Chinese authorities are ramping up a crackdown on crypto mining, calling it an "extremely harmful" practice that threatens to jeopardize the country's efforts to reduce carbon emissions. From a report: The National Development and Reform Commission spokesperson Meng Wei blasted bitcoin mining during a press conference Tuesday in Beijing. She said that activity "consumes lots of energy" and "produces lots of carbon emissions." Meng said that the NDRC -- the country's top economic planner -- will launch a "full-scale" clampdown on cryptocurrency mining by focusing on commercial mining and the role of state-owned businesses in the industry. She also said that crypto production and trade produces "prominent risks," and blasted the industry as "blind and disorderly."

As part of its new push, the NDRC said it would raise electricity prices for any institution found to be abusing its access to subsidized power to participate in crypto mining. Authorities have traditionally offered schools, community centers, or other public welfare institutions lower prices for electricity. The price of bitcoin fell after the remarks, diving more than 7% to $60,889, its lowest value in more than a week. While the reason for the plunge was not immediately clear, it coincided with the NDRC press conference. Ether, the second largest digital token after bitcoin, slid more than 8% on Tuesday to $4,297, the worst level in two weeks.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Nigerian central bank's digital currency has lured about half a million users three weeks after it was introduced in a move to entice people away from crypto currencies. Adoption rate for the Central Bank of Nigeria digital currency called eNaira "has been excellent," according to Osita Nwanisobi, spokesman for the Abuja-based lender. More than 488,000 people have downloaded the consumer wallet -- that's needed to transact eNaira -- while about 78,000 merchants from more than 160 countries have enrolled, Nwanisobi said by phone.

The central bank is opposed to crypto currencies but that hasn't stopped Nigerians from using virtual currencies as a hedge against the nation's capital controls and to remit money. Demand is so large that individuals in the West African nation hold the world's highest proportion of such assets per capita, according to a survey by Statista. About 62 million naira ($150,000) of the virtual currency have been traded since it was introduced, according to Nwanisobi. The nation has traded 60,215 Bitcoins since 2017 to the end of last year -- valued at $3.9 billion as of Monday -- the largest volume outside the U.S., according to Paxful, a peer-to-peer Bitcoin marketplace. It has also the largest proportion of retail users conducting transactions under $10,000, according to Chainalysis.

The world's fastest-growing major financial exchange has no head office or formal address, lacks licenses in countries where it operates and has a chief executive who until recently wouldn't answer questions about his location. From a report: Started just four years ago, Binance is the exchange giant that towers over the digital currency world, a crypto equivalent of the London, New York and Hong Kong stock exchanges combined. After a burst of growth, Binance processes more trades for cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and ether each day, $76 billion worth, than its four largest competitors put together, according to data provider CryptoCompare.

The years of largely unfettered, unregulated growth for Binance in particular and the crypto industry broadly, however, are coming to an end. Financial regulators increasingly worry that digital assets, until recently dismissed by some as a fad, have grown so quickly they now are systemically important. In an October speech, Bank of England official Jon Cunliffe brought up the 2008 subprime-mortgage-fueled crisis and said of crypto, "When something in the financial system is growing very fast, and growing in largely unregulated space, financial stability authorities have to sit up and take notice." Binance is drawing the most regulatory attention. Authorities in a dozen countries have cautioned users in recent months the exchange is unregistered or not authorized to provide various services.

Bitcoin's long-awaited Taproot update will occur in the coming days, with most sources suggesting Saturday as its activation date. Crypto Briefing reports: Taproot is an upgrade that will improve Bitcoin's capacity for scripting, bringing it in line with competing blockchains like Ethereum that already have programmable smart contracts. Taproot will also introduce MAST (Merkelized Abstract Syntax Tree), which will make it more difficult to trace and analyze Bitcoin transactions. It does so by making complex transactions -- such as multi-signature transactions and Lightning Network transactions -- indistinguishable from basic transactions. The upgrade will also include Schnorr signatures, which will create smaller transaction sizes through data aggregation.

