New submitter NoMoreDupes shares a report from CoinDesk: The crypto market was in a sea of red on Friday as bitcoin, the world's largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, tumbled more than 10% over the past 24 hours. It appears that global investors have entered the year with a reduced appetite for risk, and so the correlations between speculative assets such as cryptocurrencies and equities have increased, which results in widespread losses. Bitcoin is down roughly 40% from its all-time high of almost $69,000, while the S&P 500 is down about 7% from its peak, compared with a 10% drawdown in the Nasdaq 100 Index.

Alternative cryptocurrencies (altcoins) led the way lower on Friday given their higher risk profile relative to bitcoin. Ether, the world's second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, was down about 13% over the past 24 hours, compared with a 14% drop in AVAX and a 16% drop in FTM over the same period. Despite the losses, some analysts still foresee a short-term bounce. "We expect BTC to find a bid around the $35K mark, close to 50% from the top. In the short term, we can bounce to challenge the $45K-$50K zone, but the overall outlook remains bearish as liquidity remains tight," Pankaj Balani, CEO of Delta Exchange, a crypto derivatives trading platform, wrote in an email to CoinDesk.

Following through on a plan he announced before he took office, New York City Mayor Eric Adams said Thursday that his first paycheck, which arrives on Friday, will be converted from US dollars into cryptocurrency. The transaction will take place on Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the US, and will convert Adams' pay into Bitcoin and Ethereum. From a report: "New York is the center of the world, and we want it to be the center of cryptocurrency and other financial innovations," Adams said in a statement. "Being on the forefront of such innovation will help us create jobs, improve our economy, and continue to be a magnet for talent from all over the globe."

Intel, one of the world's largest chip makers, is likely to unveil a specialized crypto-mining chip at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in February, according to the conference's agenda (PDF). CoinDesk reports: One of Intel's "highlighted chip releases" at the conference is entitled "Bonanza Mine: An Ultra-Low-Voltage Energy-Efficient Bitcoin Mining ASIC." The session is scheduled for Feb. 23. This brings the company into direct competition with the likes of Bitmain and MicroBT in the market for bitcoin mining ASICs, or application-specific integrated circuits, for the first time. [...] Unlike its competitor Nvidia, Intel has said it doesn't plan to add ether mining limits on its graphics cards.

Opera has launched its Web3 "Crypto Browser" into beta with features like a built-in crypto wallet, easy access to cryptocurrency/NFT exchanges, support for decentralized apps (dApps) and more. From a report: The aim is to "simplify the Web3 user experience that is often bewildering for mainstream users," Opera EVP Jorgen Arnensen said in statement. A key feature is the built-in non-custodial wallet that will support blockchains including Ethereum, Bitcoin, Celo and Nervos from the get-go. It also announced partnerships with Polygon and others. The idea is to let you access your crypto without the need for any extensions, with the option of using third-party wallets as well. You can purchase cryptocurrencies via a fiat to crypto on-ramp, swap crypto directly in-wallet, send and receive it and check your wallet balance. It even has a secure clipboard that ensures other apps can't data when you copy/paste. The other primary function is support for Web3, aka blockchain-based decentralized internet, aka the buzzy new thing among crypto enthusiasts (and skeptics). On top of providing extra security via blockchain encryption, it allows users to access things like GameFi "where you can earn as you play your way through all sorts of metaverses," Opera notes. It also offers a "Crypto Corner" with the latest blockchain news that also "lets you grow your Web3 skills," according to Opera.

Intel, one of the world's largest chipmakers, is likely to unveil a specialized crypto-mining chip at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in February, according to the conference's agenda. From a report: One of Intel's "Highlighted Chip Releases" at the conference is entitled "Bonanza Mine: An Ultra-Low-Voltage Energy-Efficient Bitcoin Mining ASIC." The session is scheduled for Feb. 23. This brings the company into direct competition with the likes of Bitmain and MicroBT in the market for bitcoin mining ASICs, or application-specific integrated circuits, for the first time.

