Crypto

After becoming carbon neutral earlier this year, the mining company will build the new solar farm on a former coal ash landfill Bitcoin mining and power generation company Greenidge Generation Holdings announced yesterday that it would be funding the development of a new solar farm. The farm will be built on the site of a coal ash landfill which is soon to close in the Finger Lakes Region of New York. Constructed in 1979, the Lockwood Landfill disposed of wastes such as coal combustion residuals until it was purchased in 2014 by Greenidge Generation Holdings subsidiary Lockwood Hills. The company has since maintained the site and is now expediting its closure. President of Greenidge, Dale Irwin, said, “For those of us who grew up and still live right here in the Finger Lakes, the Lockwood ...

This weekly roundup of news from Mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong attempts to curate the industry’s most important news, including influential projects, changes in the regulatory landscape, and enterprise blockchain integrations.   It was a tumultuous week in China outside the financial world with severe flooding hitting Zhengzhou and typhoon In-Fa lashing into cities around Shanghai. Even worse, a COVID-19 Delta-variant outbreak in Nanjing is now threatening to disrupt the relatively open lifestyle that residents have enjoyed since strict anti-infection measures got the initial outbreak under control in early 2020.  Shanghai city skyline (Pexels) Trouble in paradise? Inside the Chinese financial world, government regulations on tech and education companies sent the loc...

Business intelligence and mobile software firm MicroStrategy has pledged to buy more Bitcoin despite reporting impairment losses of $424.8 million in Q2. This is only a paper loss however based on the price of Bitcoin at the end of the quarter and does not reflect a realized loss. Depending on how you add the figures up, MicroStrategy appears to have made nearly a billion dollars more from Bitcoin than it spent. Along with CEO Michael Saylor’s fervent belief in Bitcoin, that may be why it’s resolved to add more Bitcoin to its reserves going forward. The report stated: “We continue to be pleased by the results of the implementation of our digital asset strategy. Our latest capital raise allowed us to expand our digital holdings, which now exceed 105,000 bitcoins. Going forward, we intend to...

Representative Ted Budd of North Carolina, a member of the House Financial Services Committee and Congressional Blockchain Caucus, has urged lawmakers to embrace decentralized innovation. In what appears to be the first occasion in which a publicly elected official has met with a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), Budd acknowledged the increasing concern about crypto among lawmakers while speaking to MakerDAO’s Chris Cameron on July 29. “There are some on the Senate side and some on the House side which fear, especially when it comes to currency, the blockchain, decentralized finance and how it’s going to evolve,” he said. “The fear is whether it will hurt our national sovereignty? Will it destabilize the dollar? Is it a threat to national security?” he added. “You even hav...

Global payments platform PayPal is looking towards the United Kingdom as the next market in which to expand its crypto trading services. According to the company’s second-quarter earnings call on Wednesday, PayPal has done very well out of crypto trading for the period. CEO Dan Schulman stated that the U.K. is likely to be the next country where crypto trading is offered. “Yeah, well, we continue to be really pleased with the momentum we’re seeing on crypto. […] We’re going to launch, hopefully, maybe even next month in the U.K., open up trading there.” He stated that the company is adding “incremental functionality” to the crypto trading platform, having already increased the crypto purchasing limits to $100,000 per week on July 15. PayPal is also working on open banking integ...

Ethereum’s native asset Ether (ETH) faces prospects of closing above $14,000 sometime in 2021 based on its current trend’s striking similarity with the one from last year. Ether price fractal First spotted by user TradingShot, the Ethereum fractal involves three technical indicators: a 50-day simple moving average (50-day SMA), a Fibonacci channel, and a relative strength index (RSI). Ether closed above its 50-day SMA in July 2021, the first time since the May 2021 bearish correction. As TradingShot noted, breaking above the said moving average wave historically predicts bull runs. For instance, a run-up above the 50-day SMA in April 2020 took the ETH/USD exchange rate from around $170 to over $500 in September 2020 — in only 137 days. Ethereum bullish fractal by TradingShot. S...

