All posts tagged: Bitcoin

Ben McKenzie Says Crypto Has a Secret Ingredient: Male Loneliness

Ben McKenzie Says Crypto Has a Secret Ingredient: Male Loneliness

Published by skeptic

Ben McKenzie had a question: “When did WIRED die?” Specifically, the actor-director wanted to know when did WIRED “‘DIE,’ all caps.” McKenzie wasn’t asking for himself; he was engaging in the time-honored celebrity tradition of reading mean tweets. Although, in this case, the object wasn’t himself so much as the publication hosting the event. McKenzie, who famously played Ryan on The O.C. before becoming a leading voice of crypto skepticism, was sharing the stage with WIRED senior correspondent Andy Greenberg for the first of what will hopefully be a series of smaller events that we are calling WIRED@Night. On April 16, about 100 people gathered at event partner Ace Hotel Brooklyn to sip drinks from Aplos, Faccia Brutto, The Sorting Table, and Manojo and ponder the future of cryptocurrency. McKenzie, coauthor of Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud, has a new independent documentary in theaters called Everyone Is Lying to You for Money. Greenberg, who often writes about crypto scams, talked to him about scenes from the book and movie, …

Charles Schwab To Launch Spot Bitcoin Trading For Retail Clients

Charles Schwab To Launch Spot Bitcoin Trading For Retail Clients

Published by Jenni Sidey

Authored by Micah Zimmerman via Bitcoin Magazine, Charles Schwab announced further details and plans in their attempt to launch direct spot bitcoin trading through its new platform, Schwab Crypto™, signaling a major step by one of the country’s largest brokerage firms into the digital asset market.  The feature will roll out in phases over the coming weeks and will allow retail clients to buy and sell bitcoin and ethereum through existing Schwab platforms, the bank said.  The move gives millions of Schwab clients the ability to trade bitcoin alongside traditional holdings such as stocks, ETFs, and mutual funds. Clients will access Schwab Crypto through Charles Schwab Premier Bank, SSB, which will act as custodian for the digital assets.  Blockchain infrastructure provider Paxos will handle sub-custody and trade execution under a federally regulated trust structure. “Clients want to conduct more of their financial lives at Schwab,” said Jonathan Craig, Head of Retail Investing. “With Schwab Crypto, they can trade digital assets within their existing accounts while drawing on the service, research, and tools they rely on.” At launch, Schwab Crypto will …

The New York Times Says It’s Identified the Creator of Bitcoin

The New York Times Says It’s Identified the Creator of Bitcoin

Published by José Betancourt

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech What is the real identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious creator of Bitcoin? Is it actually a brainy Japanese man, or just someone LARPing as one? And are they sitting on a stockpile of Bitcoin worth billions of dollars today? These questions have swirled since Nakamoto published a 2008 white paper outlining Bitcoin’s underlying framework, giving birth to a multitrillion dollar industry. Now, the New York Times claims to have identified a contender for the person behind the pseudonym: British cryptographer Adam Back.  In the investigative piece, reporter John Carreyrou — the journalist who took down Theranos back in 2015 — homed in on a trove of emails Satoshi wrote to the Finnish programmer Martti Malmi. Malmi chose to release these as part of a civil trial against an Australian man who was sued for falsely claiming to be the Bitcoin creator, providing the largest corpus of Satoshi’s communications to date. After extensively analyzing the writing style and uncovering …

British cryptographer Adam Back denies NYT report that he is Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto

British cryptographer Adam Back denies NYT report that he is Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto

Published by skeptic

The identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonym of the creator of Bitcoin, remains a long-running mystery. But according to a new investigation published in the New York Times, Satoshi could be Adam Back, a British cryptographer who conducted influential early research about digital assets. Back denies that he is Satoshi. People have been trying to track down the father of Bitcoin for decades, without much success. Based on Back’s denial, it’s not clear if the Times’ tech journalist John Carreyrou, known for his reporting that took down Theranos, got much further than anyone else. Back fits the profile of the kind of person you might suspect would create the first cryptocurrency. He created Hashcash, the proof-of-work system that Satoshi used to mine bitcoin, and he is now the co-founder and CEO of Blockstream, a company building infrastructure for blockchain-based payment systems. Back even agreed with Carreyrou that he’s a reasonable suspect, and it’s probable that Satoshi is — like him — a fifty-something-year-old British Cypherpunk. (In that case, yes, the use of a Japanese moniker …

Iran Demanding Huge Bitcoin Payments to Pass Through Strait of Hormuz

Iran Demanding Huge Bitcoin Payments to Pass Through Strait of Hormuz

Published by José Betancourt

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech Late Tuesday evening, US president Donald Trump said the US had agreed to a two-week ceasefire with Iran that included the opening of the Strait of Hormuz, a key chokepoint for the global oil and gas industry. But while his defense secretary Pete Hegseth vowed that “commerce will flow,” Iran will still be levying a substantial toll for any oil tankers passing through, something that remains unchanged following Trump’s announcement. The shakedown will involve the use of digital currencies, an extremely popular choice among scammers, human traffickers — and apparently governments trying to circumvent international sanctions. Hamid Hosseini, a spokesperson for Iran’s Oil, Gas and Petrochemical Products Exporters’ Union, told the Financial Times that the tariff will amount to $1 per barrel of oil. According to the International Energy Agency, an average of 20 million barrels of oil passed through the Strait before the war began, although it remains unclear how much revenue the toll will amount to, …