New submitter Ol Olsoc writes: "When the Mozilla Foundation took to Twitter on New Year's Eve to announce it was going to begin accepting cryptocurrency donations, it likely didn't think about potential blowback from one of its founders, but that's what it got," reports TechRepublic. "In response, Mozilla has said it's pausing cryptocurrency donations." Wikipedia is now discussing whether it should stop accepting Cryptocurrency as well.

Mozilla co-founder Jamie Zawinski has some strong feelings about the matter, [telling TechRepublic]: "Anyone involved in cryptocurrencies in any way is either a grifter or a mark. It is 100% a con. There is no legitimacy." I cannot disagree with him. Zawinksi tweeted scathing criticism of a Mozilla tweet late last month promoting cryptocurrency donations. They first started accepting bitcoin for donations in 2014.

Here's where Wikipedia comes in: "Shortly after Zawinski's tweet and Mozilla's change of heart, Wikipedia editor GorillaWarfare opened a request for comment on Wikimedia's meta-wiki calling for the organization to stop accepting cryptocurrency donations, citing Zawinski's tweet and Mozilla's reaction," reports TechRepublic. "Zawinski has read the Wikipedia talk page about the discussion and says he hopes it indicates the beginning of a trend."

He added: "I'm actually a bit surprised (and pleased) to see that the conversation seemed to be going in an anti-cryptocurrency direction. Good for them."

Further reading: Wikipedia Faces Pressure to Stop Accepting Crypto Donations on Environmental Grounds (CoinDesk)

The Observer reports: For bitcoin enthusiasts in Kosovo with a breezy attitude to risk, it has been a good week to strike a deal on computer equipment that can create, or "mine", the cryptocurrency. From Facebook to Telegram, new posts in the region's online crypto groups became dominated by dismayed Kosovans attempting to sell off their mining equipment — often at knockdown prices. "There's a lot of panic and they're selling it or trying to move it to neighbouring countries," said cryptoKapo, a crypto investor and administrator of some of the region's largest online crypto communities.

The frenetic social media action follows an end-of-year announcement by Kosovo's government of an immediate, albeit temporary, ban on all crypto mining activity as part of emergency measures to ease a crippling energy crisis....

Kosovo has the cheapest energy prices in Europe due in part to more than 90% of the domestic energy production coming from burning the country's rich reserves of lignite, a low-grade coal, and fuel bills being subsidised by the government. The largest-scale crypto mining is thought to be taking place in the north of the country, where the Serb-majority population refuse to recognise Kosovo as an independent state and have consequently not paid for electricity for more than two decades.... Kosovans spent the final days of 2021 in darkness as domestic and international factors combined to cause energy shortages and rolling blackouts across the country....

Since the Kosovan authorities made the decision, police and customs officers have begun conducting regular raids, seizing hundreds of pieces of hardware. While a 60-day state of energy emergency remains in place, the prospect of upcoming regulation and energy bill price rises leaves the future anything but certain. "There are a lot of people who have invested in crypto mining equipment and it's not a small investment," cryptoKapo said. "People have even taken out loans to invest and the impact now is very bad on their lives."

Former Twitter CEO and Block founder Jack Dorsey has announced plans to create a "Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund" with Chaincode Labs co-founder Alex Morcos and Martin White, who appears to be an academic at the University of Sussex. CoinTelegraph reports: The announcement was sent on a mailing list for Bitcoin developers, bitcoin-dev, at 13:45 UTC on Wednesday from an email address appearing to belong to Dorsey. The announcement stated the fund will help provide a legal defense for Bitcoin developers, who are "currently the subject of multi-front litigation." "Litigation and continued threats are having their intended effect; individual defendants have chosen to capitulate in the absence of legal support," the email stated, referencing open-source developers who are often independent and, therefore, susceptible to legal pressure.

