"Bitcoin mining is a process of competitively wasting electricity to guess a winning number every 10 minutes or so," writes author David Gerard in Foreign Policy magazine.

And he's got an equally negative take on Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele's experiment in making Bitcoin an official national currency alongside the U.S. dollar. "When a con artist's grift starts to fall apart, he knows to move onto the next one fast..." More than 91 percent of Salvadorans want dollars, not bitcoins. The official Chivo payment system was unreliable at launch in September — the kiss of death for a new system. Users joined for the $30 signup bonus, spent it or cashed it out, then didn't use Chivo again. The system completely failed to check new users' photos, relying solely on their national identity card number and date of birth; massive identity fraud to steal signup bonuses ensued. Bitcoin's ridiculously volatile price was appreciated only by aspiring day traders. Large street protests against compulsory Bitcoin implementation continued through October. The government stopped promoting Chivo on radio, TV, and social media. Chivo buses and vans were seen with plastic taped over the company's logo.

Bukele's financial problems remain. El Salvador can't print its own dollars, so Bukele urgently needs to fund his heavy deficit spending. The International Monetary Fund has not lent the country the $1 billion Bukele asked for, and has indicated its strong concerns about the Bitcoin scheme... At the Latin American Bitcoin and Blockchain Conference on Nov. 20, Bukele came onstage to an animation of beaming down from a flying saucer and outlined his plans for Bitcoin City: a new charter city to be built from scratch, centered on bitcoin mining — and powered by a volcano. Bitcoin City would be paid for with the issuance of $1 billion in "volcano bonds," starting in mid-2022.

The 10-year volcano bonds would pay 6.5 percent annual interest. $500 million of the bond revenue would be used to buy bitcoins... Holding $100,000 in volcano bonds for five years would qualify investors for Salvadoran citizenship... Holders of El Salvador's existing sovereign debt were unimpressed. The volcano bonds would be a strictly worse investment than buying the country's existing bonds and hedging them with bitcoins. The existing bonds dropped from 75 cents on the dollar to a record low of 63.4 cents after the volcano bond announcement...

[T]he volcano bonds are Bukele's way to get Bitcoin holders' money into the Salvadoran economy and count it as dollars. Bukele will brazen all of this out as long as he can, periodically throwing new plans on the table as a distraction. If he can maintain power, then the Bitcoin users will discover that he's taken their money. If he can't maintain power, then his successor will have no love for his failed Bitcoin schemes. Either scenario ends with a lot of disappointed Bitcoin users — because a national economy really can't run on a volatile and manipulated speculative commodity that's unusable as a currency.

Both the Bitcoin users and Bukele seem to think the other is a sucker who they'll take for everything they've got. It's possible that both will lose.
The article also points out that with El Salvador's high electricity rates, one of their power plant recently spent $4,672 in electricity to mine $269 in bitcoin.

Visa is launching new consulting and advisory services to help its clients navigate the world of cryptocurrencies. CNBC reports: The payments processor said Wednesday its crypto advisory practice, housed within its consulting and analytics division, will offer advice to financial institutions, retailers and other firms on everything from rolling out crypto features to exploring non-fungible tokens. The move marks Visa's latest attempt to push deeper into the crypto industry. From Oct. 1, 2020 to Sept. 30, 2021, the company processed $3.5 billion in digital currency transactions through its crypto-linked card schemes, according to Nikola Plecas, Visa's European crypto lead.

"Some of these leading exchanges have millions or, in some instances, tens of millions of users," Plecas told CNBC, adding that the company allows users to spend their crypto at over 80 million merchants. The company is also developing products geared toward stablecoins -- virtual tokens tied to the value of sovereign currencies, typically the dollar -- and central bank-issued digital currencies. Visa hopes its crypto consultancy can help further mainstream adoption of bitcoin and other digital currencies. Like rival Mastercard, the credit card giant sees cryptocurrencies as a key growth opportunity as it expands into areas beyond card payments.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Decrypt: Today, the publisher behind Assassin's Creed and Just Dance revealed Ubisoft Quartz, a platform that lets players earn and purchase in-game items that are tokenized as NFTs on the Tezos blockchain. Quartz will launch first in the PC version of Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Breakpoint, the latest online game in the long-running tactical shooter series. Quartz will launch in beta on December 9 in the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Brazil, and Australia. Ghost Recon Breakpoint players who have reached XP level 5 in the game can access the NFT drops. Ubisoft's release says that players must be at least 18 years old to create a Tezos wallet for use with the game.