Bitcoin (BTC) bulls are locked in a battle with bears in order to take control of the $40,000 level and dovish comments from U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell suggest that loose monetary policies will remain in place for the foreseeable future. Generally, the crypto ecosystem is “cautiously optimistic” about further price rises as the fallout from China’s miner purge begins to subside and displaced miners begin to establish mining operations in other countries, resulting in a rebound of the Bitcoin hash rate. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that while the momentum in Bitcoin has slowed down, several altcoins have gained more than 30% on the 24-hour chart, led by THORChain (RUNE), Quant (QNT) and Perpetual Protocol (PERP). Top 7 coins with the highest 2...

The International Monetary Fund, or IMF, plans to “step up” its monitoring of digital currencies, according to a report by Reuters. This intent, as published in an IMF paper Thursday, details how the fund plans to “manage this far-reaching and complex transition” toward a digitized economy. “Rapid technological innovation is ushering in a new era of public and private digital money,” the report reads, highlighting the benefits of digital assets. “Payments will become easier, faster, cheaper, and more accessible, and will cross borders swiftly. These improvements could foster efficiency and inclusion, with major benefits for all.” Related: IMF plans to meet with El Salvador’s president, potentially discussing move to adopt Bitcoin However, such implementations can only occur ...

On Friday, July 30, a total of 42,850 Bitcoin (BTC) option contracts ($1.7 billion) are set to expire. This might be the first time since the May 21 weekly expiry that bulls will be able to profit from the $40,000 call (buy) options.  The most recent surge in price may have been prompted by the rumor that Amazon would accept crypto payments, but after the e-commerce giant denied these rumors, BTC has held relatively steady. According to options markets, regardless of the reason behind the recent market strength, a few incentives are in place for bulls to sustain the $40,000 level. Aggregate July 30 Bitcoin option open interest by strike. Source: Bybt.com While the initial analysis favors the neutral-to-bullish call options by 21% according to the call-to-put ratio, a decent number of ...

Analysts have long decried the European Union’s lack of homegrown tech giants, pointing to the gulf between the bloc and counterparts like the United States and China. However, the EU now appears to be making moves to up its investments in innovative technologies. The European Investment Fund (EIF), the EU agency responsible for SME financing, has recently backed a new digital assets and blockchain fund.  Fabric Ventures, a venture capital fund based in Luxembourg that invests in digital assets, tokenization projects and other blockchain applications, has secured $30 million from the EIF out of a total of $120 million for its 2021 fund.  Other high-profile investors include executives from Ethereum, PayPal, (Transfer)Wise, Square, Google, Galaxy Digital, PayU, Ledger and man...

A group of Russian experts is working on a new blockchain-based service to allow users to bequeath their cryptocurrency holdings and digital rights to the next generation. The National Technological Initiative (NTI), a global technical leadership program in Russia, announced a new digital inheritance tool based on blockchain technology, local news agency RIA Novosti reported Tuesday. The initiative brings together experts from three local universities, including Lomonosov Moscow State University, the National Research Nuclear University and the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. Dubbed “Time Capsule,” the service would allow users to store digital data and assets like social media passwords and Bitcoin wallet keys, according to the NTI. The service would also allow the tran...

China’s stringent crypto regulations meant closing shop for many Chinese businesses within the Bitcoin (BTC) mining ecosystem. The sudden disappearance of Bitcoin miners from the grid has resulted in falling hash rates. The hashing performance, the cumulative computing power of the Bitcoin network, dropped from an all-time high of 180 exahashes per second (EH/s) to 84 EH/s in just 21 days. While the hash rate drop was directly attributable to the drop in the number of Chinese miners, Blockchain.com Explorer data suggests there has been a steady increase in mining difficulty since June 3.  Since the drop, the hash rate has increased by 21.38%, owing to the return of the migrating Chinese miners that have started operating in other regions. The resulting adjustment in Bit...