"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BankInfoSecurity reports: [A] report released last week, "COVID-19 Vaccination Certificates in the Dark Web," which has not yet been peer-reviewed, notes that some darknet markets continue to sell supposed vaccine certificates for use in multiple countries.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."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Texas, already home to the most vulnerable power grid in the U.S., is about to be hit by a surge in demand for electricity that's twice the size of Austin's. An army of cryptocurrency miners heading to the state for its cheap power and laissez-faire regulation is forecast to send demand soaring by as much as 5,000 megawatts over the next two years. The crypto migration to Texas has been building for months, but the sheer volume of power those miners will need -- two times more than the capital city of almost 1 million people consumed in all of 2020 -- is only now becoming clear.

The boom comes as the electrical system is already under strain from an expanding population and robust economy. Even before the new demand comes online, the state's grid has proven to be lethally unreliable. Catastrophic blackouts in February plunged millions into darkness for days, and, ultimately, led to at least 210 deaths. Proponents like Senator Ted Cruz and Governor Greg Abbott, both Republicans, say crypto miners are ultimately good for the grid, since they say the miners can soak up excess clean power and, when needed, can voluntarily throttle back in seconds to help avert blackouts. But it raises the question of what these miners will do when the state's electricity demand inevitably outstrips supply: Will they adhere to an honor system of curtailing their power use, especially when the Bitcoin price is itself so high, or will it mean even more pressure on an overwhelmed grid?

Miners setting up shop in the Lone Star State can often count on a 10-year tax abatement, sales tax credits and workforce training from the state, depending on where they are located and how many jobs they add. Even without formal incentives, the cheap power prices and the state's hands-off policy toward business is often enough of a lure. The pitch is working: The grid operator Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or Ercot, will account for about 20% of the Bitcoin network globally by the end of 2022, up from 8% to 10% today, according to Lee Bratcher, president of the Texas Blockchain council. Right now, Ercot has somewhere between 500 and 1,000 megawatts of mining capacity, out of about 2,000 nationwide. The state grid will add another 3,000 to 5,000 megawatts of mining demand by the end of 2023, he said.

In a follow-up to Monday's story, "a crowdfunded effort to buy a rare 1787 copy of the U.S. constitution at auction claims to have received more than [$31 million] worth of cryptocurrency donations," reports the BBC. And this figure is only going to increase as there's more than 24 hours to go. From the report: The group, ConstitutionDAO, says it plans "to put the constitution in the hands of the people," and hopes to raise at least $20 million. But it is not clear how ownership will be arranged if the bid succeeds. There are 13 known copies to have survived from a run of 500 originally printed after the text was settled at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The copy for sale is one of only two not held in the collection of an institution, Sotheby's says. The group wants to put the document on public display.

DAO stands for "decentralized autonomous organization." The idea is to enable individuals to come together to make purchases and share ownership, with their transactions and operating rules recorded on the blockchain - the same underlying technology on which cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum run. ConstitutionDAO launched just a week before the auction, and is soliciting money with which to buy the constitution document in Ethereum. On its website, the group says it is "pooling together money to win this auction."

At first, the website told contributors they were buying "fractional ownership and governance. You will own a piece of the constitution based on how much you contribute." That has since been changed to say those who contribute will not get a share in owning the constitution. The question "Am I receiving ownership of the constitution in exchange for my donation?" is answered: "No, you are receiving a governance token, not fractionalized ownership." The "governance token," the website says, could be used to "advise" on "where the constitution should be displayed, how it should be exhibited, and the mission and values of ConstitutionDAO."

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.