Ubisoft is referring to its NFT drops as "Digits" and plans to release free NFTs for early adopters on December 9, 12, and 15, with further drops planned for 2022. An infographic shows items such as weapon skins and unique armor and apparel, along with a message that teases future initiatives: "This is just the beginning" [...] Much of Ubisoft's announcement today highlights the difference in environmental impact between the proof-of-stake Tezos blockchain and the energy-intensive Bitcoin. Tezos claims that a single transaction on its network uses "more than 2 million times less energy" than Bitcoin, the leading cryptocurrency. It also suggests that a single Tezos transaction uses about as much energy as a 30-second streaming video, whereas a Bitcoin transaction is estimated to measure up to the environmental impact of a full, uninterrupted year of streaming video footage.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: There's a long-running conspiracy theory among a small number of cryptocurrency enthusiasts that Bitcoin's anonymous inventor, Satoshi Nakamoto, was actually the CIA or another three-lettered agency. That fringe theory is having a fresh day in the sun after CIA Director William Burns said on Monday that the intelligence agency has "a number of different projects focused on cryptocurrency" on the go. Burns made his comments at the tail end of a talk at the Wall Street Journal's CEO Summit. After discussing everything from the possible Russian invasion of Ukraine to the challenges of space, someone in the audience asked if the agency is on top of cryptocurrencies, which are currently at the center of the ransomware epidemic that U.S. officials are attempting to get a handle on and stamp out.

Here's what Burns said: "'This is something I inherited. My predecessor had started this, but had set in motion a number of different projects focused on cryptocurrency and trying to look at second- and third-order consequences as well and helping with our colleagues in other parts of the U.S. government to provide solid intelligence on what we're seeing as well.'" Cryptocurrencies "could have enormous impact on everything from ransomware attacks, as you mentioned, because one of the ways of getting at ransomware attacks and deterring them is to be able to get at the financial networks that so many of those criminal networks use and that gets right at the issue of digital currencies as well," Burns said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: The Australian computer scientist who claims he invented Bitcoin was told by a U.S. jury to pay $100 million in damages over claims that he cheated a deceased friend over intellectual property for the cryptocurrency. Jurors in Miami federal court took about a week to reach Monday's verdict, following about three weeks of trial. The jury rejected most claims against Craig Wright and the outcome probably won't resolve the debate over whether Wright is the mythical creator of the peer-to-peer currency, Satoshi Nakamoto.

The brother of Dave Kleiman, a computer security expert who died in 2013, alleged that the late Florida man worked with Wright to create and mine Bitcoin in its early years. As a result, the plaintiffs claimed the estate was entitled to half of a cache of as many as 1.1 million Bitcoins worth some $70 billion, which are thought to be held by Satoshi. Some cryptocurrency investors see Wright as a fake, and years-long litigation in Florida has done little to quiet the skeptics. Wright has declared many times in court that he invented Bitcoin, as he has previously in news interviews. Had the jury's verdict gone against Wright, that would have forced to him to produce the Satoshi fortune. To some observers, that would have been the true test.

"Many years ago, Craig Wright told the Kleiman family that he and Dave Kleiman developed revolutionary Bitcoin based intellectual property," he said in a statement. "Despite those admissions, Wright refused to give the Kleimans their fair share of what Dave helped create." The jury found Wright liable for conversion -- the illegal taking of property -- and awarded damages to W&K Info Defense Research LLC, the entity through which Kleiman and Wright are supposed to have done work together. In closing arguments to the jury, Freedman said Wright schemed and connived to "steal from his dead best friend with forgery and lies." The estate claimed that in addition to the Bitcoin mining the friends did together, Kleiman helped Wright create the intellectual property behind early blockchain technology worth $252 billion. Wright contended that the claims by Dave Kleiman's brother, Ira, were fabricated. He testified that his friend didn't help him launch the cryptocurrency and argued there was no paper trail showing that they had a partnership.

