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US authorities seize $1 billion worth of Silk Road Bitcoin
As the Wall Street Journal notes, they only managed to seize 175,000 Bitcoins from Ulbricht back then, which is less than half of the 600,000 Bitcoins they believe the website generated in commissions.
PayPal will soon let US users buy, sell and shop with cryptocurrency
The company plans to bring digital currencies to Venmo next year too.
John McAfee arrested for tax evasion, charged by SEC for touting ICOs
John McAfee has been arrested in Spain, and faces charges for tax evasion, failure to file taxes and promoting cryptocurrency without admitting he had a financial interest in it.
After Math: 15-Minute COVID tests and 27,000 not-so-great scots
Congratulations on making it through another seven days as the world burns around us — in California’s case, quite literally — so let’s take a look at some of the top headlines from the week that was. While Walmart joined the bidding frenzy, TikTok’s recently acquired CEO, former Disney bigwig Kevin Mayer, announced that he is leaving the company after just three months. This new rapid COVID test from Abbot promises to diagnose people for the virus in just 15 minutes, rather than the 15 or so days current testing systems require.
It takes an estimated seven nuclear plants to power our bitcoin mining
Turns out that plugging a bunch of computers into our electrical grid that do nothing but draw current and hash through algorithms has had some negative environmental impacts. Recent studies suggest that Bitcoin-related power consumption has reached record highs this year — with more than seven gigawatts of power being pulled in the pursuit of the suspect digital currency. Today’s bitcoin mining operations can be as small as a single user running a dedicated desktop machine to 50,000 state-of-the-art rigs installed in a Kazakhstan warehouse with the goal of hashing through the Bitcoin consensus algorithm faster than your competition in order to maximize the number of block rewards you receive.
US officials seize cryptocurrency accounts tied to al-Qaeda and ISIS
Agents recouped about $2 million worth of virtual currency in total.
Recommended Reading: The world of Lego interface panel design
The week's noteworthy writing on technology and more.
Alleged Twitter hacker was previously caught stealing a fortune in Bitcoin
The teenage "mastermind" behind last month's Twitter hack reportedly stole hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of Bitcoin last year.
Steve Wozniak sues Google for not acting on YouTube Bitcoin scams
Steve Wozniak has filed a lawsuit against YouTube, saying the site has repeatedly ignored his requests to take down phony bitcoin giveaways that use his name.
After Math: Twitter's very bad breach
Let’s take a look at Twitter’s worst Wednesday in living memory, as well as some stellar game sale numbers amid the COVID-19 shutdown and a high-end video camera with more resolution than even James Cameron can handle. Sisyphus would have had an easier time getting over hump day than Twitter did last Wednesday.
Twitter confirms 'Bitcoin' hackers copied the data of several accounts
Twitter confirmed that during the security breach revealed on Wednesday when accounts for Joe Biden, Bill Gates and others were hijacked, attackers exported copies of the data from at least eight of their targeted accounts.
Twitter's Bitcoin hackers had almost limitless access
Imagine getting the keys to the Twitter kingdom -- access to all the account admin panels in the world. What would you do? If you're any kind of seasoned attacker, you wouldn't blow your own cover by tweeting from the world's biggest accounts -- for a bitcoin scam.
Twitter says attackers targeted 130 accounts in Wednesday's breach
Twitter released some more information about the crypto scammer attack that hijacked high-profile accounts on Wednesday. According to the company, attackers may have targeted as many as 130 accounts.
Everything we know about the Twitter Bitcoin hack
Early in the afternoon (Eastern time) on July 15th, a hacker -- or hackers -- gained control of a series of Twitter accounts owned by Bitcoin enthusiasts, executives and exchanges. Upon gaining control of those accounts, the hackers tweeted messages to those accounts' audiences claiming that they would be "giving 5000 BTC back to the community" and directing users to cryptoforhealth.com. People who visited the now-defunct website were told that if they sent Bitcoin to a specified address, they would receive double the amount in return, plus a bonus if contributions exceeded a certain threshold.
It won't be easy to hide the Bitcoin stolen through Twitter
Someone hacked Twitter to run a Bitcoin double-your-money scam. Here's how hard it'll be to clean that cash.
Telegram to pay $18.5 million and return $1.2 billion following SEC crypto charges
Telegram has been fined $18.5 million for not properly following securities regulations.
The Winklevoss twins are making a movie about the Winklevoss twins
The Winklevoss Twins -- who allegedly came up with the idea for Facebook -- will create a movie on how they made $1 billion from Bitcoin.
Opera now supports in-browser crypto purchases with Apple Pay
Opera has just made it a bit easier to purchase cryptocurrency. The browser -- which was the first to include a built-in crypto wallet -- is now letting users in the US and Scandinavian countries buy Bitcoin and Ethereum using a debit card or Apple Pay.
New York power plant mines Bitcoin using excess energy
A natural gas power plant can't always send excess energy into the grid, frequently leading to waste as the gas is flared or vented away. However, a plant in Dresden, New York thinks it has a solution: use that surplus to generate some digital cash. Greenidge Generation has revealed that it's using "behind-the-meter" energy at the facility to mine Bitcoin, with 7,000 mining systems producing up to 5.5BTC (about $45,000 as of this writing) per day.
Steven Seagal settles with SEC over undisclosed bitcoin promotions
It seems that martial artist and actor Steven Seagal isn't above the law. In 2017, he touted the initial coin offering (ICO) for Bitcoiin2Gen (B2G), a digital currency that sounded shady right from the start. Seagal didn't disclose the fact that he was paid by B2G to encourage his fans to buy into the bitcoin, which is required by law when a currency qualifies as a security. (B2G didn't even bother to register as a security, which resulted in the state of New Jersey issuing it a cease-and-desist order.) The actor has agreed to pay $157,000 in disgorgement plus a $157,000 penalty.