The Banning of Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill 2019, on its way to the Indian Parliament for debate and possible legislation, seeks to impose a stunning 10-year imprisonment as penalty for any person or business found buying, selling, holding, or mining crypto-currency in India. It has wording to tell wilful mining apart from "crypto-jacking" (malware that mines crypto on a computer or portable computing device without its user's knowledge). Violations of this Act will also be treated as "cognizable" and "non-bailable," meaning that the accused cannot seek bail, anticipatory or in custody, while their case is being taken up by India's criminal-justice system.

A Cognizable Offense under Indian law, is comparable to a Felony under U.S. law, and some of the most heinous crimes, such as homicide and rape, are classified as these. The Indian Government has reportedly taken this step to clamp down on rampant tax-evasion, "hawala" money transfers (illegal money transfers disconnected from the banking system), and financing of terrorism, drug-trade, and social unrest by foreign NGOs and eco-terrorists. The Bill is expected to have smooth sailing through Parliament as the incumbent political administration enjoys a simple majority in the Lok Sabha (essentially House of Commons); and has a good sway over the Rajya Sabha (Council of States, but essentially House of Lords).

The new year does not seem to bring good tidings alone for NVIDIA, with yet another class action lawsuit promising to keep their legal team busy. When we first posted about NVIDIA stock prices falling 2.1% following the launch of their Turing microarchitecture cards, there was no warning that just a few days after that post things would get worse. Indeed, as of today, the NVIDIA stock price on the NASDAQ stock market has fallen nearly 54% from the 1-year high that was only this past calendar quarter. California-based Schall law firm believes this drop in price can be attributed to more than just the volatile trading that has been ongoing in general in the stock markets, and has decided to file a class action lawsuit against NVIDIA.

Schall Law believes, and we quote, "the Company made false and misleading statements to the market. NVIDIA touted its ability to monitor the cryptocurrency market and make rapid changes to its business as necessary. The Company claimed to be "masters at managing our channel, and we understand the channel very well." NVIDIA also claimed to the market that any drop off in demand for its GPUs amongst cryptocurrency miners would not negatively impact the Company's business because of strong demand for GPUs from the gaming market. Based on these facts, the Company's public statements were false and materially misleading throughout the class period. When the market learned the truth about NVIDIA, investors suffered damages." These are strong words indeed, as oft is the case with the launch of class action lawsuits, and they have put out a press statement to accompany a link for those wanting to join along which can be seen in the source below.

In a move that made us go "WTF" internally, Razer has decided to test their fanbase's loyalty more so than ever before. Today, the company introduced Razer Softminer, a mining software program that is intended to be installed on computers and run to mine cryptocurrency. But instead of the users getting whatever new cryptocurrency is in fashion, Razer instead wants to retain all mined crypto and in turn "award" users with the so-called Razer Silver- loyalty reward credits, in their own words. The miner appears to be running off a version of the Gamma desktop application, as per speculation from TweakTown.

Razer Softminer utilizes heavy GPU performance loads, and there is no mention as to what the actual mining is for. It is clear, however, that the users are not mining Razer Silver (which Razer is quick to admit is not cryptocurrency) and these loyalty credits are handed out in an equivalent manner based on the mining power of the system. In their estimate, a sytem with at least a NVIDIA GTX 1050 or AMD RX 460 running the mining program for a whole day will net ~500 Razer Silver, and these can be used to "redeem Razer peripherals, digital rewards such as games, vouchers and more" from a dedicated rewards page.

Maybe the guys at ASUS haven't noticed it, but this is probably the worst time to announce an effort to promote cryptocurrency mining. The crypto market has fallen about 80% since its peak in 2017, and this November has been an special tough month for crypto investors with Bitcoin going under $4,000 for a few days. Miners are running away and a lot of people think the bubble is finally exploding. Companies such as GIGABYTE are suffering the consequences, but ASUS seems to be quite sure that the situation isn't that bad.