When cybersleuths traced the millions of dollars American companies, hospitals and city governments have paid to online extortionists in ransom money, they made a telling discovery: At least some of it passed through one of the most prestigious business addresses in Moscow. From a report: The Biden administration has also zeroed in on the building, Federation Tower East, the tallest skyscraper in the Russian capital. The United States has targeted several companies in the tower as it seeks to penalize Russian ransomware gangs, which encrypt their victims' digital data and then demand payments to unscramble it. Those payments are typically made in cryptocurrencies, virtual currencies like Bitcoin, which the gangs then need to convert to standard currencies, like dollars, euros and rubles.

That this high-rise in Moscow's financial district has emerged as an apparent hub of such money laundering has convinced many security experts that the Russian authorities tolerate ransomware operators. The targets are almost exclusively outside Russia, they point out, and in at least one case documented in a U.S. sanctions announcement, the suspect was assisting a Russian espionage agency. "It says a lot," said Dmitry Smilyanets, a threat intelligence expert with the Massachusetts-based cybersecurity firm Recorded Future. "Russian law enforcement usually has an answer: 'There is no case open in Russian jurisdiction. There are no victims. How do you expect us to prosecute these honorable people?'" Recorded Future has counted about 50 cryptocurrency exchanges in Moscow City, a financial district in the capital, that in its assessment are engaged in illicit activity. Other exchanges in the district are not suspected of accepting cryptocurrencies linked to crime.

The Verge reports: On Wednesday night, someone drained funds from multiple cryptocurrency wallets connected to the decentralized finance platform BadgerDAO. According to the blockchain security and data analytics Peckshield, which is working with Badger to investigate the heist, the various tokens stolen in the attack are worth about $120 million.

While the investigation is still ongoing, members of the Badger team have told users that they believe the issue came from someone inserting a malicious script in the UI of their website. For any users who interacted with the site when the script was active, it would intercept Web3 transactions and insert a request to transfer the victim's tokens to the attacker's chosen address. Because of the transparent nature of the transactions, we can see what happened once the attackers pounced. PeckShield points out one transfer that yanked 896 Bitcoin into the attacker's coffers, worth more than $50 million.

According to the team, the malicious code appeared as early as November 10th, as the attackers ran it at seemingly random intervals to avoid detection....

One of the things Badger is investigating is how the attacker apparently accessed Cloudflare via an API key that should've been protected by two-factor authentication...

"Cryptocurrency was down by as much as 20% Saturday, hitting its lowest point in months," reports MarketWatch: Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market value, was down 18% at $46,571.84 at about 7 a.m. ET, according to data from CoinDesk. It temporarily dipped to $42,000 before bouncing back. Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency, was down close to 16%.

The declines were widespread across the crypto universe. Other widely traded cryptocurrencies including Solana, Dogecoin, and Shiba Inu coin lost more than a fifth of their value.
Dogecoin now appears to be down more than 33%. According to the article, a "market insights" official at cryptolender Genesis Global Trading speculated that a large sell order might have triggered cryptocurrency margin calls and liquidations.

Meanwhile, the president of El Salvador gloated on Twitter that they'd snapped up 150 bitcoins at an average price of $48,670 each, bragging that "El Salvador just bought the dip!" MarketWatch reports.

"He later wrote that the country had 'Missed the f***ing bottom by 7 minutes,' followed by a laughing emoji."

Criminals have been selling fake vaccine certificates online and may be able to fool an EU system designed to verify the certificates' validity, researchers warn. BankInfoSecurity reports: [A] report released last week, "COVID-19 Vaccination Certificates in the Dark Web," which has not yet been peer-reviewed, notes that some darknet markets continue to sell supposed vaccine certificates for use in multiple countries. Four researchers - Dimitrios Georgoulias, Jens Myrup Pedersen, Morten Falch, Emmanouil Vasilomanolakis - who are all part of the Cyber Security Group at Aalborg University in Copenhagen, Denmark, reviewed vaccination certificate offerings from 17 marketplaces and 10 vendor shops. The researchers found that at least one vendor appears to be selling digital certificates, registered in Italy, that are being read as valid by mobile COVID-19 certificate-checking apps developed by both France and Denmark.