The announcement went on to describe the Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund as a "nonprofit entity that aims to minimize legal headaches that discourage software developers from actively developing Bitcoin and related projects." "The main purpose of this Fund is to defend developers from lawsuits regarding their activities in the Bitcoin ecosystem, including finding and retaining defense counsel, developing litigation strategy, and paying legal bills," it stated. Initially, the fund will include volunteers and part-time lawyers for developers to "take advantage of if they so wish," although, the email also states that "the board of the Fund will be responsible for determining which lawsuits and defendants it will help defend." According to the email, the fund's first project will be to take over the existing defense of Ramona Ang's "Tulip Trading Lawsuit" against developers for alleged misconduct over access to a Bitcoin (BTC) fortune.

China's state-backed Blockchain Services Network (BSN) plans to roll out infrastructure at the end of this month to support the deployment of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), a major step to creating a Chinese NFT industry that is not linked to cryptocurrencies. From a report: Although Beijing has banned cryptocurrencies, He Yifan, chief executive of Red Date Technology, which provides technical support to BSN, told the South China Morning Post that NFTs "have no legal issue in China" as long as they distance themselves from cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. The infrastructure, named the BSN-Distributed Digital Certificate (BSN-DDC), to differentiate it from crypto-transacted NFTs, will offer application programming interfaces for businesses or individuals so they can build their own user portals or apps to manage NFTs. Only Chinese yuan is allowed for purchases and service fees. "NFTs in China will see annual output in the billions in the future," He said in an interview.

Wikimedia, the non-profit foundation that runs Wikipedia, is facing internal opposition to its policy of accepting cryptocurrency as a form of donation, primarily for environmental reasons. From a report: A proposal to the foundation from contributor Molly White, who goes by the user name GorillaWarfare, argues that accepting donations in cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, bitcoin cash and ether signals endorsement of digital coins, which are "inherently predatory" as investments and don't align with the foundation's commitment to environmental sustainability. The contributor argues that Wikipedia risks damaging its reputation by accepting crypto donations, citing the recent decision by non-profit peer, Mozilla, to pause accepting donations in crypto. Wikimedia currently accepts bitcoin, bitcoin cash, and ether via BitPay. White singled out bitcoin and ether's need for enormous amounts of energy, while noting that there are other "eco-friendlier" cryptocurrencies, although they are less widely-used.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: A defunct hydro plant in Costa Rica is getting a new lease on life by powering crypto mining, and bringing clean energy to a rapidly expanding business. More than 650 machines from 150 customers operate non-stop from this plant next to the Poas River, just outside of capital city San Jose. Costa Rica generates nearly all its energy from green sources, where the state has a monopoly on energy distribution. But the government stopped buying electricity due to surplus power in the country, forcing the plant to reinvent itself.

Eduardo Kooper is the owner of Data Center CR and the plant. "We had a lot of power, but we did nothing with it. We had to pause activity for nine months. We looked for many alternatives -- from making fried food, frozen food -- everything that used a lot of energy. Just a year ago, someone told me about Bitcoin, blockchain, and digital mining." Kooper, skeptical at first, learned that the crypto mining business requires a lot of energy, much of which comes from fossil fuels. The company invested $500,000 to venture into hosting digital mining computers. "Our market is the international miner who is looking for better conditions," said Kooper. "That miner is looking for clean energy, cheap energy that is economically viable, and looking for internet connection, where he finds it is where that miner is going to go."

