Bitcoin ATM operator LibertyX now offers bitcoin purchases at the United States’ most popular convenience and drug stores.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/colinharper/2020/06/23/you-can-now-buy-bitcoin-at-cvs7-eleven-rite-aid/

Was it simply a catastrophically expensive mistake, or something more nefarious? The mining pool is holding on to the fee in case the sender speaks up.

Imagine sending $133 to a friend and being charged a $2.5 million fee. That seems to be the case for a cryptocurrency user who paid a $2.5 million transaction fee during a trade on Wednesday morning using Ethereum, a cryptocurrency similar to Bitcoin but with some key differences.

According to transaction details, which are publicly available, the mistake may have been in setting the price that the trader was willing to pay to have their transaction posted to the Ethereum blockchain, a permanent record of transactions.

Idena is a novel way to formalize people on the blockchain. It does not collect or store personally identifiable information. Idena proves the humanness and uniqueness of its participants by running an AI-hard Turing test at the same time for everyone around the globe.

The Idena blockchain is driven by proof-of-person consensus: Every node is linked to a cryptoidentity, one single person with equal voting power.

Little by little, the central bank will acquire more power to track how money is used

This Utility Heats New York State—And Mines Its Own Bitcoin
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-05/this-utility-heats-new-york-state-and-mines-its-own-bitcoin

A power plant in New York’s Finger Lakes region has set up its own Bitcoin mining operation, using the electricity it produces to generate about $50,000 worth of the virtual currency every day.

Atlas Holding LLC, the private-equity firm that runs the operation, has installed some 7,000 crypto mining machines at the Greenidge Generation plant in recent months that can mine about 5.5 Bitcoins per day. The 65,000-square-foot facility in Dresden, New York, was built in 1937 as a coal plant and later converted to natural gas.

The machines work off so-called “behind-the-meter” power, which makes it extremely low cost, the private-equity firm said. Because powering crypto mining machines is usually so energy intensive, miners have been roaming the world seeking out cheap electricity, such as that available from hydro power plants. Many met with an unwelcome surprise, when those utilities jacked up prices. But Greenidge said it’s power costs are predictable and low — essentially, just costs of production, which can be offset by power-related services.

The server farm consumes about 15 megawatts of the 106 megawatts of capacity that the plant produces. While in the past the plant used to only run during times of peak energy demand — during summer or winter — it’s now operating year round.

While all Bitcoin miners are going to be impacted by so-called halvening, slated for May, when rewards the network issues to miners will be cut in half, the plant’s owners believe they will still remain in the black.

Homeland Security has unveiled its latest initiative to crack down on unlicensed Bitcoin businesses.

Homeland Security is focusing on illicit crypto transactions.
The Cryptocurrency Intelligence Program will look at illegal movement of money.
Other US departmens are also looking into crypto payments.

DHS detailed the Cryptocurrency Intelligence Program (CIP)—a cryptocurrency-centric initiative to trail unlicensed crypto companies partaking in money laundering activities.

Under the scope of the DHS, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) established the BCSC in 2009, to wage war on criminal assets. Over the past few years, the focus has increasingly moved towards cryptocurrencies and P2P sites.

IOTA Foundation, the nonprofit organization behind the IOTA cryptocurrency, has shut down its entire network this week after hackers exploited a vulnerability in the official IOTA wallet app to steal user funds.

The attack happened this week, Wednesday, on February 12, 2020