The Aalborg University researchers, however, note that many darknet markets forbid any listing containing any items related to COVID-19. But others, they say, do allow both physical and digital vaccine certificates to be offered for sale, and in some cases also "yellow vaccination cards" or other vaccination record cards that can be used as proof of vaccination, albeit only inside the country in which they were supposedly issued. "The listings are heavily focused on European countries and the United States, but there are also listings from other continents and countries, such as Brazil, Canada, Mexico and Australia," as well as Russia, the researchers write. "The pricing differs greatly between the different listings, with the cheapest certificate starting at $39 and the highest price reaching almost $2,800, which included both a physical and a digital certificate, registered in the United Kingdom," they write. Most markets accept bitcoin and monero cryptocurrencies as payment, they add, while a smaller number also take such digital coins as ethereum, cardano, litecoin and zcash. [...] The Aalborg University researchers note that buying a fake digital certificate gives the seller ample opportunity to scam a buyer.

If these fake COVID-19 certificates can indeed pass for valid ones, then one unanswered question remains: How? Many of the sites claim to have access to the systems used to issue certificates, either by hacking into them remotely, or having insiders who work at a healthcare or other health organization, the researchers say. "In the specific case of a listing on the Russian marketplace Hydra, the description even mentioned the exact location and hospital that the system was accessed from," they say. Another possibility, however, is that criminals have somehow stolen one or more private keys for the European system, which were issued to participating health organizations. If so, it would be difficult to revoke these keys, the researchers say, since doing so would invalidate what might be a large quantity of legitimate certificates too.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Blockchain startup MonoX Finance said on Wednesday that a hacker stole $31 million by exploiting a bug in software the service uses to draft smart contracts. The company uses a decentralized finance protocol known as MonoX that lets users trade digital currency tokens without some of the requirements of traditional exchanges. "Project owners can list their tokens without the burden of capital requirements and focus on using funds for building the project instead of providing liquidity," MonoX company representatives say here. "It works by grouping deposited tokens into a virtual pair with vCASH, to offer a single token pool design."

An accounting error built into the company's software let an attacker inflate the price of the MONO token and to then use it to cash out all the other deposited tokens, MonoX Finance revealed in a post. The haul amounted to $31 million worth of tokens on the Ethereum or Polygon blockchains, both of which are supported by the MonoX protocol. Specifically, the hack used the same token as both the tokenIn and tokenOut, which are methods for exchanging the value of one token for another. MonoX updates prices after each swap by calculating new prices for both tokens. When the swap is completed, the price of tokenIn -- that is, the token sent by the user -- decreases and the price of tokenOut -- or the token received by the user -- increases.

By using the same token for both tokenIn and tokenOut, the hacker greatly inflated the price of the MONO token because the updating of the tokenOut overwrote the price update of the tokenIn. The hacker then exchanged the token for $31 million worth of tokens on the Ethereum and Polygon blockchains. There's no practical reason for exchanging a token for the same token, and therefore the software that conducts trades should never have allowed such transactions. Alas, it did, despite MonoX receiving three security audits this year. "These kinds of attacks are common in smart contracts because many developers do not put in the legwork to define security properties for their code" said Dan Guido, an expert in securing smart contracts and CEO of security consultancy Trail of Bits. "They had audits, but if the audits only state that a smart person looked at the code for a given period of time, then the results are of limited value. Smart contracts need testable evidence that they do what you intend, and only what you intend. That means defined security properties and techniques employed to evaluate them."

According to Blockchain researcher Igor Igamberdiev, the drained tokens included $18.2 million in Wrapped Ethereum, $10.5 in MATIC tokens, and $2 million worth of WBTC, along with small amounts of tokens for Wrapped Bitcoin, Chainlink, Unit Protocol, Aavegotchi, and Immutable X.