The value of bitcoin fell under the $40,000 mark in early morning trading today. From a report: The popular cryptocurrency sold off sharply this morning, while rival tokens like ether also lost value. Currently worth $39,831 per coin, bitcoin is off 4.3% and ether 5.1%, according to Coinbase data. While it is always risky to cover price changes in the crypto world, the fall in the value of bitcoin has crossed the threshold from notable to material. Yahoo Finance indicates that bitcoin's recent all-time high saw the cryptocurrency trade as high as $68,789.62 per coin. Today's price puts bitcoin's current drawdown at just over 42%. That's twice the swing required for bitcoin to have entered a technical bear market, and four times what it would need to meet the requirements of a correction.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The Abu Dhabi Grand Prix draws princes, movie stars and world-famous athletes every year to party on Yas Island, the entertainment hub about 30 minutes from the center of downtown. Mingling among them last month was a figure charting an unlikely ascent: a former McDonald's burger-flipper and software developer who, practically overnight, has vaulted into the ranks of the world's wealthiest people -- cryptocurrency pioneer Changpeng Zhao. CZ, as he's known to cryptophiles, is quickly becoming a fixture in the United Arab Emirates, meeting with royalty in Abu Dhabi who are eager to bring his Binance exchange to the country, according to people with knowledge of the situation. He has scooped up an apartment in Dubai and hosted dinners near the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building, and on the city's Palm Jumeirah island -- making him the most prominent personality in the nation's booming crypto scene.

In a region known for dizzying wealth, Zhao, 44, fits right in: His net worth is $96 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. It's the first time Bloomberg has estimated his fortune, which exceeds Asia's richest person, Mukesh Ambani, and rivals tech titans including Mark Zuckerberg and Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Zhao's fortune could be significantly larger, as the wealth estimate doesn't take into account his personal crypto holdings, which include Bitcoin and his firm's own token. Binance Coin, now called BNB, surged roughly 1,300% last year. Binance's success underscores the vast riches being created in the unshackled cryptoverse, even with recent declines, but controversy has swirled around the firm. Banished from China -- where it was founded -- the company faces regulatory probes globally. The U.S. Department of Justice and Internal Revenue Service are investigating whether one entity Zhao controls, Binance Holdings, is a conduit for money laundering and tax evasion, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

Mike Melanson's "This Week in Programming" column looks at what happened after Mozilla founder Jamie "jwz" Zawinski slammed the group for accepting donations in cryptocurrency (which Zawinski called partnering "with planet-incinerating Ponzi grifters.") Peter Linss, one of the creators of the Gecko browser engine on which Mozilla Firefox is based, also stepped in to back up Zawinski, saying that he was 100% with him and that Mozilla was "meant to be better than this."

When Mozilla first announced it would accept Bitcoin donations in 2014, it cited Khan Academy, Electronic Frontier Foundation, United Way, Greenpeace, and Wikimedia Foundation among its moral and upstanding cryptocurrency-accepting compatriots. Of that list, just Greenpeace has since stopped accepting cryptocurrency donations, telling the Financial Times earlier this year that "as the amount of energy needed to run bitcoin became clearer, this policy [of accepting cryptocurrency donations] became no longer tenable."
Thursday the Mozilla Foundation announced it was pausing cryptocurrency donations to review whether the idea "fits with our climate goals" — a fact the column also addresses: Mike Shaver, another Mozilla project founder, also tweeted his support, writing that he was "glad to see this reflection happening."

In a follow-up blog post to the ordeal, Zawinski doubled down on his condemnation of Mozilla's cryptocurrency acceptance, writing that "cryptocurrencies are not only an apocalyptic ecological disaster, and a greater-fool pyramid scheme, but are also incredibly toxic to the open web, another ideal that Mozilla used to support" — an idea also espoused in many of the comments on the initial Twitter thread.

Meanwhile, although Mozilla says that it is pausing the ability to donate cryptocurrencies during its review, the donations page still lists BitPay among its payment methods.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: For as long as cryptocurrencies have existed, libertarians have dreamed of using them to create communities, seasteads, and cities free from the prying eyes of the state and its tax collectors. We've seen crypto-inspired attempts to claim disputed lands as tax havens, use UFOs and fireworks to christen a new tax-free Bitcoin town, build cities with DAOs, and establish communities inside of U.S. colonies to avoid taxes. But there's now a wave of attempts to buy entire islands and build the next crypto "paradise."

