FreeCryptoCurrency.Me

Iris Energy reported a 10% increase in Bitcoin mined during May (totaling 151 BTC), over the previous month.

The company also said in a statement Tuesday that its average operating hash rate rose to 1,165 petahash per second, representing a roughly 12% increase.

That is despite the Bitcoin network difficulty going up by 5.56 % on April 27 and 4.89% on May 11, according to BTC.com.

Iris Energy’s revenue was $4.9 million. The company indicated that it was considering additional debt similar to the $71 million it secured with NYDIG in equipment financing.

“The Company remains focused on prudently assessing various options and ensuring that any decisions consider an appropriate long-term capital structure for the Company,” the statement said.

The company’s developments in Mackenzie and Prince George also remain on track to reach 1.5 and 1.4 exahash per second, respectively, by the third quarted of 2022, per the statement.

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Citadel Securities, the market-making firm founded by billionaire Ken Griffin, is in preparations to launch a digital assets trading ecosystem for brokerages, according to a source with knowledge of the process. 

Involved in the preparations are market-making firm Virtu as well as venture capital firms Sequoia Capital and Paradigm, the source said. CoinDesk first reported the details of the plan on Tuesday.

Both Sequoia and Paradigm took part in a $1.15 billion funding round for Citadel Securities earlier this year, as previously reported. Citadel Securities is a separate entity from Citadel LLC, the hedge fund also founded by Griffin.

The idea is that the ecosystem will enable brokers to source liquidity and offer crypto services to their end clients. Anti-money laundering and know-your-customer procedures will form part of this ecosystem, according to the source. 

Griffin previously indicated in March that the firm would eventually become a market maker in the crypto sector, telling Bloomberg that crypto “has been one of the great stories in finance over the course of the last 15 years.”

Griffin said that he had been “the naysayer” for a long time, but had turned back around.

“The crypto market today has a market capitalization of about $2 trillion in round numbers, which tells you that I haven’t been right on this call,” he said.

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Quick Take

• $2.5bn Market Capitalization as of June 2022 following their Nov-19 initial public offering 

• La Jolla, California based commercial bank operating since 1988 with expansion into digital assets starting in 2013 

• Operates the Silvergate Exchange Network (SEN), allowing clients to convert between stablecoins and fiat 24 / 7 / 365

• SEN Leverage product provides SEN clients U.S. denominated loans collateralized by Bitcoin holdings

• Provides digital asset clients with crypto custody with partnerships with Coinbase Custody and Fidelity Digital Assets

• Dec-21 announcement of EJF Silvergate Ventures Fund, a joint investment vehicle with EJF Capital focused on early-stage investing

• Recently acquired intellectual property (IP) and other technology assets from the Diem Group related to operating a blockchain payment networks

This research piece is available exclusively to
members of The Block Research.
You can continue reading
this Research content on The Block Research.

A group of 20 international human rights activists has written an open letter to the US Congressional leadership advocating for a “responsible” crypto policy acknowledging the technology’s role in combating “monetary colonialism” worldwide.

The letter is a direct response to an earlier letter submitted to Congress on June 1 by a group of 1,500 computer scientists, software engineers, and technologists urging lawmakers to take a “critical, skeptical approach” toward the industry.

“To most in the West, the horrors of monetary colonialism, misogynist financial policy, frozen bank accounts, exploitative remittance companies, and an inability to connect to the global economy might be distant ideas,” the new letter reads.

Bitcoin, it argues, has already helped people in need of an alternative to fiat currency. “(W)hen currency catastrophes struck Cuba, Afghanistan, and Venezuela…Bitcoin helped keep the fight against authoritarianism afloat.”

The letter points to a growing rift among technologists about the role of blockchain technology. Critics, such as those that signed the June 1 letter, claim that blockchain technology is a “solution in search of a problem,” and that lofty promises about “financial inclusion” are merely used to justify its existence when “far better solutions are already in use.”

