Bitcoin News and Finance: What You Need to Know

Authorities in Iran have confiscated 3,000 units of mining hardware in just one week as part of a push to curb illegal crypto mining amid power shortages and blackouts. In a single year, Iranian law enforcement has shut down over 180 crypto farms in Tehran Province alone. Over 500 Crypto Mining Rigs Confiscated in Tehran As the government’s offensive against unauthorized crypto mining intensifies, authorities have discovered and seized more than 3,000 pieces of mining equipment, Iran’s power utility announced Wednesday. Over 500 devices have been confiscated in Tehran Province, where law enforcement officials have already shut down 183 illegal crypto farms with 11,000 mining units in the past fiscal year. Another 600 mining rigs have been found in Kerman Province, said the Iran Power Generation, Distribution and Transmission Company ( Tavanir ) quoted by the Financial Tribune. According to the Iranian business daily, illegal mining farms have been located also in the provinces of

Throughout 2021, a great number of mysterious whale movements from miners who mined bitcoins in the early days have occurred. This week, 1,000 bitcoin from 2010 were transferred, and the miner has spent 11,000 bitcoin since last year. Old school whale movements like these have made some people assume that decade-old coinbase spends could stem from Satoshi Nakamoto. However, even though estimates say Nakamoto mined over a million bitcoin, many other network participants mined millions of coins as well. 2010 Saw CPU and GPU Mining, Alongside Extremely Low Hashrate and Difficulty On June 9, 2021, an early miner sent 1,000 bitcoin (BTC) stemming from 20 block rewards from 2010 to a myriad of different addresses. Bitcoin.com News has caught this whale six times so far in 2021, spending 6,000 decade-old bitcoin. Further, our newsdesk caught the previous five strings before 2021, when 5,000 decade-old coins were spent in 2020. Ever since we published our investigations it has been assumed

Chinese authorities have announced that more than 170 criminal gangs have been eliminated and over 1,100 suspects arrested in the latest round of crackdown on criminal groups providing cryptocurrency money laundering services for telecom fraudsters. Crackdown on Telecom Fraud Using Cryptocurrency for Money Laundering The Ministry of Public Security of the People’s Republic of China announced Wednesday that the fifth round of the “Broken Card” operation has been carried out. This has “Severely cracked down on illegal and criminal groups that provide virtual currency money laundering services for telecom fraud,” the ministry detailed, adding: More than 170 criminal gangs have been eliminated, more than 1,100 criminal suspects have been arrested. The criminal gangs used cryptocurrencies to transfer the funds involved in the case, the announcement notes. Police investigations have revealed that these criminal gangs usually work with “coin farmers” who help the fraudsters launder

Synthetic assets open up several opportunities for investors by not confining them to a specific location. If the concept excites you, there’s good news from XCarnival . Recently, XCarnival announced it has secured a two-million US dollar seed investment in its quest to reinvent synthetic assets in crypto. This investment was led by top crypto funds including Fundamental Labs, Zonff Partners, SNZ, EVG, NGC, etc. At the same time, institutions like AU21, Incuba Alpha, DFG, WaterDrip, LD Capital, Gate, ChainCapital and Bitrise Capital. “We are very excited for the funding progress, which reflects the confidence from the investors in our project and our team,” said Leon Liu, founder of XCarnival, a crypto influencer, investor and one of the most influential community leaders in the Binance Smart Chain Chinese community. Being a next generation synthetic asset platform, XCarnival has been committed to building non-standard asset leasing, pawning, and lending businesses. At the same

El Salvador has begun exploring bitcoin mining using energy from its volcanoes, President Nayib Bukele has revealed. “Our engineers just informed me that they dug a new well that will provide approximately 95MW of 100% clean, 0 emissions geothermal energy from our volcanos,” he detailed. Bitcoin Mining Using Volcanoes’ Energy El Salvador President Nayib Bukele announced on Twitter Wednesday: “I’ve just instructed the president of La Geo (our state-owned geothermal electric company) to put up a plan to offer facilities for bitcoin mining with very cheap, 100% clean, 100% renewable, 0 emissions energy from our volcanos. This is going to evolve fast.” The president soon followed up with another tweet that says: Our engineers just informed me that they dug a new well that will provide approximately 95MW of 100% clean, 0 emissions geothermal energy from our volcanos. Starting to design a full bitcoin mining hub around it. What you see coming out of the well is pure water vapor. Ma