Goldman Sachs is among a handful of tier-one U.S. banks figuring out how to use bitcoin as collateral for cash loans to institutions, CoinDesk reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the plans. From the report: Banks such as Goldman will not touch cryptocurrency spot markets but lean towards synthetic crypto products such as futures. Emulating tri-party repo type arrangements (a way of borrowing funds by selling securities with an agreement to repurchase them, involving a third-party agent), banks are exploring ways to follow the same path of not touching bitcoin, like other synthetic products. It's an opportunity that lays the groundwork for more integrated crypto prime brokerage services in the future, according to the sources CoinDesk spoke with. It's also a continuation of Wall Street's relatively sudden embrace of a $2.7 trillion asset class -- albeit with somewhat niche products. "Goldman was working on getting approved for lending against collateral and tri-party repo," said one of the people. "And if they had a liquidation agent, then they were just doing secured lending without ever having bitcoin touch their balance sheet."

Square, the financial services and digital payments company founded by Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey in 2010, announced today that it is changing its name to Block. From a press release: Block will be the name for the company as a corporate entity. The Square name has become synonymous with the company's Seller business, which provides an integrated ecosystem of commerce solutions, business software, and banking services for sellers, and this move allows the Seller business to own the Square brand it was built for. The change to Block acknowledges the company's growth. Since its start in 2009, the company has added Cash App, TIDAL, and TBD54566975 as businesses, and the name change creates room for further growth. Block is an overarching ecosystem of many businesses united by their purpose of economic empowerment, and serves many people -- individuals, artists, fans, developers, and sellers.

The name change to Block distinguishes the corporate entity from its businesses, or building blocks. There will be no organizational changes, and Square, Cash App, TIDAL, and TBD54566975 will continue to maintain their respective brands. A foundational workforce, which includes teams such as Counsel, People, and Finance, will continue to help guide the ecosystem at the corporate level. As a result of the name change, Square Crypto, a separate initiative of the company dedicated to advancing Bitcoin, will change its name to Spiral. The name has many associated meanings for the company -- building blocks, neighborhood blocks and their local businesses, communities coming together at block parties full of music, a blockchain, a section of code, and obstacles to overcome. "We built the Square brand for our Seller business, which is where it belongs," said Jack Dorsey, cofounder and CEO of Block. "Block is a new name, but our purpose of economic empowerment remains the same. No matter how we grow or change, we will continue to build tools to help increase access to the economy."

Long-time Slashdot reader smooth wombat writes: Recently, Slashdot posted a story about a group trying to purchase one of the few copies of the U.S. Constitution in the public domain. The idea was to use pool donations by people via Ethereum to get the winning bid. Alas, Citadel CEO Ken Griffin outbid the group and took possession of the copy.

Now the group, ConsitutionDAO, is in the process of refunding the donations, the BBC reports, and the people getting their money back are finding it can be quite expensive...
The BBC writes: That is because the Ethereum network records its transactions on the blockchain, the same basic technology idea that powers other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. And like Bitcoin mining, it requires computational power to run. "Gas" is the fee paid to those who run the computer systems to facilitate transactions. And it changes price based on supply and demand. That means that at times, it can be much more expensive to make any kind of transaction, depending on how busy the Ethereum network is. And the network has recently seen high usage — and high gas prices.

On its official Discord — the chat app which allows anyone to create rooms and discussion channels for enthusiasts on almost any topic — the group said it had 17,437 donors with a median donation of $206.26. High gas fees mean that "small" donations could be severely hit by the transaction charge.

One user on the Discord said that in order to get $400 refunded, they would have to pay $168 in gas. Others complained of the fees being higher than the relatively small amount of their refund.

Illegal miners and mass relocations after a ban on crypto mining in China have overloaded energy grid. From a report: Matthew Heard, a software engineer from San Jose, is worried about his 33 bitcoin mining machines in Kazakhstan. In the past week, they kept getting shut off in an attempt by the national grid to limit the power being used by crypto miners. "It has been days since my machines have been online," he said. "During the last week, even if my machines do come on, they barely stay on." Kazakhstan has been struggling to cope with the huge popularity of crypto mining, driven this year partly by the steep rise in value of cryptocurrencies and partly by a mass migration of miners to its borders after China made mining illegal in May.