Together, these features mean that developers will be able to create more extensive Bitcoin applications, while end-users will be able to benefit from cheaper, more private transactions. Taproot is Bitcoin's most significant upgrade since 2017, when the cryptocurrency introduced a controversial new feature called SegWit. The Taproot upgrade is much less likely to cause division.

Though Taproot already gained support from miners earlier this week, 800 blocks will need to be mined under those conditions before the feature is actually activated. NiceHash's countdown suggests that the upgrade will occur at 1:00 UTC on Saturday, Nov. 14. Another countdown website, Taproot.watch concurs with that estimate, suggesting that there are just 339 blocks left to mine at the time of writing.

Miami Mayor Francis Suarez has again raised the stakes as to which city in the U.S. will become the country's crypto hub. From a report: Suarez announced today on CoinDesk TV that the city would be staking (i.e. locking up cryptocurrencies to earn yield) a large portion of its native cryptocurrency, MiamiCoin, to earn yield in Bitcoin. What's more, he said Miami will be "the first city in America to give a Bitcoin yield as a dividend directly to its residents." Previously, only holders of MiamiCoin could earn any kind of crypto return, be it STX, the native cryptocurrency for the Stacks protocol on which MiamiCoin is built, or Bitcoin. Now, according to today's announcement, residents will be given a Bitcoin wallet and receive free BTC regardless of whether they hold MiamiCoin or not.

La Haus, a Latin American property tech startup backed by Bezos Expeditions, said it will accept Bitcoin for real estate transactions, adding to the region's growing adoption of the cryptocurrency as a means of payment. From a report: The company, which allows users to purchase homes through an app, will allow buyers to pay with the digital currency, starting with a housing development in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. It will eventually open the rest of its inventory of more than 80,000 properties to Bitcoin, according to the company. "We think that Bitcoin will be the reserve currency of the future," said Rodrigo Sanchez-Rios, president and co-founder of La Haus, in an interview. "At our core, we're a tech company. It's natural for us to be pioneers with this technology." The company is partnering with Los Angeles-based payment processor OpenNode to allow for transactions both on-chain and over the Lightning Network, which was designed to make purchases quicker and easier. La Haus will act as an intermediary, paying the sellers in fiat. The company has not decided how much Bitcoin it will keep on its balance sheets, he said.

New York City mayor-elect Eric Adams thinks that schools should add cryptocurrency and blockchain technology to the curriculum. CNBC reports: In an interview with CNN's "State of the Union," Eric Adams said that bitcoin is the "new way of paying for goods and services throughout the entire globe" and that schools "must" teach the technology behind it, as well as "this new way of thinking." "When I talked about blockchain and bitcoins, young people on the street stopped and asked me, 'What is that?'" Adams told CNN on Sunday. The mayor-elect did not specify whether he was referring to elementary, high school, or tertiary-level education. When asked whether he would encourage businesses in New York City to accept bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, Adams said that they were "going to look at it" and "tread carefully." "We are going to get it right," continued Adams. Since winning office last Tuesday, Adams has been talking a big game on cryptocurrency. Not only does he have dreams of putting the Big Apple on the blockchain, but he's said that he plans to take his first three paychecks in bitcoin.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Just outside of Shiprock, New Mexico, on land belonging to the Navajo Nation, a Bitcoin mine owned and operated by a Canadian investment company consumes seven megawatts of power each month -- enough to power 19,600 homes. The operation is run by a firm called WestBlock Capital and mines between 23 and 25 bitcoins per month, equivalent to roughly $1.4 to $1.6 million USD, with a majority of its power coming from renewable solar energy. According to a press release from the mine's parent company, Luxxfolio, the mine accesses these resources "at significantly reduced cost in the bottom decile of global power costs."