They have partnered with blockchain technology provider Quantumcloud and they will encourage users to use their idle GPUs to mine cryptocurrencies. Yeah, that's right. There are no details on what crypto currencies will be mined with Quantumcloud's software, but at least ASUS is letting now those potential users that they "won't get rich quick, but you can earn some easy money with your idle GPUs". In fact there's a disclaimer telling they do not "guarantee that users of its software will make any earnings or profit" and ASUS adds that users "are responsible for considering their own usage costs". Maybe a year ago this could have been a thing, but the idea seems really uncool right now.

The Wall Street Journal has come forward with a story confirming what we all knew, but could have been left out of the cryptocurrency narrative for various reasons: that bots are used on a daily basis to manipulate pricing of these digital assets. The practice includes various tricks, such as spoofing (creating a hue order in the ledger and then canceling), pump-and-dump schemes (where players can resort to a variety of manipulation techniques to pump um a given product's pricing in order to then dump all their positions at the ballooned price) and ping-pong transactions (where a holder of multiple wallets makes extensive trades between his assets, never moving crypto in or out of his control, but placing extra orders and volume on the markets.

Of course, most of these practices have been outlawed in real-world investment scenarios, as price manipulation doesn't really bode well for a free market. However, some players in the crypto sphere (trader Kjetil Eilersten, who developed the market-manipulation program Quatloo Trader) go as far as defending pricing manipulation tools' implementation, saying that a market where "everybody manipulates" results in a zero-sum loss for anyone. Now isn't that refreshing.

Cryptocurrency prices continue their downward slide making them no longer viable to mine on GPUs. The value of Ethereum has dropped to USD 256, down from its historic high of $1,250 this January. Bitcoin fell to below $6,000 Wednesday, way down from its late-2017 high of $19,000. A 79 percent devaluation isn't the worst of Ethereum's problems. The currency is facing stiff inflation from conversions to other cryptocurrencies or the Dollar. At its peak, ETH held 32 percent of all cryptocurrency market cap, beaten only by BTC at 39 percent. Now ETH only makes 14 percent.

The cryptocurrency phenomenon and the growth of a keen audience of cryptocurrency owners was never going to go unnoticed by cyber-criminals. To achieve their nefarious goals they typically use classical phishing techniques, however these often go beyond the 'ordinary' scenarios we have become familiar with. By drawing inspiration from ICO (initial coin offering) investments and the free distribution of crypto coins, cyber criminals have been able to profit from both avid cryptocurrency owners and rookies alike.

Some of the most popular targets are ICO investors, who seek to invest their money in start-ups in the hope of gaining a profit in the future. For this group of people, cyber-criminals create fake web pages that simulate the sites of official ICO projects, or try to gain access to their contacts so they can send a phishing email with the number of an e-wallet for investors to send their cryptocurrency to. The most successful attacks use well-known ICO projects. For example, by exploiting the Switcheo ICO using a proposal for the free distribution of coins, criminals stole more than $25,000 worth of cryptocurrency after spreading the link through a fake Twitter account.

After Google has actually announced a change to their financial services-related ad policies that will ban all cryptocurrency-related ads that run through its advertising platform, reports now place Twitter as the next major service to follow suit. According to Sky News, the banning will affect the majority of ads relating to cryptocurrency products, services, and advice, cutting it diagonally and indiscriminately if services are actually legit or fakes. The publication says the decision comes "amid looming regulatory intervention in the sector."

Sky's sources say this ban will enter into effect within the next two weeks. If so, this is now the third major servie (after Facebook and Google) to ban all crypto-related content form its advertisements. That regulatory intervention is looming on the sector is putting it mildly; and it's high time that happened. The cryptocurrency market really is "being chilled", to quote Mike Lempres, chief legal and risk officer at Coinbase. And it's coming from all sides: regulatory bodies, general services, John Oliver shows, mainstream media, and even investors' own risk-assessment. It was bound to happen - the frenzy was getting quite old, really - and is an expected development. Let's hope this is just the beginning of a renewal of sorts for the cryptocurrency and blockchain world.