Several major global cryptocurrency exchanges are reportedly exploring ways to enter the Indian crypto market. “The Indian market is huge and it is only starting to grow, if there was more policy certainty by now Indian consumers would have been spoilt for choice in terms of exchanges because everyone wants to be here,” said an executive of a crypto firm. Major Crypto Exchanges Want to Enter India Global crypto exchanges are exploring ways to enter the Indian cryptocurrency market, Reuters reported. Four sources told the publication that U.S.-based Kraken, Hong Kong-based Bitfinex, and rival Kucoin are actively scouting the Indian crypto market. One source claimed to be directly involved with an exchange that is considering acquiring an Indian crypto firm and had begun due diligence for it. The source described: These companies have already begun talks to understand the Indian market and the entry points better. The other two exchanges are in the initial stages of deciding wheth

Amidst the stratospheric rise of defi and heightened demand for unique and innovative solutions, the global community of angel investors and VC firms is continuously engaging in private funding rounds and token sales. The resulting flood of capital demonstrates that entrepreneurs and startups play their part in developing a new generation of blockchain technology. Balancer Labs Raises $24.25 Million to Accelerate Protocol Development Balancer Labs, the company behind Balancer , an automated portfolio manager, liquidity provider, and price sensor, has raised $24.25 million from leading investors in its recent token sale, which will be utilized to accelerate the development of the Balancer protocol. The recent round witnessed an influx of new investors, including Alameda Capital, Pantera Capital, Fenbushi Capital, Blockchain Capital, Longhash Ventures, Fintech Collective, and Continue Capital. One of the Balancer Protocol highlights is that it uses multidimensional values to build a

On the heels of the SpaceX announcement that the company accepted dogecoin as payment, an apparel store on Brooklyn’s colorful Flatbush Avenue took the jump as well into the deep, cold Doge waters. Brick-and-Mortar Is Another Brick in the Crypto Adoption Wall Crypto adoption has been widely and thoroughly discussed in the media and on social networks, as both an investment vehicle and a payment method. Companies large and small have declared their willingness to accept this or that cryptocurrency in return for their services or products; some companies have even reversed such decisions . While bitcoin has attracted most of the attention in the adoption debate, not far behind it is turned-serious dogecoin. In Cryptwerk’s Dogecoin Directory there are “1300+ places, stores and services accepting dogecoin” though only a handful are physical stores. Bitcoin cash has quite a few locations around the world where it is accepted as well, including many brick-and-mortar locations. Still,

After years of development, Concordium has unveiled its permissionless blockchain and MVP that is designed to meet the needs of enterprises by delivering transparency and governance, all with an orientation towards protecting user privacy. Identity-Centric Network to Promote Broader Business Adoption Although blockchain’s novel characteristics are not in dispute, corporate adoption of distributed ledger technology (DLT) has remained sluggish due to bad actors diminishing trust via the anonymity promised by many existing chains. Besides these relevant concerns, some enterprises are wary of embracing the technology due to regulatory requirements. Since 2018, Concordium has endeavored to overcome these obstacles and now has revealed its answer to these challenges. With its Concordium mainnet now live alongside its corresponding GTU cryptocurrency, the organization is pioneering a new decentralized, public blockchain model. Instead of providing the anonymity features that define othe

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) plans to guide local banks towards full adoption of fintech technologies, a new strategy reveals. The region’s central banking institution also stressed that it’s going to “walk the talk” by digitalizing its own supervision of financial institutions. Hong Kong Central Bank to Support Fintech Development Hong Kong’s monetary policy regulator has presented its new strategy to stimulate the fintech development of China’s special administrative region. With the strategy, HKMA aims for a comprehensive adoption of new financial technologies in the next four years. The central bank also wants to “promote the provision of fair and efficient financial services for the benefit of Hong Kong citizens and the economy.” Speaking at a seminar organized by the Hong Kong Association of Banks, HKMA’s chief executive Eddie Yue outlined five focus areas of “Fintech 2025.” The regulator wants to encourage all banks to go fintech, future-proof Hong Kong for CBDCs