The first one to look at is "Cryptoland," founded by Max Oliver and Helena Lopez, who reportedly have a checkered history with the Spanish YouTuber community mired in allegations of doxxing and the resulting boycott of an awards show linked to the pair. Cryptoland burrowed into the public's mind when its unlisted 18-minute animated sales pitch was found on YouTube in December. It features three sections littered with bombastic rhetoric about what is to come, a manifesto of sorts, a memorial to Bitconnect -- arguably the most infamous scam in Bitcoin history -- and promises to "make crypto enrich a harmonious co-existence with the world energy of its surroundings." Since going viral, Cryptoland has taken down its unlisted sales pitch but a shorter public version is still available to behold. [...]

Cryptoland isn't alone. Satoshi Island is another crypto utopia supposedly in the works, featuring a 32 million square foot island (approx 1.1 square miles) in Vanuatu -- an archipelago of islands between Australia and Fiji. It's slightly larger than Cryptoland, but has substantially less information available on it. Its website states that the island is owned by Satoshi Island Limited, but there's no information on who runs the company or how beyond a Team section listing some individuals involved. It also claims to have "a green light from the Vanuatu Ministry Of Finance and all approvals in place." Motherboard reached out to various Vanuatu offices to confirm this, but has not heard back. Satoshi Island told Motherboard they have owned the island for some years, but when asked about the company's ownership said "Some of the public team and advisors have legal control of the company" and pointed at the Team section. "It's important to note that, for both islands, almost none of this exists yet," adds Motherboard's Edward Ongweso Jr. "It's not clear if any of it will ever exist, as the details offered are not only relatively scant and nebulous, but it's not clear if it's possible even if tens of millions are not raised through NFTs and other means. And, given that Cryptoland and Satoshi Island are just two examples of a growing trend, it's starting to look like bespoke crypto-utopias are another bubble within a bubble."

Cryptocurrency enthusiasts who piled into meme coins such as Dogecoin and Shiba Inu amid the long-time industry rallying call of "to the moon" are finding this year's journey back to earth pretty painful. From a report: Dogecoin, Shiba Inu and other tokens associated more with online jokes rather than actual software products have been hit harder than sector originals Bitcoin or Ethereum during the recent retreat from the record price levels reached late last year. Doge is off nearly 80% from its all-time high of 74 cents in May, and Shiba has declined more than 65% since hitting its peak of fractions of a penny in late October, according to data compiled by Messari.

Trading volumes have fallen off, now measured in millions instead of billions. And the jokes that once swayed a legion of mostly retail day traders to buy up coins on a whim come with a hint of sadness. The frenzy started with Doge. A digital token created in 2013 by a pair of software engineers took off as interest in crypto trading spiked and a new crop of retail traders took to social media platforms, using jokes, sarcasm and trolling to gin up their popularity. Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Elon Musk's embrace of the token helped to send it soaring. Doge's popularity inspired the creation of new tokens based on the breed of dog, including Shiba Inu, Baby Shiba Inu and Floki, which is named after Musk's pet.

The Mozilla Foundation is pausing accepting donations in cryptocurrency following a backlash from scores of people including a founder of the Mozilla Project. From a report: The foundation, which oversees the development of Firefox browser, on Thursday acknowledged conversations around the environment impact that cryptocurrency potentially pose and said it is reviewing whether its current policy on crypto donations "fits with our climate goals."

The foundation started to face backlash following a tweet late last year that invited people to donate via using a variety of crypto tokens including Bitcoin. In response to it, Jamie Zawinski expressed dismay at the foundation's move. "Everyone involved in the project should be witheringly ashamed of this decision to partner with planet-incinerating Ponzi grifters," he said, adding an expletive.

A beta "payments" feature now lets users of the popular encrypted messaging app send MobileCoin around the globe. From a report: In the spring of 2021, the encrypted communications app Signal announced that it would add a payments feature in beta for its users in the UK, testing out an integration with a relatively new, privacy-focused cryptocurrency called MobileCoin. But a much broader phase of that experiment has quietly been underway since mid-November. That's when Signal made the same feature accessible to all of its users without fanfare, offering the ability to send digital payments far more private than a credit card transaction -- or a Bitcoin transfer -- to many millions of phones. MobileCoin founder Josh Goldbard confirmed the timing of the rollout, and says that it spurred massive adoption of the cryptocurrency, which now sees thousands of daily transactions versus just dozens before the global beta release. "There are over a hundred million devices on planet Earth right now that have the ability to turn on MobileCoin and send an end-to-end encrypted payment in five seconds or less," Goldbard says, referencing reports of Signal's total download numbers.