Despite not being backed by an official statement, NVIDIA's next-generation crypto-mining Turing graphics cards are expected to be revealed at GTC 2018 between March 26 to 29. According to DigiTimes's latest report, NVIDIA is expecting a drop in demand for graphics card later this year. In an effort to prolong the lifecycle of their current graphics cards, mass production for Turing won't start until the third quarter of 2018. Sources around the industry have also revealed that NVIDIA had a sit-down with AIB partners to address the current situation. In short, NVIDIA partners are now forbidden to promote activities related to cryptocurrency mining and to sell bulks of consumer graphics cards to cryptominers.

In what could bring cheers to PC gamers, and tears to miners, NVIDIA is reportedly wary of a possible drop in cryptocurrencies through 2018. This directly affects the company, since GPUs are used in mining various cryptocurrencies, which triggered inflation in prices of graphics cards from Q2-2017 to Q1-2018. Over the past couple of weeks, prices of popular high-end GPUs such as the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti have cooled, although not back to their original levels. NVIDIA's manufacturing division, which sub-contracts silicon fabrication to TSMC, is calculating the impact a cryptocurrency slump could have on its supply-chain, and are being conservative with their orders to the foundry. A drop in demand could leave the company with vast amounts of unsold inventories based on an old-generation architecture (Pascal, in the wake of Volta/Ampere), which could result in multi-billion-dollar inventory write-offs. According to a Digitimes report, NVIDIA has placed restrictions on its add-in card (AIC) partners on marketing cryptocurrency mining abilities of their graphics cards, and selling directly to large miners.

In addition to a slump in demand for cryptocurrencies, 2018 could see introduction of purpose-built crypto-mining ASICs that are tailored for popular cryptocurrencies. Purpose-built ASICs tend to be extremely economical for medium-thru-large scale miners, in comparison to GPUs. The third horseman is policy. While several governments around the world have developed an appreciation for blockchain technology for its resilience to tampering, fraud, and data-theft (which could be implemented in safekeeping government- and bank-records); governments are, understandably, anti-cryptocurrency, as it undermines sovereign legal tender issued by central banks, and aids tax-evasion. Several governments through 2017-18 have announced measures to crack down on cryptocurrency mining and use as tender. This has led to a further drop in public interest in cryptocurrencies, as large ICO investors are weary of losing money in a highly volatile market. Close to half the ICOs have failed.

So, what's cheaper than building your own cryptomining rig? Stealing one, of course. With the humor aside, the Associated Press reported that around 600 cryptomining computers were stolen from multiple data centers in Iceland over the last three months. The first three thefts occurred in December, and the fourth took place recently in January. So far, the Icelandic authorities have apprehended 11 individuals, including a security guard, in connection with the series of heists. According to the publication, the stolen computers are estimated to worth almost $2 million. Unfortunately, the police haven't had any lucky locating the whereabouts of the stolen goods. However, they are actively monitoring electric consumption in the country, since cryptomining tends to require high power usage. They've also contacted local internet service providers, electricians, and storage space rentals to ask for their cooperation in reporting any abnormal requests for more power.

The title of this piece is both question and answer, though users that keep up with PC-related news knew the answer already. Jon Peddie Research, in a new report, pegs the number of total graphics cards sold to miners at a pretty respectable 3 million units (worth some $776 million). That's some 3 million gamers that could be enjoying video games on their PCs right now, or which would be able to enjoy them at a much lower price that they had to recently pay to have the privilege.

AMD has been the primary benefactor here - its GPU market share went up by 8.1%, while NVIDIA's dropped by 6% and Intel's by 1.9% (the fact that Intel's graphics processing units come embedded in the company's processors helps keep that number stable). As it is, attachment rates of GPUs to systems was over 100% at 136%, the result of miners buying more cards per system in an effort to maximize profits. Jon Peddie thinks that gaming will still be the key player to drive GPU sales, though "augmented by the demand from cryptocurrency miners." The firm also expects demand for GPUs to slacken, coeteris paribus, due to "increasing utilities costs and supply and demand forces that drive up AIB prices." However, for those looking for prices to drop before upgrading their system, the news aren't rosy: the article states that pricing will not drop in the foreseeable future, so owners of GPUs that can actually mine already are being encouraged to mine while not gaming, so as to try and offset the markups in the current GPU offerings.