After three major power plants in the north of the country went into emergency shutdown last month the state grid operator, Kegoc, warned that it would start rationing power to the 50 crypto miners that are registered with the government, and said they would be "isconnected first" if the grid suffers problems. Heard set up in Kazakhstan in August and his machines are managed by Enegix, a company that rents out space to run crypto mining machines. He said his income has dropped from an average of $1,200 worth of bitcoin per day to $800 in October, and in the past week his machines have only been on for 55 per cent of the time. Machine owners are not notified when shutdowns are going to happen or when they will go back online, he said.

China is considering setting up a digital asset exchange in Beijing as officials push to promote usage of the digital yuan and crack down on cryptocurrencies. From a report: Beijing will explore the possibility of establishing a bourse for digital assets trading, as part of broader efforts to boost financial services in the capital, according to guidelines issued by the State Council. The cabinet called for faster trials of the digital yuan and urged big banks to set up e-CNY operation firms. The statement provided no further details on the planned digital asset exchange.

China has been in process of creating a virtual version of its legal tender since 2014 in an effort to cope with an increasingly digitized economy as well as to fend off potential threats from virtual currencies such as Bitcoin. It banned crypto-exchanges in 2017 and stepped up scrutiny this year to ban crypto mining and all related transactions, in tandem with campaigns to promote the digital yuan.

Faced with a sharp rise in energy consumption, Swedish authorities are calling on the European Union to ban "energy intensive" crypto mining. From a report: Erik Thedeen, director of the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority, and Bjorn Risinger, director of the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, said cryptocurrency's rising energy usage is threatening Sweden's ability to meet its obligations under the Paris Climate Agreement. Between April and August this year, the energy consumption of Bitcoin mining in the Nordic country rose "several hundred per cent," and now consumes the equivalent electricity of 200,000 households, Thedeen and Risinger said.

In an open letter, the directors of Sweden's top financial and environmental regulators called for an EU-wide ban on "proof of work" cryptocurrency mining, for Sweden to "halt the establishment" of new crypto mining operations and for companies that trade and invest in crypto assets to be prohibited from describing their business activities as environmentally sustainable.

Crypto.com's deal last week to replace Staples as the title sponsor of an iconic downtown Los Angeles sports center appears to have already paid for itself. From a report: The CRO token has surged more than 55% in the past seven days as of Monday and reached a record on Sunday, according to pricing from CoinGecko, and is now the 13th-biggest by market capitalization at about $18 billion. Its gains come as many other top cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ether and Binance Coin, fall back. Two people familiar with the naming agreement said last week that it was worth $700 million over 20 years. The deal is a continuation of a trend by Crypto.com and others to gain name recognition and customers through pacts in sports, music and more.

China's ban on cryptocurrency mining in May triggered an exodus of miners and a global race to relocate millions of the clunky, power intensive machines they use to solve complex puzzles and earn bitcoin. From a report: Fourteen of the biggest crypto mining companies in the world have moved more than 2m machines out of China in the months following the ban, according to data gathered by the Financial Times. The lion's share of machines was hastily moved to the US, Canada, Kazakhstan and Russia. Bit Digital, one of the largest US-listed crypto mining companies, hired an international logistics firm to extract its property from China and is still waiting for a batch of almost 1,000 machines to be released from the docks at the Port of New York.

"We started our fleet migration in March 2020, which in hindsight was a great move. When the ban was announced we had 20,000 miners in China," said Sam Tabar, chief strategy officer of Bit Digital. Still, the company said it had to abandon 372 machines in China, which had "reached the end of their useful lives." Eight out of the 10 largest public mega farms based in North America have expanded the number of machines in their fleets since China's ban, the FT's figures show.

