Several popular accounts on Twitter-like service are closed down, displaying message saying account ‘violates laws and rules’
China has stepped up its crackdown on bitcoin trading and mining, blocking a slew of cryptocurrency-related accounts on the Twitter-like Weibo platform over the weekend.
More actions are expected, including linking illegal crypto activities in China more directly with the country’s criminal law, according to analysts and a financial regulator.
Continue reading...Wise Bank of England heads are pondering the case for a state-run digital currency this week. But do we really need one?
When Google announced that bitcoin traders would be allowed to buy advertising space on its pages from August, central banks were alerted to the next likely surge in publicity for cryptocurrencies.
The increasing activity around digital currencies has not gone unnoticed at the Bank of England, and on 7 June Threadneedle Street’s brightest will publish a consultation document, setting out how a publicly operated electronic coinage system – one that would rival bitcoin – might work.
Continue reading...Speculators buy up vital components as demand surges for rival to bitcoin that requires huge storage space
A new cryptocurrency is being blamed for shortages of hard drives and other storage systems, as speculatorsbuy up critical components in anticipation of a price rise.
Chia is the creation of Bram Cohen, the entrepreneur behind the BitTorrent file-sharing system. It aims to improve on more popular cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and ethereum by removing the incentives to burn massive amounts of electricity.
Continue reading...Digital currency under pressure from payment crackdown and tweets from Elon Musk
The price of bitcoin fell by almost 30% on Wednesday, after a Chinese government crackdown on banks’ use of cryptocurrencies accelerated a long-predicted sell-off, in a day of chaotic trading.
The world’s largest digital currency tumbled to about $30,000 (£21,000) amid frenzied trading, a drop of more than 50% since it hit record highs of more than $64,000 in mid-April. However, by 10pm UK time, the bitcoin price had risen back to about $38,500, still down 11% on the day, according to Refinitiv data.
Continue reading...Digital currency, which is made with an energy-intensive process, falls 17% after the tweet
Tesla has suspended customers’ use of bitcoin to purchase its vehicles, Elon Musk said on Wednesday, citing concerns about the use of fossil fuel for bitcoin mining.
Related: Dogecoin’s record-breaking rise shoots ‘joke’ cryptocurrency to wider attention
Continue reading...The crypto asset is down more than 30% this week but is still up by more than 1,000% from the start of 2021
A senior manager at Goldman Sachs in London has quit the US investment bank after making millions from investing in Dogecoin, the joke crypto asset which has risen by more than 1,000% in value this year.
City sources said Aziz McMahon, a managing director and head of emerging market sales, had resigned from the bank after making money from investing in the digital currency based on the Doge internet meme.
Continue reading...Fall comes amid warnings over speculation by novice investors in cryptocurrencies such as dogecoin
Bitcoin has posted its biggest one-day drop in almost two months, amid warnings that novice investors could suffer heavy losses from speculating in crypto assets such as “meme coin” dogecoin.
Bitcoin tumbled more than 11% on Sunday, dropping from about $62,000 (£45,000) to $55,000 – its lowest level since the end of March. Last week, the cryptocurrency had hit fresh record highs at nearly $65,000.
Continue reading...China powers nearly 80% of the global cryptocurrencies trade, but the energy required could jeopardise its pledge to peak carbon emissions by 2030
China’s electricity-hungry bitcoin mines that power nearly 80% of the global trade in cryptocurrencies risk undercutting the country’s climate goals, a study in the journal Nature has said.
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies rely on “blockchain” technology, which is a shared database of transactions, with entries that must be confirmed and encrypted. The network is secured by individuals called “miners” who use high-powered computers to verify transactions, with bitcoins offered as a reward. Those computers consume enormous amounts of electricity.
Continue reading...This year non-fungible tokens burst into the mainstream after several digital images and animations sold for absurd amounts – so I entered the world of NFTs myself
For years, I’ve kept an ever-growing record of interesting pictures I discover online in a folder entitled Images on my desktop: a fox sauntering through an art gallery; a pixelated rendering of a Tokyo streetscape; Jon Bon Jovi doing yoga. They’re sentimental reminders of things I’ve seen online, but I am under no illusion that I somehow own these images. They come from the internet and can be copied, shared and experienced by many people all at once. My collection really is worthless to anyone but me.
Related: Art, amulets and cryptokitties: the new frontier of cryptocurrencies
Continue reading...Company’s financial chief has been rebranded ‘master of coin’ following £1bn bitcoin investment
Elon Musk, the billionaire chief executive of Tesla with a penchant for eccentric behaviour, has changed his job title to “technoking” of the electric car manufacturer.
In addition to Musk, who also retains his position as chief executive, the company’s financial chief, Zach Kirkhorn, has been rebranded as “master of coin”.
Continue reading...When is a meme worth $600,000? When technology has created a ‘unique’ version that can’t be owned by anyone else
Pat, I keep hearing references to cryptoart which are all very … cryptic. What is this thing?