Coinbase, one of the world's largest cryptoexchanges - which is also one of those with the most solid footing when it comes to these kind of exchange - has announced via email that it will be disclosing around 13,000 users' data to the IRS. No doubt this is a move by the company to improve its footing even more with state institutions; however, this will certainly reduce consumers' trust in the exchange - at least, for those customers who weren't considering having to pay taxes on their crypto earnings.

What prompted this move by Coinbase? Well, back in November 2016, the IRS, through a San Francisco-based judge, started court proceedings which would see all of Coinbase users' data to be delivered to the services. Coinbase fought over these court proceedings, but ultimately caved in after the IRS's proposal changed from "all users" to a system that's likely based on trading volume. This is why "only" 13,000 users will see their personal data (taxpayer ID, name, birth date, address, and historical transaction records for certain higher-transacting customers during the 2013-2015 period) being delivered to the IRS as part of a major tax evasion investigation (which should surprise no one, really).

ARCHOS is providing cryptocurrency enthusiasts with the perfect hardware wallet to secure their bitcoins and other currencies, to ensure cold storage of private keys and to prevent hacking attempts. Unveiled at the MWC 2018 (Hall 6 - Stand B60), the ARCHOS Safe-T mini will be available starting June 2018, at 49.99 €.

ARCHOS is an active member of the SYSTEMATIC PARIS-REGION cluster who has created a specific branch Digital Trust & Security aiming to promote and develop worldwide champions in cybersecurity. ARCHOS Safe-T mini is in line with the dynamics of this thematic group, which, on the cryptocurrency, has partners like Secure-IC, OCamlPro or Gemalto. Digital Trust & Security has also supported and facilitated the emergence and deployment of major collaborative projects such as iTrac or MoneyTrack.

ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings) were 2017's talk in the cryptocurrency work: they were akin to the Dot-com craziness in the late 1990's, early 2000's, in that investment and speculation moved billions of dollars. Wherever you turned, every week, and sometimes more than twice per day, ICOs were popping out - initial investment efforts much like Kickstarter in "cool" new projects built on the blockchain technology. According to Tokendata, around 46% of 2017's ICOs resulted in failed projects: of the 902 crowdsales that took place last year, 142 failed at the funding stage, and 276 have failed, due to the "developers" either taking the money and running, or choosing the less obvious approach of letting the project fade into obscurity - alongside the collectively raised $233 million between them.

As if those numbers weren't high and disheartening enough as they are, an additional 113 ICOs are being classified as "semi-failed": the teams behind the projects have either started the process of obscuring their activities, stopping to communicate on social media, or their community has become so small as to mean the project has no chance of success. All in all, the 46% failed ICOs could soon grow to a staggering 59% of either confirmed failures or failures-in-the-making.

Blockchain technologies will eventually change the world, eventually. Whether or not cryptocurrencies will be part of that world, however, is still up for debate. Venezuela, however, is looking to reap dividends from the current cryptocurrency craze before the final answer to that question has a chance of being answered. As the country has entered a severely crippled economic and civil state, the search for a way to raise government funds has led to the development of the petro cryptocurrency - which is linked, as one would expect, to the country's primary export and income source: oil.

As part of the petro pre-sale, investors were being offered $60 petro tokens at discounted rates that they can exchange for actual petros during a planned Mars ICO (Initial Coin Offering). After that ICO has been gone through, a petro will supposedly represent a barrel of crude from a specific division in the country's Orinoco oil belt. Is this a pre-buy for a barrel of crude of sorts? It seems so. It's also an extremely risky move for investors, though, but nothing that they aren't used to already: futures trading does exist, after all.