When Americans gather around the Thanksgiving table this week, the blistering rally in technology, electric vehicles and crypto-related stocks is likely to be a part of their conversations. From a report: There's a reason it will dominate the small talk: The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 is now worth almost half as much as the benchmark S&P 500 -- the highest ever -- and the megacap tech stocks alone represent a third of the S&P 500. Nvidia and Roblox's sprint stood out in a year when the rest of the big tech names jogged to new highs, defying several calls to sell the sector around last year's thanksgiving due to soaring valuations.

Chipmaker Nvidia has soared 148% as booming chip demand and a foray into the metaverse made it the best performer on the Nasdaq 100. Applied Materials and Advanced Micro Devices were other winners, each rising about 80% and outperforming many of the megacap tech stocks. Tesla soared to a $1 trillion market value as the electric-carmaker's shares doubled in value, driven by a sustained pickup in sales, even as part shortages were crippling the broader auto industry. EV fever was even more evident with Rivian Automotive, which doubled in value in less than two weeks after going public. Lucid Group was the sector's other hot name. Roblox's tripling of value from its March listing to Facebook's name change to Meta Platforms showed the metaverse was the next big thing in tech. The rush to the space was evident with the Roundhill Ball Metaverse ETF, an exchange traded fund focused on the theme, surpassing $500 million in assets under management on Nov. 17, having doubled in just two weeks. From the digital world to digital money: Bitcoin briefly reclaiming $60,000 and a rally in smaller cryptocurrencies boosted a host of related stocks such as Marathon Digital Holdings, Riot Blockchain and MicroStrategy. Marathon Digital was among the top winners, with its stock jumping ten-fold.

"In a rock concert-like atmosphere, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele announced that his government will build an oceanside 'Bitcoin City' at the base of a volcano..." reports the Associated Press.

"A bond offering would happen in 2022 entirely in Bitcoin, Bukele said, wearing his signature backwards baseball cap. And 60 days after financing was ready, construction would begin." The city will be built near the Conchagua volcano to take advantage of geothermal energy to power both the city and Bitcoin mining — the energy-intensive solving of complex mathematical calculations day and night to verify currency transactions. The government is already running a pilot Bitcoin mining venture at another geothermal power plant beside the Tecapa volcano...

The government will provide land and infrastructure and work to attract investors. The only tax collected there will be the value-added tax, half of which will be used to pay the municipal bonds and the rest for municipal infrastructure and maintenance. Bukele said there would be no property, income or municipal taxes and the city would have zero carbon dioxide emissions.

"Invest here and earn all the money you want," Bukele told the cheering crowd in English at the closing of the Latin American Bitcoin and Blockchain Conference being held in El Salvador.
CNN adds some interesting details: Likening his plan to cities founded by Alexander the Great, Bukele said Bitcoin City would be circular, with an airport, residential and commercial areas, and feature a central plaza designed to look like a bitcoin symbol from the air. "If you want bitcoin to spread over the world, we should build some Alexandrias," said Bukele, a tech savvy 40-year-old who in September proclaimed himself "dictator" of El Salvador on Twitter in an apparent joke.

El Salvador plans to issue the initial bonds in 2022, Bukele said, suggesting it would be in 60 days time. Samson Mow, chief strategy officer of blockchain technology provider Blockstream, told the gathering the first 10-year issue, known as the "volcano bond", would be worth $1 billion, backed by bitcoin and carrying a coupon of 6.5% [the annual interest paid on a bond]. Half of the sum would go to buying bitcoin on the market, he said. Other bonds would follow. After a five year lock-up, El Salvador would start selling some of the bitcoin used to fund the bond to give investors an "additional coupon", Mow said, positing that the value of the cryptocurrency would continue to rise robustly.

"This is going to make El Salvador the financial center of the world," he said...

Once 10 such bonds were issued, $5 billion in bitcoin would be taken off the market for several years, Mow said. "And if you get 10 more countries to do these bonds, that's half of bitcoin's market cap right there." The "game theory" on the bonds gave first issuer El Salvador an advantage, Mow argued, saying: "If bitcoin at the five-year mark reaches $1 million, which I think it will, they will sell bitcoin in two quarters and recoup that $500 million."