In fact, getting started using Signal's payments feature still isn't quite that simple. Anyone outside of sanctioned companies like North Korea and Syria can access their MobileCoin wallet within a message by tapping the "+" icon and then "payment." But the challenge for many will be loading that wallet in the first place; the cryptocurrency is listed for sale on only a few smaller cryptocurrency exchanges -- such as BitFinex and FTX -- none of which yet offer it to US consumers. Signal itself didn't respond to WIRED's requests for comment on the global rollout of the payments feature. But last April, Signal creator Moxie Marlinspike explained to WIRED that he wanted to add payments to the encrypted video-calling and texting app to match features from rivals like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger -- while also bringing Signal's lauded privacy protections to monetary transactions. "I would like to get to a world where not only can you feel [a sense of privacy] when you talk to your therapist over Signal, but also when you pay your therapist for the session over Signal," Marlinspike said at the time.

The global computing power of the bitcoin network has dropped sharply as the shutdown this week of Kazakhstan's internet during a deadly uprising hit the country's fast-growing cryptocurrency mining industry. From a report: Kazakhstan became last year the world's second-largest centre for bitcoin mining after the United States, according to the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, after China clamped down on crypto mining activity. Russia sent paratroopers into Kazakhstan on Thursday to help put down the countrywide uprising after violence spread across the tightly controlled former Soviet state. Police said they had killed dozens of rioters in the main city, Almaty, while state television said 13 members of the security forces had died. The internet was on Wednesday shut down across the country in what monitoring site Netblocks called "a nation-scale internet blackout." The move would have probably prevented Kazakhstan-based miners from accessing the bitcoin network.

CoinDesk: Garry Kasparov knows math. He knows logic, strategy and decision-making. Widely regarded as the greatest chess player in the history of mankind, the Russian grandmaster -- ranked No. 1 from 1984 to 2005 -- sees the world with a certain clarity. So it will delight many in the blockchain industry to learn that Kasparov, easily one of the smartest people alive, is now a champion of cryptocurrency. And it's partly because of math. Kasparov has spent his "retirement" opposing Russian President Vladimir Putin (a defiance that once got him tossed in jail), fighting for humanitarian causes and serving as chairman of the Human Rights Foundation (a nonprofit that strongly supports bitcoin as a freedom-giving tool). Now he views crypto as a way to check government power. Bitcoin offers protection against rampant government spending, says Kasparov, "because you're protected by math" -- by the logic of the code itself. Kasparov also sees merit in non-fungible tokens. [...]

CoinDesk: How'd you get into the crypto space?
Kasparov: If you followed my career and read about my early interest in computers and technology, you should not be surprised that I was very excited when I recognized the value of cryptocurrencies and NFTs. This goes all the way back to the '80s; I always tried to be at the cutting edge. It started with chess. But I also saw an opportunity to use computers and new tools to advance individual freedoms. It's my belief that technology should help people fight back against the power of the state.

How do cryptocurrencies fit into that?

Cryptocurrencies become an inseparable part of or progress, because the whole world is moving digital. And if the economy becomes more digital, so does the money. Another philosophical reason is that ... governments [have] unlimited opportunities to print money. And printing money is the most exquisite form of borrowing from us and from future generations. And I believe that cryptocurrencies -- with bitcoin as a standard -- offer a protection against this onslaught of the government, because you're protected by math. You're protected by the limited number of any code behind the respective currency. Cryptocurrencies, and all the products related to cryptocurrencies, are absolutely vital for the future development of our world.