Coinbase, one of the world's largest - and more transparent, in legal terms - cryptocurrency exchanges, has announced the start of a new cryptocurrency payment program. Coinbase Commerce is a new service that enables merchants to accept multiple cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum and Litecoin) directly into a user-controlled wallet as payment for services rendered or products acquired. Coinbase Commerce can be directly integrated into a merchant's checkout flow or added as a payment option on an e-commerce platform with just an email address and a phone.

This is another step to cryptocurrency world domination, and one of the most important steps towards widespread adoption of these as actual stores of value. The difficulty of translating cryptocurrency into real world value and products - which has seen better days, but has since seen key players withdraw from accepting these as payments - is one of the remaining walls towards widespread, mainstream adoption, and could provide a window for crypto in general to abandon its actual relevance as mere speculative investment. Some platforms already exist - TenX and BitPay come to mind, for instance. however, Coinbase as an exchange has some of the more solid footings in the cryptocurrency industry - and financial markets as well - so this is definitely a high-impact move that could help cement a future based in cryptocurrency trades.

Remember the revived pressure on cryptocurrencies on account of news that South Korea might halt trading in their territory? Well, the country's finance minister, Kim Dong-yeon, who previously said that shutting down exchanges was "a live option but government ministries need to very seriously review it," came on the record this Wednesday to, let's say, set the record straight, clarifying that "There is no intention to ban or suppress cryptocurrency (market)." The minister, then, added that the government's immediate task is to "regulate exchanges". Those two statements certainly leave a lot of space in-between, since the shutting down of some exchanges while some others are left operating would not, in fact, result in an outright ban. Let's call it pruning, shall we?

The intention, it seems, is to be able to cut out the unregulated parts of the market, that take the form of unregulated exchanges, where the country's customs earlier announced it had uncovered illegal cryptocurrency foreign exchange trading worth nearly $600 million. This, it seems, is the real target for South Korea's newfound steam.

Welcome back to Confessions of a Crypto Miner… my bi-weekly column about a crypto miner from 2013 trying to get caught up with the latest standards. I'm presently mining and reporting to you from a dual GTX 1080 based rig mining zCash.

In the last entry, I got my hardware & software set up and started mining. If you were monitoring the miner via the stats link, you may have noticed a few offline moments 2-3 days ago. This was due to me installing a nice new power monitoring setup and taking some measurements at different settings, all with the goal of finding the most efficient way to run the miner long term, to maximize profits. We now have all the data on hand and can now draw conclusions from it. There are two things I'd like to investigate with this article: 240 VAC's impact on power draw, and how the graphics card power limit setting affects profit margins.

Maingear, an award-winning PC system integrator of custom gaming desktops, is partnering with popular eSports brand Unikrn to bring UnikoinGold (UKG) crypto-mining capable PCs to life. The new family of PCs currently consists of two models: the Maingear ACM (Advanced Crypto Miner) and the Maingear ACM PRO. Although Maingear hasn't officially disclosed the technical specifications, the product page gives us a glimpse of the upcoming PCs. The systems are housed inside a spectacular cube-shaped chassis with unique MARC II artwork and gorgeous automotive paint finishes. The ACM model can support up to six graphics cards. Additionally, the ACM PRO model provides additional options for expansion and comes in a rack mountable chassis. Although the systems are designed to mine UnikoinGold, they can be employed to mine Ethereum as well. Both models will be available later this year.

Apart from the new partnership with Unikrn, Maingear also announced that they now accept UnikoinGold as a payment option for their products. From this point forward, their products will come with an option to connect to Unikrn Connekt where gamers can earn UnikoinGold for playing ranked matches while also tracking their statistics and progress in their favorite games.

As I have mentioned on the forums here at TechPowerUp a few times, I was an active crypto-miner during one of the most tumultuous times in crypto history: The period between 2013 and 2015. Rather than tell you a long and sad story, I will say just this: I ended up with a net loss by the end of this era, and it wasn't a good time to be an investor if you didn't like roller coaster rides. The reasons I lost money are many, but I think I can attribute them to primarily a lack of experience, a lack of written records, and really, a complete lack of a plan.

