Category: Mining

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Crypto News DeFi Ethereum Gas Mining

Ethereum Miner Returns $22 Million After DeversiFi’s Erroneous Gas Fee

The decentralised exchange (DEX) DeversiFi mistakenly paid a fee of US$22 million for a transaction that should have been a fraction of the cost. The miner altruistically returned the funds seeing it was accidental, showing the cooperative side of the crypto community.

On September 27, “a deposit transaction was made by a DeversiFi hardware wallet from the main DeversiFi user interface with an erroneously high gas fee”, the exchange tweeted. The transaction was done through DeversiFi for Bitfinex in order to save on transaction fees.

This transaction was to deposit funds on the DeversiFi L2 solution. These transactions are extremely rare and third-party companies [usually] cover the costs of such integrations.

Bitfinex representative
The erroneous transaction: Etherscan

The details of the transaction can be seen on Etherscan where block 13307440 had a transaction fee of over $22 million for a $100,000 deposit transaction.

All You Need To Do Is Ask

While working on discovering the cause, the DeversiFi team said it reached out to Binance. The miner’s address continually routes funds to the centralised exchange; this is generally done to sell mined ETH.

Binance agreed to give the miner DeversiFi’s contact information, and the miner agreed to return the funds “after a few emails back and forth”. DeversiFi pushed for the miner to keep 50 ETH as a reward.

This was a show of crypto community spirit, given that because of the nature of the blockchain the miner could have kept the funds, and it’s unlikely any legal proceedings could have compelled him to return them.

While the mining pool that received the gas fee is anonymous, it is currently ranked ninth among the largest Ethereum miners and is responsible for roughly 3.1 percent of the network’s hash rate, according to Etherscan.

What Caused the Problem?

In a postmortem blog post on September 28, DeversiFi said that the exceedingly high gas fee was due to an error caused by a calculation mess-up in how the EthereumJS library processes decimals.

The team also said it worked with hardware wallet provider Ledger on a bug patch, and that the bug could only apply to large wallets such as theirs.

The team also wrote that DeversiFi has implemented “additional safety and sanity checks to ensure gas fees associated with transactions could not exceed unrealistic thresholds”. The new checks aim to “protect against user error, extreme network fee spikes” to serve as “an additional layer of protection against any future coding error”.

No customer funds on DeversiFi are at risk and this is an internal issue for DeversiFi to resolve, and operations are running as usual.

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Bitcoin Bitcoin Mining Crypto News Ethereum Litecoin Mining Trading

Debt-Laden Laos Approves Crypto Mining for Economic Growth, Reverses Previous Ban

The one-party socialist government of landlocked South-East Asian country Laos has green-lit six domestic firms to trade and mine cryptocurrencies.

As named by government mouthpiece The Laotian Times, the companies that have been licensed are Wap Data Technology, Phongsubthavy Road & Bridge Construction, Sisaket Construction, Boupha Road-Bridge Design Survey, Phousy Group and Joint Development Bank. Only the latter, a state-backed lender, appears to have any financial background. 

Most of the others are construction or infrastructure-related firms. Phousy Group, for example, has been active in road and bridge building in Laos since 1998, mainly as a favoured contractor to the Laotian government.

All six companies have been given permission to trial mining and trading of digital assets including bitcoin, ethereum and litecoin. A commission led by the Laotian Ministry of Technology and Communication will set out a regulatory plan to be scrutinised by the country’s prime minister, Phankham Viphavanh, this week.

After Banning Crypto in 2018, Laos Changes Its Tune

The announcement comes less than a month after Laos’s central bank issued a warning to the public against trading digital tokens. The government issued a decree that effectively banned crypto in 2018 and repeated its stance as recently as last month.

The country’s rediscovered enthusiasm for cryptos follows the crackdown earlier this year on bitcoin mining by Laos’s nearest and biggest neighbour, China, ostensibly on power consumption grounds. 

The Nam Ou hydro-electric project on the Mekong River in Laos, established in 2016 with an installed capacity of 1,272 megawatts.

What Laos has going for it is that it is a hydro-electric superpower, making it an ideal potential home for power-hungry crypto miners. Its economy is based on harnessing hydro electricity from the country’s extensive river system and exporting two-thirds of its reserves to neighbouring countries Thailand, China and Vietnam.

Crypto Mining: A Ready Antidote to Foreign Debt?

For that reason alone, Laos is seen by the World Bank as one of the Pacific region’s fastest-growing economies, with annual GDP growth averaging 7.4 percent since 2009, though the nation is also mired in foreign debt.