But all around the mine, Dine -- citizens of the Navajo Nation -- live without electricity or running water in their homes. The Navajo Tribal Utility Authority (NTUA), the nation's non-profit utility enterprise that initially partnered with Calgary, Alberta blockchain company WestBlock on the mine project, is working to connect more homes on the nation to basic utilities. A short documentary detailing the project by Bitcoin mining hosting company Compass was released last week, framing the mine as a means to achieve sovereignty and economic prosperity for the nation. But some Dine are bristling at the idea of a foreign Bitcoin mining company getting access to dirt cheap electricity while residents in Navajo Nation live without basic utilities like power and running water.

Tyler Puente, who commented on a since-deleted Facebook post from Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez's Facebook page about the mine's groundbreaking ceremony that Navajo leadership are allowing outsiders to take advantage of Dine, told Motherboard that he sees the Bitcoin mine as a form of "financial colonialism." "I think Bitcoin companies prey on communities like my own," said Puente. "My perspective is that we're being used." To some Dine, WestBlock project resembles a form of crypto-colonialism, a term that describes the exploitation of lands and resources by cryptocurrency and blockchain interests, often under the guise of progressive or egalitarian rhetorics for the host communities.

While Apple might not offer users a way to pay with cryptocurrency anytime soon, its leader has invested in it personally. From a report: Tim Cook, Apple's chief executive, said at the DealBook Online Summit on Tuesday that he has bought cryptocurrencies. "I think it's reasonable to own it as part of a diversified portfolio," Mr. Cook told DealBook's Andrew Ross Sorkin, quickly adding that he wasn't giving investment advice. He said he has done some research on crypto and has been interested in it for "a while." The revelation came as Mr. Cook said that Apple itself did not intend to join a growing number of big businesses incorporating crypto in their operations. Mr. Cook said, however, that Apple didn't plan to buy any Bitcoin with its roughly $200 billion in cash -- "I don't think people buy Apple stock to get exposure to crypto," he said -- and added that it had no plans to make crypto an accepted method of payment anytime soon. "It's not something we have immediate plans to do," he said. But never say never: Mr. Cook added, cryptically, "There are other things that we are definitely looking at."

The U.S. Department of Defense's internet-defending Cyber Command teamed with "a foreign government" in two operations which shut down a major overseas ransomware group by hijacking its servers, reports the Washington Post. Several U.S. officials told the Post the operation left the ransomware gang's leaders "too frightened of identification and arrest to stay in business." "Domains hijacked from REvil," wrote 0_neday, an REvil leader, on a Russian-language forum popular with cyber criminals, on October 17.... "The server was compromised," he wrote hours later, "and they are looking for me." And then: "Good luck everyone, I'm taking off."

Soon after, REvil ceased operations, such as recruitment of affiliates, ransom negotiations and distribution of malware.

The Washington Post previously reported that REvil's servers ["reachable only through Tor"] had been hacked in the summer, permitting the FBI to have access. The compromise allowed the FBI, working with the foreign partner, to gain access to the servers and private keys, officials said. The bureau was then able to share that information last month with the U.S. Cyber Command, enabling the hijacking, they said... Cyber Command leader, General Paul Nakasone, said at the Aspen Security Forum on Wednesday that while he wouldn't comment on specific operations, "we bring our best people together ... the really good thinkers" to brainstorm ways to "get after folks" conducting ransomware attacks and other malign activities. "I'm pleased with the progress we've made," he said, "and we've got a lot more to do."

The group's departure may be temporary. Ransomware gangs have been known to go underground, regroup and reappear, sometimes under a new name. But the recent development suggests that ransomware crews can be influenced — even temporarily — to cease operations if they fear they will be outed and arrested, analysts say. "The latest voluntary disappearance of REvil highlights the powerful psychological impact of having these villains believe that they are being hunted and that their identities will be revealed," said Dmitri Alperovitch, executive chairman of the think tank Silverado Policy Accelerator and a cyber expert. "U.S. and allied governments should proudly acknowledge these cyber operations and make it clear that no ransomware criminal will be safe from the long reach of their militaries and law enforcement agencies...."

