Hedging against downside has always been a challenge for Bitcoin BTC miners, and the current bear market is a perfect example of how energy prices and crypto market volatility can negatively impact miners’ profit margins and their ability to stay solvent. Oftentimes, institutional and retail traders use BTC-, stablecoin- and U.S. dollar-settled derivatives (options and futures contracts) to create hedging strategies that mitigate downside in Bitcoin price, and now an instrument specific to Bitcoin mining is available to miners. The Oct. 10 launch of Luxor Hashprice NDF, a non-deliverable forward contract, will allow miners to hedge their exposure to Bitcoin …

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has been pointing out the flaws affecting the Ethereum protocol following its latest upgrade. A major issue, according to Hoskinson, is the locking mechanism that prevents investors from withdrawing their staked Ether (ETH) from the Beacon Chain until the completion of the next upgrade. “Ethereum is the Hotel California of cryptocurrencies. You can check in but you can't check out,” said Hoskinson in a recent Cointelegraph Interview. According to Hoskison, this mechanism heavily impacts ETH's liquidity and could eventually spark a liquidity crisis. “You'll have less and less Ether trading in the marketplace," he explained. "And …

Ethereum’s long-awaited transition to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism kicked off on Sept. 15, thus finally putting its long-standing transaction woes in the rearview mirror. To this point, the network is now capable of processing anywhere between 20,000–100,000 transactions per second (tps) as opposed to its previous rate of just 30 tps. Furthermore, the Merge also saw the Ethereum network become up to 99.9% more energy efficient as compared to its previous iteration, thus allaying fears of its excessive energy consumption, a criticism that still lingers quite heavily in relation to Bitcoin (BTC). Amid these developments, however, a question that …

Throughout the month of October, Bitcoin's (BTC) hash rate surged by 10.8% as it recorded new all-time highs on a daily basis. While the increase in hash rate ensures greater security for the Bitcoin network, multitudes of factors contribute to the metric. Falling GPU prices Hash rate relates to the computing power required by Bitcoin miners to mine a block. As a result, a higher hash rate demands stronger mining rigs that could help miners mine a block and earn mining rewards. As global markets recovered from chip shortages in 2022, the prices of the graphics processing units (GPU) — …

Bitcoin (BTC) miner Marathon Digital Holdings has revealed $81.3 million worth of exposure to recently bankrupted mining hosting provider Compute North. Marathon provided a breakdown of its exposure on Oct. 6 explaining the majority was in operating deposits worth $50 million, noting these deposits “were primarily related to King Mountain and Wolf Hollow security deposits and prepayments associated with the ongoing operation of those sites.” The remainder is split between $21.3 million allocated to “an unsecured senior promissory note” and $10 million in convertible preferred Compute North stock. It comes weeks after Compute North submitted a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing …

Grayscale Investments announced on Oct. 6 the formation of Grayscale Digital Infrastructure Opportunities LLC ("GDIO"), a co-investment opportunity focused on Bitcoin mining hardware. By leveraging its affiliated staking infrastructure firm, Foundry, the company plans to acquire mining equipment at reduced prices during the crypto winter. The company said the new entity will be available to individuals and institutional accredited investors at a minimum investment of $25.000. The funding is expected to be completed before the end of this year and will offer liquidity similar to private equity or infrastructure assets that have a three-to-five-year investment horizon, as Bloombergreports. Investors who …

Bitcoin (BTC), along with other cryptocurrencies, has provided people with a venue to earn passive income, making money without any active involvement. One doesn't need to take unnecessary trading risks or spend time reading and analyzing reams of information. While the concept of passive earning isn't new, cryptocurrency has undoubtedly added new dimensions to it. Concepts like compounding interest or reinvesting dividends are also applied in the cryptocurrency market, creating an ecosystem where one can earn passively. Let us discuss various ways to earn passive income with Bitcoin. This article includes interest accounts, lending, mining, trading and liquidity pool. Bitcoin …

How does the hash rate affect Bitcoin price? The main drivers of Bitcoin’s price include computational power, mining profitability and network difficulty. Since miners are compensated in Bitcoin while incurring costs in local currencies, the hash rate follows the price. That said, the more computational power the Bitcoin network employs, the higher its value is. Moreover, rational miners are only willing to mine BTC if it is profitable, which implicitly means that any other cryptocurrency with no demand for it would have zero value and miners would redirect its resources elsewhere. Additionally, the network difficulty can be used as a …

Ethereum blockchain shifted from a proof-of-work (PoW) to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism on Sept. 15, 2022. Along with this move, ETHPoW, a distinct PoW blockchain (basically the old pre-Merge Ethereum) forked from Ethereum's Merge, became live. This forked version of Ethereum aims to maintain the proof-of-work mining process for ETH miners. Any miner is permitted to add a block to the PoW network with the clear stipulation that the first valid block published is the correct one. In reality, more than one legitimate block is occasionally discovered by the network due to the latency of data propagation, creating numerous …

The electricity mix of Bitcoin (BTC) has drastically changed over the past few years, with nuclear energy and natural gas becoming the fastest growing energy sources powering Bitcoin mining, according to new data. The Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) on Tuesday released a major update to its Bitcoin mining-dedicated data source, the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI). According to the data from Cambridge, fossil fuels like coal and natural gas made up almost two-thirds of Bitcoin’s total electricity mix as of January 2022, accounting for more than 62%. As such, the share of sustainable energy sources in the …

It’s been nearly two weeks since Ethereum made its historic transition from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake, and some ex-ETH miners say they remain clueless on how to move forward. Following the Merge, many took to crypto Twitter to discuss what they believe will happen to these former Ethereum miners. On the day of the merge, Twitter user hashoveride tweeted: GPU #mining is dead less than 24 hours after the #merge. Here are the three largest #GPU chains and current daily profitability with a 3090 GPU and 6 us¢/kwh#ETC -7 ¢#XMR -37 ¢#RVN 2 ¢ The only coins showing profit have no …

As the Ethereum network’s move to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism drives adoption from institutional investors, the prices for graphics processing units (GPUs), often used for mining cryptocurrencies like Ether (ETH), have gone down in China. Following the historic Ethereum Merge on Sept. 15, the previously highly sought-out Nvidia GeForce GPUs have become significantly cheaper according to a report by the South China Morning Post. Peng, a Chinese merchant, gave the RTX 3080 as an example as the GPU’s price dropped from 8,000 yuan (1118 USD) to 5,000 yuan within 3 months. According to Peng, when Bitcoin (BTC) mining was …