Hey Lucy! So you might have heard of it in context of the $US600,000 Nyan Cat gif or the more recent Kings of Leon NFT Album, both of which are examples of cryptoart. Cryptoart is a way of making digital art unique, and therefore – according to some people – valuable. Normally, digital art is very easy to replicate due to the very nature of digital information. So cryptoart is a way of making digital files one-of-a-kind.
Continue reading...Bitcoin mining – the process in which a bitcoin is awarded to a computer that solves a complex series of algorithm – is a deeply energy intensive process
It’s not just the value of bitcoin that has soared in the last year – so has the huge amount of energy it consumes.
The cryptocurrency’s value has dipped recently after passing a high of $50,000 but the energy used to create it has continued to soar during its epic rise, climbing to the equivalent to the annual carbon footprint of Argentina, according to Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index, a tool from researchers at Cambridge University that measures the currency’s energy use.
Continue reading...Artificial constraint highlights struggle to keep up with demand from cryptocurrency miners
The newest graphics cards from the gaming processor designer Nvidia will be artificially constrained in their ability to mine cryptocurrencies, the company has announced, as it desperately tries to manage a year-long inability to satisfy demand.
The RTX 3060, a high-powered PC peripheral designed to let gamers get the best performance from their machines, will ship with software that makes it half as effective at mining the cryptocurrency Ethereum as it could be.
Continue reading...After investors caused havoc on the markets last week in a battle over the shares of a video-game chain, we explore the promise and pitfalls of the apps they used
A year ago shares in struggling US video game store GameStop were worth just $3.25 a pop, yet at the end of last month they had reached $482. This stupendous surge was created by thousands of armchair traders, organising themselves on internet forums such as Reddit, who were attempting to outwit hedge funds who had placed massive bets on the chain’s decline in a process known as short-selling.
This has resulted in billion-dollar losses for some hedge funds, and big profits for traders who cashed out before the stock fell back to less than $100. Many of these speculators were using a new generation of share-trading apps, such as eToro, Robinhood and Trading 212. Have these services tipped the scales of financial power in favour of the little guy? Here we answer some key questions …
Continue reading...They are elusive, infuriating gatekeepers that rule our lives. Easy to crack and hard to remember, forgetting them is pricey – it cost Stefan Thomas £160m in lost bitcoin
Modern life is the act of entering the third character of a long-dead family pet into an online form three times a week, getting it wrong, and speaking to a call-centre worker in India whose real name is almost certainly not Kenny, ad infinitum, until you die. Our ancestors lived short, brutish lives and died in childbirth, or were gored to death on the battlefield, but at least they didn’t have passwords, and that’s something.
The tyranny of passwords; it colonises modern life. These petty dictators deny us access to our bank accounts, our baby photos, our phone contracts, even our heating. They reproduce as endlessly as bacteria, and yet, like Tupperware lids, you can never find the one you need. They are our boyfriends, our girlfriends, our children, our pets. A talented and motivated adversary could probably work yours out in the time it has taken you to read this paragraph.
Continue reading...Cryptocurrency passes $30,000 as financial institutions express growing interest
Bitcoin has surged to a record high amid rising interest from investors and claims that the volatile cryptocurrency is on the way to becoming a mainstream payment method.
Having quadrupled in value during 2020, bitcoin began 2021 strongly by breaking through the $30,000 (£22,000) mark for the first time, less than three weeks after first trading above $20,000.
Continue reading...DoJ is suing for formal forfeiture of funds after tracking down the person holding them
The US government has seized more than $1bn worth of bitcoins connected to the shuttered darknet marketplace Silk Road and is suing for formal forfeiture of the funds.
The case is the biggest cryptocurrency seizure in history, and explains why the bitcoins changed hands this week. Analysts had noticed the transfer on the public blockchain and speculated that it was either due to an unknown Silk Road co-conspirator attempting to cash out, or because the funds had been stolen by hackers.
Continue reading...Lawyers for customers of an insolvent cryptocurrency exchange have asked police to exhume the body of the company’s founder, amid efforts to recover about $190m in Bitcoin which were locked in an online black hole after his death.
Miller Thomson LLP sent a letter to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police on Friday, requesting authorities “conduct an exhumation and postmortem autopsy” on the body of Gerald Cotten, founder of QuadrigaCX, citing what the firm called the “questionable circumstances” around his death earlier this year.
Continue reading...South Korean-based site accepted digital currency for access to videos, with victims rescued in US, UK and Spain
Hundreds of people have been arrested in a worldwide operation over a South Korea-based dark web child sexual abuse site that sold videos for digital cash.
Officials from the United States, Britain and South Korea described the network as one of the largest operations they had encountered to date.
Continue reading...Several large companies have announced their departure, including Visa and Mastercard, a week after PayPal exited
Nearly every payment firm that initially agreed to join Facebook’s cryptocurrency Libra has backed out, in a potentially fatal blow to the social network’s plan for a worldwide digital currency.
Visa and Mastercard said on Friday they would no longer participate in the Libra Association and Latin American payment system Mercado Pago announced it would back out as well. Several other large companies have announced their departures .
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