If Russia Invites Bitcoin Adoption, The Global Arms Race Will Begin
Recent pro-Bitcoin developments from Russia could put the Eastern power in a lead position as inflation grows. How will other powers react?On February 15, the Russian Ministry of Economic Development signaled a bullish development around Bitcoin; reduced costs for bitcoin miners. But what can we make of this?First the obvious: yes it is bullish. The Russian Ministry is reportedly considering “energy tariffs” for bitcoin (and other cryptocurrency) miners, as well as taxing cryptocurrency-to-ruble conversions — as long as said facilities are constructed in particular regions (you don’t want....
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Putin’s business ombudsman says Russia must become the world’s blockchain leader, as he’s certain the country has the necessary resources. There are currently around 500 000 of Blockchain users in Russia, and the number is growing. Following the UK’s decision to leave the EU the race is now on to replace London as the global fintech capital, and Moscow may join the race. Focus on Blockchain. The Party of Growth led by Boris Titov has developed a program which will be presented in the parliament elections this September. Researching and testing Blockchain applications are one of the main....
CoinDesk's Daniel Cawrey recently visited and toured the facilities at Butterfly Labs, one of the most prominent and written about producers of bitcoin mining technology. In this second part of this series, he reports on the factors involved in the bitcoin mining arms race. Now that Butterfly Labs is shipping ASIC bitcoin miners at a steady pace, their production plus that of Avalon and mining pools like ASICMiner are causing the mining difficulty to go up quite quickly. What this means is that it takes more computational power to complete proof of work algorithms. It means that a race is....
Blockstream's $210 million raise will play a big role in North American ASIC production and manufacturing.
Manufacturers are planning to ship scrypt-based equipment that will speed up mining and reduce the power overhead for the alternative cryptocurrency algorithm. Could this fuel the next cryptocurrency arms race? Most cryptocurrencies that are mined by computers use a 'proof of work' algorithm, designed to make them prove that they have invested the computing power in producing the coins. Bitcoin uses SHA-256, but many alternative coins (altcoins) use another system, called scrypt. One of the biggest differences between scrypt and SHA-256 is that the former relies heavily on computing....
The face of industrial-scale bitcoin mining is changing with every passing month, having already pushed far beyond the bounds once envisioned, perhaps, by the hobby miners of four years ago. The landscape is much different now. Many large-scale mines are shifting from warehouse set-ups to data centers better equipped to deliver the massive power and cooling resources necessary to compete in a steadily accelerating industry. CoinDesk spoke with executives from some of the biggest hardware companies in the mining space. During those discussions a picture emerged of an industry undergoing a....