Government powerbrokers may have one eye on developments in El Salvador, which officially made bitcoin legal tender this month and plans to harness the Central American republic’s abundant geothermal energy, derived from its many volcanoes, to mine bitcoin. Based on the current BTC price, this could earn the Salvadorean government more than A$1 billion per year.

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Bitcoin Mining Crime Crypto News Mining

Government Employee Faces Jail for Installing Crypto Miners Inside Office Walls

An IT operations supervisor in New York state is being prosecuted for allegedly installing BTC mining rigs and other devices inside government offices, costing his Long Island civic employer thousands of dollars in electricity, according to a report last week by The New York Times.

Over $6,000 in Electricity Bills

Christopher Naples, 42, allegedly hid 46 mining devices in various areas in the Suffolk County Center in Riverhead. The Long Island resident now faces up to 15 years in jail for grand larceny, official misconduct, public corruption and computer trespass.

The Suffolk County Center now has to pay more than US$6,000 in restitution for the power used, but it’s likely Naples has cost the county thousands more as another 36 machines were later discovered.

Timothy D. Sini, the Suffolk County district attorney, said that the first 10 mining rigs discovered had been operating since early February, some of them hidden in at least six rooms – including beneath floorboards and in an unused electrical panel.

Mining cryptocurrency requires an enormous amount of resources, and miners have to navigate how to cover all of those electricity and cooling costs. [Naples] found a way to do it; unfortunately, it was on the backs of taxpayers.

Timothy D. Sini, district attorney, Suffolk County

Sini told The New York Times that Naples placed so many mining rigs inside the building that it required an “unusual level of expertise from investigators” to discover them. Several employees even complained about slow internet speeds and an unusual rise in temperature. Once the machines were removed, the temperature dropped by more than 20 degrees Fahrenheit (6.6ÂșC).

Miners Forced to Emigrate as Countries Tighten Mining Regulations

Mining cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin consumes a lot of electricity and can even cause massive power outages. Such was the case in Iran, where in June the government confiscated over 45,000 mining rigs due to high energy consumption sparking power outages across the country.

Other countries like China have been more aggressive toward miners. As Crypto News Australia reported, also in June, China’s State Council released a document saying it would “crack down on bitcoin mining and trading activities” in order to “prevent possible financial risks”.

As a consequence, miners were forced to set up shop overseas to continue their operations in more receptive environments.

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Crypto News Ethereum Gas Mining

$1 Million in ETH Burned 3 Hours Following London Hard Fork

The long-awaited Ethereum hard fork has been operational for a few days now and with a massive amount of ETH already burned, the currency could be well on its way to becoming deflationary.

At the time of writing, the total amount of Ethereum (ETH) burned since the London hard fork had already run up to 4300 ETH, about US$11 million worth of the digital currency. The network is burning the digital currency at approximately 3.68 ETH ($10,295) every minute on average.

Ethereum burn statistics. Source: watch the burn.com

The update has integrated a new mechanism that burns a portion of the base fee of a transaction, while the other portion goes to the miner. Shortly after implementation, the price of Ethereum jumped more than 6 percent, adding to its 12-day price gain.

Many other updates were administered in the Ethereum hard fork, and here’s what you need to know.

Change to a Flexible Monetary Policy Aids Deflation

By burning the majority of the base fee of transactions, the mechanism aims to deflate the supply of Ethereum. While a sustained rate of over 2 ETH per block is necessary to see Ethereum’s supply deflate, EIP-1559 is the first step on its road to a deflationary monetary currency.

The much anticipated EIP1559 network upgrade was a huge day for the Ethereum cryptocurrency ecosystem. Now, every transaction, NFT purchase or loan on the Ethereum network will result in ETH being burned out of existence, making ETH a deflationary and inflation-busting asset.

Ross Middleton, chief financial officer, DeversiFi

What Does the Change Mean for Users and Miners?

Looking at user experience, gas fees and Maximal Extractable Value (MEV), topics that usually have a negative connotation when talking about Ethereum are being solved.

Anyone sending a transaction will know the fee in advance; users currently have to submit a bid to miners, which can lead to overpaying or long wait times if the fee is too low. Meanwhile, the block size increase means the queue to get in will be faster during peak congestion […] To avoid being subject to gas price manipulation for gas refunds, smart contracts need access to a decent trustless gas price oracle. That’s another thing EIP-1559 solves.

Justin Drake, Ethereum 2.0 researcher

However, what miners will get from transactions is a fraction of what they used to be. While the current Proof-of-Work consensus mechanism sees Ethereum pay miners more than 12,000 ETH every day, experts believe Proof-of-Stake will reduce that to around 1,000 ETH per day.

