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Showing posts from January, 2018

The Best Places In The World To Mine Bitcoin

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Deep in China’s Sichuan mountains, miners are chipping away at complex mathematical puzzles in hopes of unlocking one of today’s most prized assets, BITCOIN . Currently, more than 60 percent of all BITCOIN  is mined in China, and these miners have picked their location wisely. The remote Sichuan mountains enjoy a cool year-round temperature and cheap electricity provided by small-scale hydro-electric facilities, averaging from $0.05 to $0.08-cents per kWh. Recent rumors, however, suggest that this could all come crashing down. First reported on  Reuters , the People’s Bank of China outlined a plan behind closed doors aiming to curb the high energy consumption associated with BITCOIN  mining in the country. The source told Reuters that the PBoC is aiming to force the hand of local governments to limit the miners’ electricity in order to gradually scale back the industry’s energy consumption. It is important to note that a separate source has since  denied the claim . But this

The Age of Cryptocurrency: Is This the End of Money?

Wharton Dean  Geoffrey Garrett  sees a big split in how blockchain-based digital cryptocurrencies like BITCOIN  are viewed on Wall Street versus in Silicon Valley. On the East Coast, the idea of a cryptocurrency replacing a fiat currency is still met with skepticism. But in the Valley, they seem “all in.” In this opinion piece he offers his views on this corner of fintech. I spent the first week of the New Year with a great group of Wharton undergraduates visiting many of our tremendous alumni in the San Francisco Bay Area. To say it felt very different from the East Coast is an understatement. And I am not talking about missing the “bomb cyclone,” which we did. I am talking about blockchain BITCOIN /cryptocurrencies, which are much more than a speculative Chinese-cum-millennial obsession. Whereas most people on Wall Street remain skeptical, playing a wait-and-see game, Silicon Valley is all in. Literally every meeting I participated in, from the biggest tech companies to the

Bitcoin volatility even putting off cybercriminals, according to new research

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It comes as the price of BITCOIN  in US dollars has plummeted to around US$11,000 Over the last quarter of 2017, there was reportedly a fall of 73% in payment demands that were in BITCOIN The volatility in the Bitcoin price is even putting off cybercriminals, according to new research. Over the last quarter of 2017, researchers saw a fall of 73% in payment demands from malware ransomware developers that were in Bitcoin, the UK newspaper the Guardian reported. It comes as the price of Bitcoin in US dollars has plummeted to around US$11,000 today, from over US$19,000 only last month after the CRYPTOCURRENCY'S meteoric rise in 2017. Proofpoint researchers, a cybersecurity firm, were quoted as saying that  soaring cryptocurrency values were a boon for holders of bitcoin. "But they are a challenge for anyone who tries to price their product or service in BITCOIN  — threat actors included. "In Q4, newer ransomware strains appeared to take this into account.

8 Benefits of Blockchain to Industries Beyond Cryptocurrency

Heard about BITCOINS  and cryptocurrency lately? You probably have, thanks to all the buzz surrounding Bitcoin’s record-breaking exploits. It’s almost surreal to think that, back in 2011, BITCOINS  traded for $1 each. Recently one BITCOIN was worth a  whopping $16,000 . As an entrepreneur, you may not be interested in purchasing Bitcoins or any other cryptocurrency as a form of investment. But you have to appreciate the underlying technology that makes Bitcoin possible -- the blockchain . In layman’s terms, the BLOCKCHAIN  is a virtual, public ledger that records everything in a secure and transparent manner. Unlike banks that facilitate transactions with traditional currencies, the blockchain allows the free transfer of cryptocurreny through a decentralized environment. All the data is then held in an interlinked network of computers, owned and run by none other than the users themselves. To some people, the blockchain technology is a lot more promising than the cryptocurrency