Recorded Future threat intelligence analyst Dmitry Smilyanets believes "REvil as a brand is done."
And meanwhile, an anonymous Slashdot reader shares the news that German investigators "have identified a deep-pocketed, big-spending Russian billionaire whom they suspect of being a core member of the REvil ransomware gang," according to Threatpost. "He lolls around on yachts, wears a luxury watch with a Bitcoin address engraved on its dial, and is suspected of buying it all with money he made as a core member of the REvil ransomware gang." The showy billionaire goes by "Nikolay K." on social media, and German police are hoping he'll cruise out of Russia on his next vacation — preferably, to a country with a cooperation agreement with Germany so they can arrest him. In case he decides to kick back somewhere other than sunny Crimea, they've got an arrest warrant waiting for him....

According to Reuters, which broke the news about last week's law enforcement move against the gang, REvil's also behind the Colonial Pipeline attack, as opposed to a culprit presumed to be a ransomware group named DarkSide.

Kroger said a press release announcing plans to begin accepting Bitcoin Cash was fraudulent, marking the latest apparent scam tying a major retailer to cryptocurrency. From a report: The statement appeared early Friday on PRNewswire, a service used by many large companies to make official announcements. Kroger's investor-relations website automatically picked up the release, the grocer said. Media organizations including Bloomberg News published the information, and Bitcoin Cash briefly spiked about 5%. "This communication was fraudulent and is unfounded and should be disregarded," Kroger said. The episode recalled a similar scam less than two months ago involving Walmart. In that situation, a fake statement went out on a separate wire service, GlobeNewswire, saying the retail giant would begin accepting the cryptocurrency Litecoin. The fake news release set off a short-lived surge of more than 30% in Litecoin before Walmart said the information was false and the statement was taken down.

In a follow-up to yesterday's story about New York City mayor-elect Eric Adams' dreams of putting the Big Apple on the blockchain, CNBC reports that Adams plans to take his first three paychecks in bitcoin. From the report: "NYC is going to be the center of the cryptocurrency industry," Adams said in a tweet on Thursday. In this same post, he wrote that in New York, "we always go big" so he would be taking his "first THREE paychecks" in bitcoin. Adams appeared to be trying to one-up Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, who said on Tuesday that he would be taking his next paycheck "100% in bitcoin."

Since winning office, the New York mayor has been throwing down with Suarez in a battle over who can transform their respective fiefdoms into crypto capitals of the country. Mayor Suarez's progressive crypto policies have already begun to attract top talent. [...] The New York mayor-elect said in an interview with Bloomberg Radio on Wednesday that he wanted to wager a "friendly competition" with Suarez. "He has a MiamiCoin that is doing very well -- we're going to look in the direction to carry that out," Adams told Bloomberg Radio. Adams also said in this interview that he planned to look at what was preventing the growth of bitcoin and cryptocurrency in New York.

UnknowingFool writes: The civil trial of Ira Kleiman vs. Craig Wright started on Monday in Miami. The estate of David Kleiman is suing Craig Wright, the self declared inventor of bitcoin, for 50% ownership of 1.1 million bitcoins. The estate claims Kleiman was in a partnership with Wright to mine the coins but after Kleiman died in April 2013, Wright denied any partnership. At over $60,000 each per bitcoin, this case is currently worth $65 billion.

Craig Wright has previously claimed he is the inventor of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, which has been met with skepticism based on his inability to show any proof. In this case, Wright has made numerous dubious claims. After the case was filed in 2018, Wright claimed he did not have the keys to the coins but that they would be arriving in January 2020 through a "bonded courier." After January 2020, Wright provided keys to the estate for verification which the estate claims the bitcoins were fake. Expressing skepticism that the courier even existed, the estate asked for more information about the courier. Wright then claimed the identity of the courier and all communications were protected under attorney-client privilege as the courier was an attorney.