When ETH gets burned it becomes more scarce, which benefits all holders. With enough activity on the network, the amount of ETH burned through transactions could surpass the amount issued to validators through Proof-of-Stake. This would make ETH deflationary, or as Drake would say, “ultrasound”.

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Australia Blockchain Mining

BHP to Use Blockchain Traceability in Nickel Deal With Tesla

Australian mining giant BHP Group has entered a nickel supply deal with Tesla for its electric car batteries. The companies will also be collaborating to build blockchain-based supply chain technology for raw material traceability and more.

According to a release from the BHP mining group, it will be partnering with the electric car and sustainable energy company, Tesla. The supply agreement will allow Tesla to source sustainably mined nickel and reduce dependence on Indonesian suppliers who have doubled the carbon footprint.

We are delighted to sign this agreement with Tesla Inc and to collaborate with them on ways to make the battery supply chain more sustainable through our shared focus on technology and innovation.

Vandita Pant, BHP Chief Commercial Officer

Headquartered in Melbourne, Australia, BHP stated that the metal will be supplied from its Nickel West operation in Western Australia.

Demand for nickel in batteries is estimated to grow by over 500 per cent over the next decade, in large part to support the world’s rising demand for electric vehicles.

 Vandita Pant

Role of Blockchain in Supply Chains

In addition to the supply agreement, BHP and Tesla will develop blockchain-based solutions to track raw materials from mines to production. By tracing materials, companies can verify the origins and production methods used to remain compliant with responsible mining practices, in turn leading to a more sustainable value chain.

A blockchain implementation also allows proof of responsible sourcing to be shared while protecting confidential or competitive information.

In Australia, blockchain technology has already been used in the food and wine industry to protect supply chains against fraud.

BHP Moving to More Sustainable Mining Practices

The global mining company which extracts and processes minerals, oil and gas has committed to cutting carbon emissions by 30 percent by 2030. BHP’s long-term target is to reach net-zero operational emissions by 2050 and has already invested US$400 million toward climate change efforts in 2019. It is working with customers to lower emissions from the steel-making industry, which is among the world’s heaviest polluters.

BHP Nickel mining facility. Source: BHP.com

BHP will also collaborate with Tesla Inc on energy storage solutions to identify opportunities to lower carbon emissions in their respective operations through increased use of renewable energy paired with battery storage.

BHP produces some of the lowest carbon intensity nickel in the world, and we are on the pathway to net zero at our operations. Sustainable, reliable production of quality nickel will be essential to meeting demand from sustainable energy producers like Tesla Inc […] Our nickel is essential to a decarbonising world and Nickel West has a global advantage in the sustainable production of nickel.

Edgar Basto, President, BHP Minerals Australia
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Crypto News Gaming Mining

PlayStation 4 Mining Farm Was Mining FIFA Ultimate Team Cards, Not Bitcoin

The Ukrainian Security Service has uncovered the largest cryptocurrency mining farm in the country to date. It found 3,800 PlayStation 4s, 500 graphics cards, 50 processors, and laptops.

Initially thought to be for the mining of cryptocurrency, it turns out the gaming consoles were being used to mine valuable FIFA Ultimate Team football cards.

Farm Was Using Stolen Electricity

The mining farm was using stolen electricity worth five to seven million Ukrainian hryvnias (US$183,610 – $257,055) in a month. Money aside, the withdrawal of electricity may have much greater consequences as entire communities in the city of Vinnytsia were left without power.


PlayStation 4s used to farm FUT cards. Source: Ukrainian Security Service

FIFA Ultimate Team Mining Bots

FIFA Ultimate Team is a game mode in FIFA that allows users to build teams with players of their choosing based on the cards they own. They then compete with each other online to win coins allowing them to buy even better individual players and player packs.

The PS4s were being controlled by computers that ran bots to grind earn in-game currency. Afterward, accounts would be sold on the black market for profit. EA Sports has issued warnings that buying or selling in-game currency on the black market may result in a ban. It’s reported that the purchase of loot boxes makes up 30 percent of EA Sport’s total revenue.

Buying FIFA player cards can be done through the FUT Web App or the console, and some cards – such as that featuring Portugal captain and Juventus star Cristiano Ronaldo – can fetch over US$1,000 as listed for sale on U7BUY card marketplace.

FIFA Ultimate Team Cards

We are starting to see more online games supporting in-game currencies, such as Counter-Strike’s CSGO allowing players to wager bitcoin when playing against others.

