Hardware news
Cryptocurrency miners are beginning to lead the next stage of AI
As artificial intelligence (AI) rapidly works its complex magic on one sector of the economy after another, there is an increasingly pressing need for compute resources to power all this machine intelligence. Training a model like ChatGPT costs more than $5 million, and running the early ChatGPT demo, even before usage increased to its current level, costs OpenAI around $100,000 per day. And AI is more than just text generation; applying AI to practical problems across multiple industries requires similar large neural models trained on a diversity of data types — medical, financial, customer information, geospatial and so forth. Moving …
Adoption / Feb. 20, 2023
Iran court orders the release of seized crypto mining equipment
Iranian authorities seized numerous crypto mining equipment over the past two years, citing stress on energy grids during winter. Now, a court ordered the release of crypto-mining equipment that was previously seized as a measure to conserve energy. Since 2021, Iran’s Organization for Collection and Sale of State-Owned Property (OCSSOP) has seized mining equipment — both authorized and unauthorized — due to looming power shortage concerns. However, the authorities had a change of heart amid winter as they ordered the release of the seizure. As explained by Abdolmajid Eshtehadi, the head of Iran's Ministry of Economic Affairs and Finance: “Currently …
Bitcoin / Jan. 4, 2023
‘Father of the iPod’ helps Ledger create new cold crypto wallet
Hardware wallet provider Ledger, known for its cold-storage devices, announced its seventh crypto wallet in collaboration with the creator of the original iPod. Tony Fadell, the inventor of the iconic iPod Classic model, has partnered with Ledger to help the company design its latest wallet device known as Ledger Stax. The company broke the news on Dec. 6 at Ledger’s bi-annual Web3 developer event, Ledger Op3n, in Paris. Ledger’s upcoming new hardware wallet is a credit card-size device that features a large E Ink display, capacitive touch, Bluetooth support, wireless charging and more. For the first time in Ledger's product …
Bitcoin / Dec. 6, 2022
Crypto miners in Russia capitalize on the bear market by hoarding ASIC devices
Cryptocurrency miners in Russia appear to be unbothered by the ongoing crisis of crypto mining as the local demand for mining hardware has reportedly been on the surge in Q4 2022. Some crypto mining hardware distributors in Russia have faced a significant spike in demand for mining-designed application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) chips, the local news agency Kommersant reported on Dec. 1. Local dealer Chilkoot reported its ASIC sales in November and October exceeded its entire sales made in Q3. Over the past nine months, the distributor reportedly sold 65% more hardware than in 2021. “We are working with legal entities, …
Bitcoin / Dec. 2, 2022
Trezor reports 300% surge in sales revenue due to FTX contagion
Amid growing concerns over centralized cryptocurrency exchanges in the wake of the FTX crisis, investors are increasingly moving to hardware crypto wallets. A major hardware wallet provider, Trezor, has recorded a major uptick in wallet sales in the aftermath of the FTX contagion, the firm’s brand ambassador Josef Tetek told Cointelegraph on Nov. 15. Trezor saw its sales revenue surging 300% week-on-week and it’s still growing, Tetek reported. The platform has also recorded a significant spike in its website traffic, which increased 350% over the same period, the exec noted. According to Tetek, Trezor is quite certain that the uptick …
Decentralization / Nov. 15, 2022
Ledger hardware wallets hit by the FTX earthquake, CTO says
Hardware-based cryptocurrency wallet provider Ledger has experienced some issues due to massive outflows from crypto exchanges amid the FTX bloodbath, according to its chief technology officer. Ledger saw a “massive usage” of their platforms and suffered a “few scalability challenges” on Nov. 9, Ledger CTO Charles Guillemet reported in a statement on Twitter. Guillemet reasoned Ledger’s issues by the outcomes of the ongoing crisis of a major global cryptocurrency exchange, FTX. The CTO said that crypto investors have been increasingly offloading their holdings from crypto exchanges to Ledger, stating: “ After the FTX earthquake, there's a massive outflow from exchanges …