Today the iconic Bitcoin white paper "celebrates thirteen years of financial disruption," notes Cointelegraph, "after being first published on Oct. 31, 2008, by an anonymous person or entity named Satoshi Nakamoto." (Here's a 2013 story from Slashdot about version 0.3.)

Cointelegraph writes: The white paper, titled Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System, foresaw the need for a peer-to-peer online payment system that is self-governing, secure and limited in quantity. The Bitcoin network was launched on Jan. 3, 2009, with each Bitcoin priced at $0.0008.... Today, Bitcoin maintains a stable trading value well above $60k after experiencing a gradual appreciation of 7,749,999,900% since its launch.
Cointelegraph celebrated the anniversary by embedding a video of the original bitcoin white paper being read by comedian Gilbert Gottfried — but they weren't the only ones. Entrepreneur/investor Anthony Pompliano celebrated with the return of what he describes as a decentralized pizzeria" named Bitcoin pizza. (An interactive online map shows participating locations around the U.S.A. where pizzas can be ordered with cash or with 0.0003 BTC — either through the web site or through the Uber Eats app.)

"If you want to pay for your pizza in bitcoin, I will gladly take your bitcoin," Pompliano says in a video posted to Twitter. "I don't think that you should use your bitcoin to buy the pizza — but we now accept bitcoin." The five available topping combos even have bitcoin-themed names like "No Keys, No Cheese" and "Satoshi's Favorite" — and the pizzas are all delivered in a special commemorative bitcoin-themed pizza box. "Every single dollar that I make from this, I donate to bitcoin developers," Pompliano explains in the video. "I make zero dollars from Bitcoin Pizza."

"And we're going to keep building this until eventually we are the single largest independent pizza chain in the United States. And then after we become the single largest independent pizza chain in the United States, we're going to turn around, and then we're going to go international."

"According to his bio on Harvard.edu, Mikao John was an erudite scholar: a medical student at the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology who'd studied statistics and biochemistry at Yale and published research in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine," reports Futurism: John was also a prolific author of blog posts on Harvard's site... But despite that veneer of academic authenticity, his posts didn't sound much like medical research. nstead, John's recent works carried titles like "KeefX.co: The Cannabis Fintech Company that Provides $1M in Funding a Month," which took the form of an extremely flattering article about a startup that provides financial services to weed businesses, and "Idahome Solar Makes Switching to Solar Power in Idaho a No-Brainer," which praised the "client-first mentality" and "incredible financing program" of a seemingly random solar panel company in Idaho.

As it turns out, there is no Harvard student by the name of Mikao John. Instead, a scammer invented that persona — and, alarmingly, managed to obtain the credentials to insert him into Harvard's web system — in order to sell SEO-friendly backlinks, and the prestige of being hyped up by someone at one of the world's most distinguished universities, to marketing firms with publicity-hungry clients.

The practice of scammers cooking up fake Harvard students to shill brands on the university's site appears to be widespread. In response to questions from Futurism, Harvard removed the Mikao John profile as well as about two dozen similar accounts being used for the same purpose... Swathes of Harvard.edu have become a spammer free-for-all where fake students and other accounts hawk an endless parade of dubious stuff: online casinos, synthetic urine, real estate in Florida, CBD, [42 more examples deleted] and many more incongruous yet trashy brands and services...

Overall, it felt as though if a reporter hadn't been sending numerous emails, the fake students probably would have been allowed to continue posting indefinitely.
Harvard eventually told the reporter that the scammers were signing up for their online classes, then using the email address they received to infiltrate the university's blogging platforms (writing fake posts about everything from bitcoin to concealed carry holsters and even bouncy castles.)

Ironically, Harvard's official motto (first adopted in 1643) is "Veritas" — the Latin word for truth.