EA Sports reportedly has over US$1 billion in revenue across FIFA and related games, so the money involved in this industry is mind-boggling.

In June, Crypto News Australia reported how players can now wager on Counter-Strike games using a Bitcoin gaming wallet. Via Infuse technology, it allows players to scan a QR code, join a lobby and play Bitcoin-infused games.

By Jana Serfontein, Crypto News Guest Author

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Australia Crypto News Mining

Aussies Can Now Help Grow a Wireless Network and Get Paid in Crypto

A growing number of Australians are helping to set up a network of Helium wireless hotspots that reward their owners in Helium Network Tokens (HNT).

Helium is a global network of public, long-range wireless hotspots for Internet of Things devices, such as Lime and Neuron scooters. Each Helium hotspot produces HNT, the native cryptocurrency of the Helium blockchain, as compensation for owners.

Community-Driven Network Already Up and Running

A global chip shortage has caused long delays on many tech products, including Helium hotspots. But for some lucky Australians, their hotspots are finally starting to arrive. The network is just getting started in Australia but there is already a long list of people itching to jump on board.

A map of active hotspots on the Helium network as at July 15, 2021. Source: Helium

The main draw is that a Helium hotspot will generate a decent amount of passive income. Some hotspot owners are reporting earnings of US$500+ per month just from one hotspot. Not bad considering the first round of devices sold for US$495 each.

Not everyone is in it just for the money, of course. Many believe in the technology and want to contribute to building a large, secure and global network for the ever-expanding Internet of Things.

Cardano Thing Down in Africa

There seems to be a global trend at the moment towards decentralised, user-driven wireless networks. Cardano recently announced it will be helping deliver a sustainable wireless internet network in Zanzibar and Tanzania, with hotspot owners being rewarded for providing coverage.

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Australia Blockchain Mining NFTs

Australian Mining Company to Use BSV Blockchain to Facilitate Tokens and NFTs

Progressive Minerals, an Australian mining company based in Queensland, is implementing a new infrastructure powered by the Bitcoin SV (BSV) blockchain to enhance its operations through the use of NFTs and tokenisation.

In a press release issued by Bitcoin Association, “MetaStreme scalable Bitcoin transaction engine has today announced it will partner with Predict Ecology, an environmental and ecological consulting firm”.

We are thrilled to be able to help build what we see as the future of mining.

Daniel Keane, managing director, Predict Ecology

These two companies were contracted by Progressive Minerals to develop new blockchain-based mining infrastructure that will be used across various mining operations.

How Is a Blockchain Useful for Mining?

The mining sector has many clear and present use cases for distributed data that stand to transform the industry at all levels – including monetising mining data and assisting in progressing and achieving environmental sustainability goals.

Paul Chiari, CEO, Prime Technology Services

Progressive Minerals’ business data streams will be stored on the blockchain (on-chain), including “environmental, operational, production and licensing data, demonstrating a commitment to data accuracy, integrity and transparency”. This will help the company stay abreast with compliance and streamline the analysis of mining data.

The company will also be implementing smart contract functionality to “offer a new level of surety and reliability for investors and business partners”. Smart contracts can be used to automatically execute orders after they have been filled to exact specifications, further automating some processes in the mining industry.

Mining and exploration leases, which act as rights or contracts to explore or prospect in a certain area, will be tokenised as non-fungible tokens (NFTs). These will be stored on-chain, and will allow for the assignment of rights and prospecting data, also allowing leases to have a clear line of ownership and to document changes through their life cycle.

Bitcoin SV Used for its High Throughput

The system will be powered by the enterprise-grade BSV blockchain, facilitating the processing of high volumes of mining data. In a public test, the BSV network has shown it could reach 50,000 transactions per second throughput, at the cost of two percent of a US cent, making it enticing for companies needing large amounts of data processed.

From an environmental perspective, the ability to record and audit resource sector data on the BSV blockchain will create new efficiencies and help to ease the regulatory burden that mining companies can often struggle to manage.

Daniel Keane, Predict Ecology

The data for a mine doesn’t need massively decentralised blockchains or public ledgers to be verified. It is for the exclusive use of the mine and its partners, thus using a more centralised high-throughput blockchain is ideal.

The mining industry, like many others, is one where the integrity of data is everything. This has historically been an issue within the sector, and the aim of Progressive Minerals is to change the way mining companies operate and provide a level of integrity and transparency of data for all stakeholders not previously realised.