Bitcoin / Nov. 10, 2022
How to build a cryptocurrency mining rig
Cryptocurrency mining involves using a computer, or several computers, to validate transactions on a blockchain. Technically, these computers solve cryptographic equations and record data in a digital ledger. The more computers solving equations, the faster the blockchain can validate transactions. When miners verify the hashes of unconfirmed blocks, they receive a reward for each verified hash. Mining can be energy and computationally-intensive, requiring specialized hardware and crypto-mining software. Among the most mined (and most profitable) cryptocurrencies are Bitcoin (BTC), Monero (XMR), Ravencoin (RVN), and Dogecoin (DOGE). Ether (ETH) used to be part of this list but Ethereum has recently shifted …
Bitcoin / Oct. 18, 2022
Bitcoin miner prices may fall if supply exceeds demand: F2Pool exec
The price of cryptocurrency mining hardware is likely to continue falling in the near future amid the ongoing crypto winter, according to an executive at major Bitcoin (BTC) mining pool F2Pool. Supporting 14.3% of the BTC network, F2Pool is one of the world’s biggest Bitcoin mining pools. On Tuesday, F2Pool released its latest mining industry update. Focusing on June 2022 BTC mining results, F2Pool’s report noted that the majority of Bitcoin mining companies like Core Scientific have opted to sell their self-mined Bitcoin recently. Bitfarms, a major Canadian BTC mining firm, sold 3,000 Bitcoin, or almost 50% of its entire …
Bitcoin / July 12, 2022
Global GPU price drops to compensate for falling Bitcoin mining revenue
As a direct result of falling Bitcoin (BTC) prices, total revenue earned by miners in transaction fees and mining rewards dropped to its one-year lows at nearly $15 million on July 4. However, a concurrent fall in graphic cards or GPU prices is set to help miners offset their operational costs amid an ongoing bear market. Bitcoin mining revenue fell 79.6% over a period of 9 months, ever since reaching an all-time high of $74.4 million on October 25, 2021. In addition, a global chip shortage and the coronavirus pandemic shot up prices of the most important part of a …
Adoption / July 9, 2022
Alkemi Earn integration brings DeFi lending to 1.5M Ledger users
The Alkemi Earn app has been added to the hardware wallet Ledger's Discover area, making decentralized finance (DeFi) lending and borrowing service accessible to Ledger's 1.5 million active customers. According to a Tuesday announcement, users of Ledger Live can now earn yield on their assets with the Alkemi Earn integration. The goal of the Ledger project is to provide consumers with a method of buying and utilizing digital assets without giving them up to third-party platforms or systems. "With Alkemi, Ledger users will have more ways to grow their assets while enjoying all the benefits of crypto without centralized custodians," …
Adoption / June 29, 2022
What happens if you lose or break your hardware crypto wallet?
Hardware cryptocurrency wallets are known for granting users full control of their crypto and providing more security, but such wallets are prone to risks such as theft, destruction or loss. Does that mean that all your Bitcoin (BTC) is lost forever if your hardware wallet is lost, burned or stolen? Not at all. There are a number of options to restore cryptocurrency for someone who has lost access to their hardware wallet. The only requirement to recover crypto assets, in that case, would be maintaining access to the private keys. A private key is a cryptographic string of letters and …
Blockchain / June 14, 2022
Trezor investigates potential data breach as users cite phishing attacks
Cryptocurrency hardware wallet provider Trezor has begun investigating a possible data breach that may have compromised users’ email addresses and other personal information. Earlier today, on Apr. 3, several users from the Crypto Twitter community warned about an ongoing email phishing campaign specifically targeting Trezor users via their registered email addresses. Hey trezor, are you aware of a phishing campaign going on? I just received this email with my actual email on it. It looked very legit. pic.twitter.com/GF0Od6llr2 — josearkaos ⚡️ (@josearkanos) April 3, 2022 In the ongoing attack, several Trezor users have been contacted by unauthorized actors posing as …
Blockchain / April 3, 2022