Bitcoin News and Finance: What You Need to Know

Meta, the company that owns Whatsapp, Instagram, and Facebook, is reportedly preparing to announce a new round of layoffs in the coming days. According to reports, the company is delaying the finalization of the budget for each one of its teams, causing operational delays and affecting the output of employees of the company. Meta to Lay Off More Staff Meta, the social media company, may be looking to trim more of its workforce in the near future. According to reports from Financial Times, the company has not finalized the budgets for its internal teams, meaning that some of them will be affected by a new round of layoffs. This situation has caused managers of each division to be unable to plan ahead for the needed activities, disrupting operational output, and even affecting projects in critical areas such as the metaverse and advertising, which are now taking more time to be solved. The move, which is currently called “the flattening” internally, is also affecting the morale of ...

India is having “detailed discussions” with other G20 members about forming a collective standard operating procedure (SOP) to regulate crypto assets, Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has revealed. She also called for “a globally coordinated approach on the regulation of crypto assets” during her recent meeting with International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva. G20’s Crypto Regulatory Discussion Underway Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman answered some questions regarding crypto mining and regulation on Monday in Lok Sabha, the lower house of India’s parliament. Noting that cryptocurrencies are largely unregulated in India at the moment, Sitharaman explained: “Whether it’s mining or whether it’s the asset or whether it’s the transaction, we recognize that it is very, completely almost, driven by technology, and a standalone country’s effort in controlling or regulating it is not going to be effective.” She added: There is an evolving...

Authorities in the Russian region of Irkutsk have so far filed 1,000 lawsuits against what they call “gray” miners, or people minting coins in their homes. In over half of these cases, courts have ordered the defendants to compensate the operators of the distribution networks. Hundreds of Crypto Miners Sued in Irkutsk for Extracting Digital Currencies Using Subsidized Electricity Power distributors in the Siberian Irkutsk Oblast have filed lawsuit number 1,000 against consumers illegally mining cryptocurrency in residential areas. In 600 of these, judges have decided that the so-called “gray” miners should pay a total of more than 260 million rubles ($3.5 million) in compensation for losses and damages. The most common reason for going to court is an unusually high usage of electricity, the regional news portal Irk.ru reported. Such is the recent case with the owner of a house in the village of Novaya Razvodnaya, whose average monthly power consumption over the course of one year ...

Bitcoin miner, Iris Energy, announced plans to increase the company’s self-mining capacity, from 2 exahash per second (EH/s) to approximately 5.5 EH/s, after it receives 4.4 EH/s of new Antminer S19j Pro miners from Bitmain. Iris Energy Leverages $67 Million in Bitmain Prepayments for Latest Mining Expansion Bitcoin mining company, Iris Energy, announced plans to increase its self-mining capacity to 5.5 exahash per second (EH/s) from 2 EH/s. The company recently unplugged 3.6 EH/s of mining rigs in November 2022 after receiving a default notice from a lender. To obtain 4.4 EH/s worth of machines, the company is utilizing approximately $67 million in Bitmain credits. The newly acquired S19j Pro mining rigs will be distributed among Iris Energy’s data centers in British Columbia and Texas. If the company finds it has an excess of machines, it will sell them to invest in corporate purposes and growth initiatives. Daniel Roberts, co-founder and co-CEO of Iris Energy, described the la...

Individuals are expected to pay income tax on gains from cryptocurrency trading, the tax authority of Bosnia has determined. In the absence of dedicated regulations, the federal government in Sarajevo has set up a working group to assess various risks associated with digital assets. Income Tax Is Due on Profits From Crypto Trades, Bosnia Tax Officials Tell Finance Ministry The taxation of crypto assets is not explicitly prescribed by Bosnia’s current legislation but the country’s tax authority has addressed the matter in communication with the finance ministry. The latter is responsible for initiating amendments to the tax regulations . Cryptocurrencies have seen increasing media coverage in the Balkan nation, the capital city of which is soon going to have its first bitcoin ATM, the FENA news agency noted in a report. On this backdrop, the aspect of taxation has also come to the forefront. According to the Tax Administration of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, natural pe...

Coinbase, one of the biggest cryptocurrency exchanges in the U.S., has stated that the staking services offered on its platform do not constitute securities. The statements, made in the wake of the $30 million settlement that Kraken, another U.S.-based crypto exchange, completed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), also criticize the institution’s approach to the issue. Coinbase Defends Its Staking-as-a-Service Program Coinbase, one of the leading U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchanges, has published a blog post differentiating its staking-as-a-service program from others in the market, and clarifying that, for the institution, this kind of service does not constitute a security offering. In a blog post published on February 10, Paul Grewal, chief legal officer of the company, states how getting this point wrong in regulation may affect the whole crypto industry in the country. The article explains the stance of the company on the issue, stating: Staking is not a...