Mathew Hancock, managing director, Progressive Minerals
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Bitcoin Bitcoin Mining Crypto News Mining

25+ Bitcoin Mining Companies Join Forces To Make Bitcoin Greener

More than 25 Bitcoin mining companies have joined forces to make Bitcoin greener thanks to the Bitcoin Mining Council (BMC), founded by MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor and backed by high-profile members including Galaxy Digital and Hive Blockchain.

In its first voluntary survey, the BMC has revealed information about Bitcoin’s sustainable energy use from over 32 percent of the current global Bitcoin network. The results show that the global mining sector uses electricity with a 67 percent sustainable power mix, representing a 56 percent growth spurt during Q2 2021.

The results of this survey show that the members of the BMC and participants in the survey are currently utilising electricity with a 67 percent sustainable power mix. Based on this data, it is estimated that the global mining industry’s sustainable electricity mix had grown to approximately 56 percent during Q2 2021, making it one of the most sustainable industries globally.

BMC report

An Attempt to Demystify the Bitcoin Mining Industry

Bitcoin’s energy usage has been the primary topic for its detractors, highlighting environmental concerns in the long term. A new wave of criticism came with Elon Musk’s decision to reverse bitcoin payments for Tesla vehicles, causing the price of Bitcoin to drop even further. 

However, recent investigations have shown that banks and gold consume more energy than Bitcoin, and most miners are moving to clean power using hydrothermal and geothermal wasted energy in countries such as Iceland and Norway. 

A recent example of clean, renewable energy is El Salvador’s plan to build a huge mining operation using its geothermal excess.

Some Pundits Are Not Convinced

It seems this report is backed by the BMC’s own analysis, assumptions and methodologies, and the validity of the data appears unclear as most responses were from a subset of the network.

During a live virtual briefing, Nic Carter, a general partner of Castle Island Ventures, asked Saylor how the Council came to these figures. Saylor said the report was based on an estimate of off-grid and unsustainable power.

Then we allocated another portion that we applied to our BMC sample in order to get a blend. The blend ended up being slightly more than the electricity grid.

I think if you back into it and take the 56 percent and then look at the 67 or 68 percent that we don’t have, that’s the out-of-sample and then you know that number is 
 50 percent sustainable 
 so 
 generally it works out that the out-of-sample mix is 
 assumed to be about 50 percent sustainable power and we tested that with a variety of analysts.

Michael Saylor on Bitcoin’s Sustainable Energy Mix

But some people were not convinced, knowing that the responses were from mostly mining companies that worked together to “provide critical information to the general public”.

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Crypto News Crypto Wallets Ethereum Mining

Norton Antivirus Reveals Norton Crypto, a Crypto Mining Add-on

NortonLifeLock is launching a new feature for their users that will allow them to mine Ethereum (ETH) from their own computers. The software is there to allow users who opt in to skip all the steps and mine crypto with only a few clicks.

From June 3, Norton 360 customers in the early adopter program were invited to mine Ethereum. At launch, the tool would only allow users to mine Ether, the cryptocurrency of the Ethereum network, the world’s second-largest crypto. However, Norton told CNN it may allow users to mine other “reputable cryptocurrencies” in the future.

We are proud to be the first consumer Cyber Safety company to offer coinminers the ability to safely and easily turn the idle time on their PCs into an opportunity to earn digital currency.

Gagan Singh, chief product officer at NortonLifeLock

The Norton press release claims its service is well suited to people who don’t want to deal with the nitty-gritty of setting up mining software and are afraid of using “unvetted code” that could be skimming or planting ransomware on their machines.

The Norton Mining Pool

Mining from a normal computer is very difficult since one requires significant power to crack the Proof-of-Work puzzle. Mining in a pool allows many computers to contribute joint resources over a network and split the reward based on how much work their machines did together.

Pools almost universally take a percentage cut of all earnings, this being a widely used standard. If it is indeed the case that users will be contributing to a mining pool, Norton will be leveraging its millions of customers’ computers to generate a new income stream.

Norton Crypto Wallet

Any earnings will be funnelled into a cloud-based wallet called the Norton Crypto Wallet. From there, users will be able to trigger transactions and receive payments. It’s funny to consider the possible additions to hashrate from 13 million Norton 360 users.

There Could Be Some Issues

Norton 360 users might need to consider tax implications before getting a surprise in the tax season. In the US, mined cryptocurrency is considered by the IRS as a taxable event and must be reported on tax returns as income.

The other side is environmental; does this mean that more people will leave their personal computers in idle to mine crypto? This might cause a higher electricity bill for some unsuspecting customers. Also, most mining farms have carbon offset technologies or make use of sustainable energy, where most individuals don’t.