My New Plan
Yes, I'm planning on mining again. I've always been drawn to the tech, and I am in a much better position to do so now. Ironically, this time around, I'm not really in it for the money. I've already been there, done that, and it's too stressful for me. Having no end goal of riches doesn't set me up for failure. I think it is a more realistic mindset for taking on this project. It also gives me a chance to document my endeavor to the world, and to you, dear reader. I hope we all learn something here.

Cryptocurrency value has begun a tumultuous plummet since yesterday, in a market shrinkage that's being mostly correlated with an announcement by South Korean finance minister Kim Dong-yeon that a ban on cryptocurrency trading could still happen, pending a government review. South Korea is one of the world's most relevant economy and technology players, so a ban there could certainly start a domino effect in other countries.

""There are no disagreements over regulating speculation," minister Kim Dong-yeon specifically said - a move that would include a ban on anonymous cryptocurrency account, thus spelling doom for some privacy-focused cryptocurrencies like Monero and ZCash from being traded in the country, for sure. The minister also places a heavy value in being able to tax the income made on virtual currency, and added that shutting down the exchanges was "a live option but government ministries need to very seriously review it."

M&A Technology continues to innovate with the latest technology and is shipping its Manda Miner which can be configured as an Ethereum or ZCash mining server. The Manda Miner is available now. The Manda Miner is a purpose built, application specific server solution for the cryptocurrency market. It performs at ~200MH/s for Ethereum or ~2400H/s for ZCash. The system designed by experienced cryptocurrency systems engineers is assembled at an ISO certified factory in Texas with the highest quality materials available.

The Manda Miner is a data center ready, performance optimized cool and quiet running cryptocurrency mining server. The Manda Miner is FCC B verified and housed in a 4U chassis specifically for crypto-mining purposes functional as a standalone unit or as a data center cabinet rack-mountable unit. The system's eight high performance graphics cards are optimized to interface with a standard motherboard for manageability and high quality performance. The system utilizes a highly efficient power supply and cooling fans designed to ensure operational efficiency and reliability.

Crytek have announced a partnership with CRYCASH, an independent decentralized ecosystem of products for gamers fueled by an all-new, gamer-centric cryptocurrency. CRYCASH will be launching with a token sale from December 12th 2017 to January 15th 2018.

"Our motto is creating products which let gamers and developers make more from their passion. The CRYCASH ecosystem solves two problems at once: it gives gamers a way to monetize game time by completing in-game tasks, set by game developers, while providing developers with decentralized sales options for games and other virtual items," explained Wachtang Budagaschwili, CRYCASH CEO. "CRYCASH will consist of four major components: Plink, a communications app for gamers and CRYCASH wallet; an advertising platform; an eSports platform for gaming tournaments and other events; and a virtual asset marketplace."

Opera has announced that the latest, Release Candidate (RC) version of their web browser now incorporates an innovative cryptocurrency mining protection baked in. Opera has been one of the most versatile browsers for some time now, offering integrated VPN, AdBlocker, and bandwidth reduction on its releases. Some issues, such as measure of lacking visibility against Firefox and Chrome, and performance that's seldom in the top spot from the available offerings in the market, has kept this browser from being the go-to option for users. Now, the opera team have again innovated, by integrating a cryptocurrency web mining blocker onto the latest release.

The solution, dubbed NoCoin, works within the confines of the integrated AdBlocking protection, with extended lists that eliminates cryptocurrency mining scripts that "overuse your device's computing ability." To enable the mining protection, users need to go to Settings or Preferences. The NoCoin (Cryptocurrency) setting can be found in Recommended lists of ad filters in the Block ads page. "With NoCoin turned on, pages embedded with cryptocurrency mining scripts will be blocked in a similar way our mechanism blocks ads," said Opera desktop QA Kornelia Mielczarczyk. This is all well and good, but some extensions already offer this kind of protection, and with Google adding their own AdBlocking solution to Chrome in early 2018, this feature exclusivity likely won't remain an additional arrow in Opera's feature quiver for long.