Advocates argue that blockchain technology plays a critical role in sustaining democratic resistance and filling gaps left by “legacy” financial institutions.

“The crypto industry is undoubtedly rife with scams,” the letter concedes, “but the solution is not to conflate genuinely useful fintech instruments with harmful crypto schemes.”

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Quick Take

• Last month the digital assets sector received nearly $3.5 billion across 220 venture deals
• Data/Analytics/Information had its largest funding month in dollar terms in at least 27 months, receiving roughly $362 million across 18 deals
• For the first time in 21 months, dating back to July 2020, DeFi was not one of the two most popular deal types.
• NFTs/Gaming continues to be the most popular deal type by a large margin. For ten consecutive months, it has been the most favored deal type

This research piece is available exclusively to
members of The Block Research.
You can continue reading
this Research content on The Block Research.

Argo saw mined 124 Bitcoin in May — a 25.3% drop from the previous month.

The company said the decrease was due to a series of factors, namely the increase in difficulty in the Bitcoin network experienced in May, in a statement Tuesday.

Network difficulty increased by 5.56 % on April 27  and 4.89% on May 11, but more fell back down by -4.33% on May 25, according to BTC.com.

About 20 BTC of the difference between the two months can be attributed to “essentially luck” from the Terra Pool, according to Argo CEO Peter Wall. 

Wall explained that unlike other pools, where miners are paid based on hash rate, in this case, Argo is paid based on the number of blocks produced.

“You’re exposed to essentially chance,” Wall said. “In the past, we’ve had pretty good fortune. This past month we’ve had pretty bad luck. We had a couple of dry spells where we didn’t very many blocks.”

The CEO stated that the company was reevaluating the relationship with Terra Pool and looking to have “consistent bitcoin rewards” from whatever pool it is using.

Argo said that last month’s results were also due to the high temperatures in Texas that led to an uptick in power demand and higher electricity prices. The company responded by curtailing mining operations and reducing energy usage, per the statement.

Finally, results were also related to downtime that happened while working out some kinks in its new flagship facility Helion, in Texas — which has come online this past month.

The company’s hash rate by the end of the month was 1.9 exahash per second — an increase of 300 petahash.

Wall said that the company sold some bitcoin in May, mainly to fund growth. 

Mining revenue was about $3.89 million in May, with a Bitcoin and Bitcoin Equivalent mining margin of 62%. The drop in margin was mainly a result of lower bitcoin price and fewer bitcoin mined, the company said.

As to Argo’s agreement with Intel — which recently announced a new ASIC chip called Blockscale — the company said that it had bought the 6,600 mining machines and had the right to place orders for up to 23,400 more.

The machines will be custom-built for Argo, in partnership with Canadian manufacturer ePIC, and designed specifically to run on immersion cooling.

Wall said they will be manufactured over the summer, with deliveries expected to start in September.

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Coinbase has created a directory of rescinded hires to connect them with other opportunities in the wake of revoking their offers. The hub already has over 300 submissions.

The Coinbase Talent Hub, which allows rescinded hires to add themselves for visibility to other recruiters, currently lists 323 candidates at publication time.

The directory includes the name, discipline, work authorization, visa status and contact information of individuals affected by the hiring changes. It also includes a job board with over 93 companies searching to fill 481 open roles. 

Coinbase announced that it would rescind some accepted job offers last week to weather challenging market conditions and the general industry downturn.

At that time, the exchange company said it was unclear how many offers would be rescinded or how long the hiring pause would last. The move followed an initiative to cut spending and slow hiring to grow revenue. 

Since then, many on Twitter have reported receiving a notice that their offer had been revoked.

Now, Coinbase Chief People Officer LJ Brock said in a Tuesday blog post that the firm is “committed to helping these exceptionally talented individuals in the next stage of their careers,” by making the directory as visible as possible to potential alternative employers.

“We aim to help create a career-defining moment for these folks — just not the one we had originally intended to,” said Brock in the post.

