Ethereum’s developers appear to be hastening the network’s shift toward Proof-of-Stake consensus and away from the Proof-of-Work mining community. On March 11, developer “Mikhail Kalinin” published specifications for Eth2’s future blockchain merge with the existing Ethereum network. The documentation notes the consensus upgrade from PoS to PoW will be the core change enacted. 6. This is usually called the "merge" - when the existing Ethereum network will swap over to using the Beacon chain, instead of Proof of Work. There's growing consensus that the merge ought to be prioritized as the next step, see e.g. https://t.co/JlgD1S3GrY — Josh Stark (@0xstark) …

Some Ethereum miners are trying to drum up support for a demonstration of force to show their opposition to the impending implementation of EIP-1559. Amid the backdrop of ever-escalating Ethereum fees, the Ethereum Improvement Proposal seeks to replace the network’s existing bidding-based fee market with a fixed price and burn mechanism. However, EIP-1559 — which is scheduled to go live in July, will significantly impact the revenue of miners. Some analysts estimating Ethereum miners could lose up to 50% of their profits. To signal their opposition to the proposal, some Ether miners are now planning a 51-hour show of force …

Nvidia’s attempt to shift Ether (ETH) miners away from its new GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card by limiting its hash rate appears to have been short-lived. Screenshots posted by tech leak Twitter account I_Leak_VN show a stack of eight RTX 3060 graphics cards operating at far above Nvidia’s 20-25 MH/s mining limit, while reportedly using Ethereum’s Dagger-Hashimoto mining algorithm. On the same day, a cryptocurrency-focused Facebook group from Vietnam posted a graphic announcing that the RTX 3060 had indeed been bypassed, and could now reach its full power of 50 MH/s thanks to a mod. Breaking Nvidia’s enforced limits on …

Does Bitcoin meet the definition of a Ponzi scheme? This is the subject of the latest Cointelegraph Crypto Duel, where Bitcoin strategist at Kraken meets professor of computer science at the University of Campinas, Jorge Stolfi. Similar to other Bitcoin skeptics, Stolfi repeatedly defined Bitcoin as a Ponzi scheme. The core of his argument is that Bitcoin doesn’t produce any cash flows and the money with which Bitcoin investors are paid comes exclusively from new investors buying Bitcoin. “Every time you invest in Bitcoin, the money that you invest goes to the previous investors or to the miners and disappears”, …

After a tumultuous 2020 that continued into Bitcoin (BTC) setting new all-time highs in 2021, Bitcoin miners are facing a bittersweet scenario — profits have skyrocketed, but multiple issues prevent them from buying more devices and boosting Bitcoin’s hash rate. According to the founder of major mining pool BTC.Top, Jiang Zhuoer, global electronics supply chain issues are having their effect on the mining industry as well. Speaking with Cointelegraph, he said: “There is definitely a shortage of equipment right now because, since the coronavirus epidemic, the global supply chain has been interrupted and is now in the process of gradually …

A three-year-old lawsuit accusing Nvidia of “misrepresenting $1 billion in sales” of crypto mining hardware during the 2017/2018 bull run came to a close on Mar. 2, with a California district court judge ruling in favor of the GPU manufacturer. The lawsuit alleged Nvidia misled investors by overstating demand from gamers as their primary sales audience. According to a summary of court documents by Law360, Judge Haywood Gilliam granted Nvidia’s request to dismiss the lawsuit on the basis that the plaintiff’s witnesses — former employees of Nvidia — were unable to demonstrate the manufacturer had acted with “conscious recklessness” when …

Lawmakers in Kentucky are looking to impose tax breaks for local cryptocurrency miners. Kentucky lawmakers on Tuesday approved several state tax breaks including House Bill 230, which would remove the sales tax from electricity purchased by local crypto mining operators. According to a report by the Lexington Herald-Leader, Kentucky legislators voted 19 to two for the new measure. The bill’s fiscal note is reportedly estimated to cost the local budget at least $1 million annually. The exact cost cannot be calculated so far because “it is unknown how many of the businesses might choose to locate here to avail themselves …

One of the largest publicly traded Bitcoin mining operations in the world, Bitfarms, has undertaken to purchase 48,000 new miners over the next two years. The Canadian mining company has sourced the equipment from Chinese supplier MicroBT in a bid to increase its hashing capacity by another 5 EH (exahashes) according to reports. Bitfarms was founded in 2017 and currently has a capacity of 1 EH. It has targeted a 200% increase by the end of 2021. The hashing capacity is the amount of pure computing horsepower that can be dedicated to mining Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies. The firm anticipates the …

Businessman Kevin O'Leary, who appears on the reality TV show Shark Tank and once called Bitcoin a “giant nothing burger,” has now joined the laser eye community. In a tweet yesterday, O'Leary said he would be allocating 3% of his portfolio to Bitcoin (BTC) and looking into investing in sustainable crypto mining. He said his investment in the latter would be aimed to avoid “blood coins” — a reference to unethically mined diamonds — and “under a mandate of 0 carbon.” Both O'Leary’s Instagram and Twitter profile pictures now show the Shark Tank star with the laser eyes associated with …

While users might still be able to adapt some gaming consoles for mining cryptocurrency, evidence suggests that recent reports of a modified PlayStation 5 mining Ether (ETH) are fake. According to a report from news outlet GizChina, Chinese software developer Yifan Gu mined Ether using a PlayStation 5. The report claimed that the developer may have overclocked the PS5’s AMD Ryzen CPU and AMD Radeon GPU cards to achieve a mining hash rate of 98.76 megahertz per second, and a screenshot from Gu showed the seemingly modified hardware required 211 watts of power to run. However, the screenshot shared by …

Authorities of the Chinese autonomous region of Inner Mongolia have proposed closing down all local cryptocurrency mining facilities to reduce energy consumption in the region. The Inner Mongolia National Development and Reform Commission, or NDRC, released an official proposal to shut down local crypto mining operations in line with its energy-saving rules. Published Thursday of last week, the draft proposal suggests to “comprehensively clean up and shut down virtual currency mining projects” by the end of April. The authority also proposed a strict ban on new cryptocurrency mining projects in the region. The NDRC will collect public feedback on the …

Belarus is studying the cryptocurrency industry for a potential move into mining digital coins like Bitcoin (BTC). The Ministry of Energy of the Republic of Belarus officially announced Friday that it is actively exploring the pros and cons of cryptocurrency mining. Minister Viktor Karankevich said that the crypto mining industry is rapidly growing all over the world in countries like China, the United States, Canada and Russia. The minister went on to say that the government is considering tapping into the mining industry following an investigation of the potential risks and other factors: “This is a new direction for us …