Bitcoin is up 4% in the last 24 hours after El Salvadorian President Nayib Bukele announced that his government had purchased an additional 420 BTC, which is equivalent to around $25 million. The country now holds an estimated 1,120 bitcoin. CoinDesk reports: "Today the markets were buoyed by news of additional state-level purchases from El Salvador, indicating the country's intentions to continue to acquire," said Jason Deane, analyst at Quantum Economics. Underlying sentiment remains extremely bullish for the top cryptocurrencies, especially bitcoin, according to Deane. The world's largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization reached an all-time high on Oct. 20 of around $66,900, a day after the first bitcoin futures exchange-traded fund (ETF) in the U.S. launched on the New York Stock Exchange. A week later, bitcoin's price fell below the $60,000 mark before retaking the level early Thursday.

Mark Cuban's basketball team, the Dallas Mavericks, announced a five-year partnership with Voyager Digital yesterday that makes the company the team's first cryptocurrency brokerage. A report adds: The agreement also includes free Bitcoin for fans that sign up in the initial two days of the partnership, as explained by the Mavericks's digital content manager on Twitter.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Bitcoin is on a tear, reaching an all time high price of $67,000 for 1 BTC on Wednesday, buoyed by a series of approvals for Bitcoin futures funds on the stock market. But on one major U.S. exchange, the price flash-crashed 87 percent to roughly $8,200 on Thursday due to a bug in a trading algorithm. The crash occurred during a massive sell-off on the Binance.US exchange that occurred around 7:42 a.m. ET, Bloomberg reported. Binance is the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, and its Binance.US exchange is meant to be compliant with U.S. regulations, although it is still banned in several states.

According to a Binance.US spokesperson, the crash was due to an issue with a trading algorithm being run by one "institutional trader," which may indicate an investment fund of some sort. "One of our institutional traders indicated to us that they had a bug in their trading algorithm, which appears to have caused the sell-off," Binance.US told Bloomberg. "We are continuing to look into the event, but understand from the trader that they have now fixed their bug and that the issue appears to have been resolved." It's entirely possible that some lucky traders were at the right place at the right time and managed to snap up some incredibly cheap BTC, but mostly it's yet another example of weirdness along the edges of the crypto ecosystem.

Walmart has started a pilot program in which shoppers can buy Bitcoin at Coinstar kiosks in some of its U.S. stores. From a report: The test with Coinstar, which is known for the machines that let customers exchange U.S. coins for paper bills or gift cards, began earlier this month, Walmart spokeswoman Molly Blakeman said Thursday. The pilot includes 200 kiosks in Walmart stores. That's part of a broader initiative by Coinstar, which has teamed up with a cryptocurrency cash exchange called Coinme to offer Bitcoin at more than 8,000 kiosks. The pilot includes 200 kiosks in Walmart stores.

"Bitcoin ATMs have been around for a while, including in many supermarkets," said Sam Doctor, chief strategy officer and head of research at BitOoda, a regulated crypto brokerage. "Walmart expands Bitcoin access to more people, though, and gives it further legitimacy among skeptics, should they roll it out beyond an initial pilot." Walmart is testing the service weeks after a high-profile hoax in which a fake press release said the retailer would start letting customers pay with a cryptocurrency called Litecoin. While that announcement was false, Walmart is assessing the future of crypto in its operations. It advertised a job in August to develop "the digital currency strategy and product roadmap" while identifying "crypto-related investment and partnerships."

Bitcoin, the world's largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, has hit a new all-time high above $65,000. From a report: The crypto broke above its previous high of $64,889 reached in April. Bitcoin is currently changing hands for around $65,607, up 4.2% over the past 24 hours. The latest rally pushed bitcoin's year-to-date terms to 122%, according to CoinDesk data. The largest cryptocurrency appears to have gotten a push on Tuesday from the launch of the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF, the first exchange-traded fund approved by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to invest in bitcoin futures. Indeed, the new fund, traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker $BITO, garnered a first-day trading volume of more than $1 billion, ranking it among the most successful launches of all time.