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Payments firm PayPal has rolled out new functionalities for users of its crypto app.

The changes, announced this morning, allow users to transfer crypto between PayPal and other wallets, and come in response to customer demand.

Users can now send supported tokens — bitcoin, ether, bitcoin cash and litecoin — to external addresses, including those linked to exchange accounts and hardware wallets. They can also now use PayPal to send crypto to other users of the app. The move is reminiscent of the way Revolut, the neobank, expanded its own crypto offering in May of last year. 

PayPal also said in its announcement that it has been granted a full BitLicense by the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS), converted from a conditional version of the license.  

“Adding the ability to transfer, send, and receive cryptocurrencies is another step in our journey to building a more inclusive and effective financial system,” said Jose Fernandez da Ponte, SVP and GM of blockchain, crypto and digital currencies at PayPal, in a statement. “We’re excited to connect PayPal’s customers to other wallets, exchanges and applications, and we will continue to roll out additional crypto features, products and services in the months ahead.”

In April, PayPal CEO Dan Schulman said on a quarterly earnings call that the company would “double down” on efforts to grow its digital wallet. Earlier this year, the firm said that it is exploring the development of a stablecoin backed by the US dollar, confirming earlier reporting by The Block.

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Circle’s payments and treasury platform now supports Polygon USD Coin (USDC) thus enabling seamless transactions for customers using the stablecoin.

According to a Tuesday announcement, Polygon USDC is the first “bridged” version of the stablecoin to be supported on its platform. Bridging in crypto involves transferring coins native to a blockchain to another chain or Layer 2 network via a bridge.

The announcement means that Circle clients can transact using USDC without having to bear the additional cost of bridging the stablecoin from Ethereum to Polygon.

Bridging USDC from Ethereum to Polygon is already possible via the latter’s existing bridge service.

This process, however, can take up to 10 minutes for the funds to arrive in the user’s Polygon wallet.

With Polygon USDC enabled on the Circle Account, business clients will be able to convert fiat deposits to the stablecoin within seconds, the announcement added.

Polygon is the largest Layer 2 network for Ethereum according to market capitalization.

USDC, a stablecoin issued by Circle, is the second-largest stable currency in the crypto space with a market capitalization of about $53.7 million according to CoinGecko.

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Ropsten, Ethereum’s oldest testnet, is about to undergo its transition to proof of stake — as one of the final tests ahead of the merge on the main Ethereum blockchain. While the exact timing for the Ropsten merge will fluctuate depending on a few variables, it’s expected to happen on Wednesday, according to an official blog post from Ethereum.  

The main objective of the testnet merge is to practice Ethereum’s mainnet merge later this year. The Ethereum core developers have carried out merge tests in the past, including a shadow fork on the main network and another merge on a testnet called Kiln.

This event will take Ropsten’s two chains — one proof of work, the other being the proof-of-stake beacon chain — and combine their code together. This is the same process that the Ethereum mainnet merge will go through later.

The Ropsten merge is one of the many critical steps to check whether client software used to run Ethereum nodes performs normally and without bugs during the event. Several client software teams participating in the coming Ropsten merge include Lighthouse, Lodestar, Prysm, Nimbus, Teku, Besu, Erigon, go-ethereum (geth) and Nethermind.

The coming merge will only happen after the proof-of-work version of Ropsten crosses a pre-decided metric called terminal total difficulty. This is set to a very high level of 50 quadrillion as to prevent any malicious entity from messing with the merge by artificially acquiring hashrate (which happened the first time this test was scheduled).

Since Ropsten is a testnet, its hashrate is low. Therefore, the merge node operators will have to manually configure their clients to override the Ropsten Terminal Total Difficulty (TTD), both for their execution layer and consensus player clients. This is scheduled to be completed by the end of today.

As soon as clients report and fix issues observed in the Ropsten merge, the developers will move to other merge tests planned on other testnets, including Goerli and Sepolia. 

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.