Author: Coindesk
BTC’s rise to record highs earlier this week is expected to allow miners to extend their November profitability into December, according to a report by investment bank Jefferies on Wednesday. Bitcoin mining economics improved in November as the average price of bitcoin was 31% higher while the average network hashrate rose by almost 4%, the report said.The hashrate, representing the total computing power dedicated to a network, is a proxy for competition in the industry and mining difficulty.”Average daily revenue per exahash was $55,649, which represented a 20.7% month-on-month increase,” analysts Jonathan Petersen and Jan Aygul wrote.U.S.-listed miners mined less…
Craig Wright, who falsely claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of bitcoin, was found to be in contempt of court and handed a 12-month jail sentence after starting a legal claim for 900 billion pounds ($1.1 trillion) over intellectual property rights related to the Bitcoin system.The case was brought by the Crypto Open Patent Alliance, which argued that Wright’s suit in October violated the London court’s July ruling barring him from pursuing proceedings related to his claim to be Nakamoto.“When it comes to the grounds of contempt I have found each of them proved beyond reasonable doubt,” Judge…
By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)If you were looking forward to a quiet Christmas away from your computer, expecting bitcoin to rise steadily through the year-end, forget it. Looks like the Fed has dashed those plans.First of all, Chair Jerome Powell’s comments distancing the central bank from President-elect Donald Trump’s potential creation of a strategic bitcoin reserve mean traders hoping for one will need some solid reassurance. Many are likely to sit on the sidelines until the new administration makes good on its promises. That will weaken the market’s bid side until Trump takes office on Jan.…
It took a while, but 2024 was the year bitcoin fulfilled a million end-of-year predictions to finally hit $100,000. Uncork the champagne if you like, but I believe bitcoin’s breach of this historic barrier is the harbinger of something even bigger, and that 2025 will be the long-awaited Year of Decentralization.The reason has very little to do with bitcoin’s soaring valuation. Anyone who’s had even half an eye on the decentralized technology landscape for the last year will have witnessed an explosion in new use cases. Many are quirky, others are cool and a few promise to solve some of…
Over the last few months, AI agents running on crypto rails have captivated the crypto community. Natural memeticists, these agents are becoming social media stars calibrated to thrill, and sometimes enrich, an “audience” of speculators betting on their meme tokens.The original and most famous of them, Truth Terminal, was created by putting instances of the large foundation model, Claude Opus, in conversation with itself and prioritizing content drawn from the back alleys of the internet including Reddit and 4Chan. What emerged was a bawdy prophet with a magnetic personality and a fanatical bent for spreading the Gospel of Goetse, a…
Mo Shaikh, co-founder of Aptos Labs, announced that he’s stepping down as CEO of the company.Aptos is a layer-1 blockchain that claims to offer enhanced scalability, security and transaction speeds. The platform leverages a unique blockchain programming language called Move, which was originally created for Facebook’s shuttered “Diem” project.In a lengthy post on X, Shaikh, who co-founded Aptos with Avery Ching three years ago, expressed pride in the progress made by the company, which included raising a mammoth $400 million in venture capital funding and building “one of the most robust ecosystems, trusted by over a thousand builders and innovators…
Every year, my company Emfarsis partners with the Blockchain Game Alliance (BGA) to conduct an industry-wide survey of blockchain gaming professionals. And every year, the overwhelming majority of respondents agree that digital asset ownership is the single biggest benefit that blockchain can bring to games; this year was no different, with 71.1% ranking it number one. Even with more people joining the industry — in 2024 we had three times as many respondents as compared to the inaugural survey in 2021 — it’s always digital asset ownership that comes out as the industry’s undisputed North Star.But while we hail digital…
Crypto asset prices slid on Thursday, building on Wednesday’s market-wide selloff spurred by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell disappointing investors with his comments on U.S. interest rate cut expectations for next year.Bitcoin’s (BTC) attempt to bounce back above $100,000 quickly faded earlier during the day and slid to the low-$97,000s during the U.S. day. Recently, it modestly recovered to around $98,000, but was still down 4.8% over the past 24 hours.Altcoins fared much worse, with the broad-market CoinDesk 20 Index diving more than 10% during the same period. Ethereum’s ether (ETH) dipped 10.8% to below $3,500, while Cardano’s ADA, Chainlink’s…
Curve founder Michael Egorov was liquidated for 918.83K CRV ($882,000) after CRV fell by more than 12% over the past 24-hours.The head honcho of the decentralized finance (DeFi) lending platform suffered a series of mammoth liquidations earlier in 2024 after taking out loans to purchase CRV and bolster the price. $140 million in total was liquidated in June.”Many of you are aware that I had all my loans liquidated. Size of my positions was too large for markets to handle and caused 10M of bad debt,” Egorov wrote at the time.The most recent of those purchases was worth $1.2 million…
As nations explore the implications of digital currencies, Bitcoin is becoming part of national strategies. El Salvador made headlines as the first country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender, while the United States is considering a national Bitcoin reserve. Even China, despite its cautious stance on cryptocurrency, has embraced blockchain technology to support its digital yuan. Amid these changes, Bhutan stands out — not by following global trends, but by charting its own path.Nestled in the Himalayas between China and India, Bhutan has long defied conventional economic models. Instead of prioritizing Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the country measures success using…