Following the report that indicates specific Chinese miners in the Xinjiang region were told by officials to shut down, another agency in Qinghai has informed miners to cease operations in a recently published government mandate. Similarly, the Qinghai Industry and Information Technology Department’s document explains bitcoin mining operations cannot operate in the area. Qinghai Province Gives Bitcoin Miners Notice to Cease Operations Beijing’s crackdown on bitcoin mining seems to be spreading. It started two weeks ago after a few accounts stemming from Inner Mongolia noted the region’s top economic planner revealed new rules against operating bitcoin mining facilities in the region. The problems with bitcoin mining in Inner Mongolia turned out to be the first enforcement measure against crypto mining. Reports explaining the government’s plans to shut down mining operations in Inner Mongolia started surfacing during the first week of March 2021. At the end of May 2021, the Sich

New submissions by a South African regulator, the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) and liquidators have exposed the web of lies and deceptive tactics that were used by Mirror Trading International (MTI) CEO Johann Steynberg and others to perpetuate the Ponzi scheme. Undeclared Losses In its report filed with the South African court, the regulator also exposes the true extent of losses that were incurred by the bitcoin investment company. For instance, in what the FSCA calls the “first period,” MTI had a “total of nearly 51 bitcoin (that) were deposited with Belize-based forex broker FXChoice, but 22 — or 43% — of these coins were lost by the traders.” However, at this point there was “no multi-level marketing involved.” Nevertheless, this would change in the second period “when Steynberg purportedly introduced a computerized trading bot” that falsely guaranteed returns of 10% each day. The report explained: FX Choice reported to the FSCA that 1,846 bitcoin were deposite

The Danish tax ministry is reportedly mulling over revising the country’s tax law to deal with the challenges posed by cryptocurrencies. Denmark’s tax authority is concerned about the rising risk of fraud and widespread filing errors involving cryptocurrencies. Denmark to Revamp Tax Law to Deal With Cryptocurrency Denmark is considering revamping its tax code in order to deal with cryptocurrency after discovering that two-thirds of bitcoin and other cryptocurrency transactions were not properly taxed, Bloomberg reported Tuesday. The country’s existing tax code is not sufficient to deal with the challenges posed by crypto assets, the Danish tax ministry explained. The authority said in a statement Tuesday that the current tax code “dates back to 1922 and therefore doesn’t take financial cryptocurrencies into account.” The ministry cited a heightened risk of fraud as well as widespread tax filing errors involving crypto transactions. Denmark will identify specific challenges to tax

Berkshire Hathaway, the company led by CEO Warren Buffett, has invested $500 million in a pro-bitcoin digital bank. Nubank says it will offer bitcoin investment following its acquisition of brokerage firm Easynvest which offers the trading of Brazil’s first bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF). Berkshire Hathaway Invests in Pro-Bitcoin Digital Bank Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. has invested $500 million in the parent company of Nubank, a Brazil-based bitcoin-friendly digital bank, the South American company announced Tuesday. This is part of the bank’s Series G funding round which began in January. The bank said it also raised $250 from other investors. Founded in 2013, Nubank says it has 40 million customers, making it the largest digital bank in the world in terms of the number of clients. With the new investments, Nubank has become “the most valuable digital bank in the world and one of the largest financial institutions in Latin America,” the announcement details. Reut

An asset management firm with nearly $160 billion in assets under management, Victory Capital, has announced that it is entering the cryptocurrency market. The firm has established exclusive agreements with Nasdaq and asset manager Hashdex. Asset Management Firm Entering Crypto Market Victory Capital Holdings Inc. (Nasdaq: VCTR) unveiled its plans to enter the cryptocurrency market Wednesday. Victory Capital is a diversified global asset management firm with $157.1 billion in assets under management as of April 30. The firm provides specialized investment strategies to institutions, intermediaries, retirement platforms, and individual investors. The company said that its wholly owned investment adviser, Victory Capital Management Inc., “has established exclusive agreements” with Nasdaq and asset manager Hashdex Ltd. in advance of plans to enter the cryptocurrency market, adding: Victory Capital will be the exclusive sponsor of private placement funds and other vehicles for U.S. i