mining facilities. The Bitcoin mined for BMN will be held in cold storage for three years, and will be distributed to the final token holders at the end of that time frame. Blockstream plans to begin BMN mining operations by July …

Coin Metrics co-founder Nic Carter has produced a well-researched rebuttal to some of the key claims suggesting power-hungry Bitcoin mining is causing an environmental disaster. In an in-depth article called Noahbjectivity on Bitcoin mining penned on March 30, the Castle Island Ventures Partner responds to claims by Bloomberg columnist Noah Smith in a March 24 article titled Bitcoin miners are on a path to self-destruction. The first claim Carter took aim at was that Bitcoin is unique among assets in that a rising price entails a greater energy draw. Carter stated that gold has the exact same trait in that …

Major U.S.-based mining firm Marathon Digital Holdings has announced the launch of what it describes as the first North American Bitcoin mining pool that is “fully compliant with U.S. regulations.” According to a March 30 announcement, the pool adheres to U.S. anti-money laundering guidelines and rules set out by the Office of Foreign Asset Control, or OFAC. Marathon will ensure the transactions processed by its pool meet regulatory standards by using technology exclusively licensed by DMG Blockchain allowing transfers to be filtered. The firm will begin diverting 100% of its current hash power to the new pool from May 1. …

The majority of Bitcoin (BTC) is mined outside of the United States using “dirty energy,” Miami Mayor Francis Suarez has claimed. Suarez discussed the environmental implications of Bitcoin mining in a March 26 episode of the Unconfirmed podcast with cryptocurrency journalist Laura Shin. The mayor said that the U.S. should mine more Bitcoin for to national security reasons. “A part of the problem with Bitcoin is 90% of it is not done in the United States. 90% of it is done in countries that have dirty energy. So that’s the reason why it’s considered to be a dirty activity,” Suarez …

An IT security researcher has been able to adapt Nintendo’s first major handheld game console to mine cryptocurrency. According to a recent YouTube video, user Stacksmashing used the hardware from a Nintendo Game Boy first released in 1989 as a starting point to mine Bitcoin (BTC). Because the gaming console has no built-in wireless capabilities — and largely predates the internet — the YouTuber said he used a Raspberry Pi microcontroller board attached to the Game Boy’s link port and a USB flash card to establish a connection to a BTC node run from his computer. "My goal was to …

Publicly-traded cryptocurrency mining firm Argo Blockchain will launch a Bitcoin (BTC) mining pool powered solely by clean energy, the company announced on March 26. Argo has partnered with fellow eco-friendly mining firm DMG Blockchain to create Terra Pool — a Bitcoin mining pool consisting of a hash rate derived from both company’s hydroelectric power sources, which the firm claims is the first of is kind. Argo Blockchain PLC is a United Kingdom-based mining company with three operational facilities in Canada set up to mine Bitcoin, and the privacy coin, Zcash (ZEC). The firm recently acquired a 320-acre plot of land …

Blockchain security provider Sigma Prime has announced its first merge transaction between the two Ethereum networks. The transaction was made by its Lighthouse client using only Proof of Stake validators, it stated in a March 25 tweet. It added that this was a step towards a 99.98% drop in Ethereum energy consumption, deriving that figure from calculations that compare the current Proof of Work Eth1 with the much more efficient Proof of Stake Eth2. Sigma Prime stated that it is an exciting achievement but still far from production as it is still a prototype with much more work to do, …