Heatbit Maxi Pro Review: a Space Heater That Also Mines Bitcoin

Heatbit Maxi Pro Review: a Space Heater That Also Mines Bitcoin

Published by skeptic

But once you’ve set up your device, Heatbit will track and file your mining revenue to your phone, even if you don’t yet have a bitcoin wallet set up. After you reach the transfer minimum of 100,000 satoshis, or one thousandth of one bitcoin ($66 at April 2026 prices), you can transfer this to your wallet and, presumably, spend it. Heatbit’s app is compatible with the Lightning networks and most major exchanges (Coinbase, Binance, OKX, BitFinex). Unlike many air purifiers that activate only when there are air quality issues, the Heatbit continually pushes air through its HEPA filter while the miner and heater are active. While Heatbit recommends filter replacement once every six months, in practice, the app showed that the filter was being used up by about 1 percent a day. For whatever reason, my Heatbit app refused to believe that I was not in Seattle, and so my exterior air quality readings were all tied to King County, Washington. Early quirks aside, the ease of onramp is admirable for a device not aimed …

US Senators Unveil ‘Mined In America Act’ To Reshore BTC Mining, Codify Bitcoin Strategic Reserve

US Senators Unveil ‘Mined In America Act’ To Reshore BTC Mining, Codify Bitcoin Strategic Reserve

Published by Jenni Sidey

Authored by Micah Zimmerman via BitcoinMagazine.com, Republican Senators Bill Cassidy and Cynthia Lummis introduced legislation Monday aimed at reshaping the U.S. digital asset mining sector, tightening supply chains, and embedding bitcoin into federal reserve strategy. The proposal, titled the “Mined in America Act,” would establish a federal certification program for domestic crypto mining operations while phasing out reliance on foreign-manufactured hardware. It also seeks to codify Donald Trump’s executive order creating a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, placing the policy on statutory footing, according to a release on the matter. “Digital asset mining is a big part of our economy. We should be doing it here in America,” Cassidy said in a statement, framing the bill as a supply chain and manufacturing initiative. Lummis tied the legislation to a broader push to position the United States as a global hub for digital assets. “The Mined in America Act brings this industry home through forward-thinking initiatives to secure our financial future,” she said. The bill directs the Department of Commerce to create a voluntary “Mined in America” certification for mining facilities and pools that …

Two Literal Crypto Bros Built a Real Estate Empire. Then the Homes Started to Fall Apart

Two Literal Crypto Bros Built a Real Estate Empire. Then the Homes Started to Fall Apart

Published by skeptic

As they eyed further expansion in Detroit, the brothers worked with real estate professional Shawn Reed, who, according to court documents, started to identify and sometimes help renovate properties for RealT to tokenize. Unbeknownst to the Jacobsons, Reed had a checkered past; he had previously served prison time for conspiracy to commit bank fraud and once agreed that he could be described as a “slumlord.” He teed up deals that helped RealT to keep pace with the now-soaring demand for its tokens. I spoke with one investor, who posts on Telegram as TokNist, who said that when they first heard about RealT, they understood the proposition immediately. A French national living in Asia, TokNist (who asked to not be named out of fear of retaliation by other RealT investors) had wanted to buy real estate but couldn’t secure a loan. RealT offered a way to invest small sums without any bank involvement. “A lot of people are like me,” says TokNist. “They are not wealthy speculators. They are simple people who want a piece of …

Ex-OpenAI Researcher’s Hedge Fund Reveals Big Bitcoin Miner Bets In New SEC Filing

Ex-OpenAI Researcher’s Hedge Fund Reveals Big Bitcoin Miner Bets In New SEC Filing

Published by Jenni Sidey

Authored by Christina Comben via cointelegraph, Leopold Aschenbrenner has built a US stock portfolio heavily concentrated in companies that supply the power and infrastructure behind the artificial intelligence boom. The former OpenAI researcher, who left the lab’s superalignment team to launch San Francisco-based hedge fund Situational Awareness LP, has expanded it from $383 million in assets in early 2025 to a reported $5.52 billion in equity positions in its latest 13F filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The fund’s 13F filing for Q4 2025 shows a highly concentrated portfolio built around betting that the real winners of the AI boom won’t be chatbots, but the power plants and data centers that feed them. Situational Awareness reported $5.52 billion in US equity positions across 29 holdings, with a large share of that value clustered in a handful of AI infrastructure names. Those include graphics processing unit (GPU) cloud provider CoreWeave, fuel cell and power specialist Bloom Energy, Intel, optics maker Lumentum and Bitcoin miner-turned-AI infrastructure play Core Scientific.  Aschenbrenner first drew attention as a …

After The Iran Attack, Is Bitcoin Giving A “Green Light” Ahead Of Monday’s Market Open

After The Iran Attack, Is Bitcoin Giving A “Green Light” Ahead Of Monday’s Market Open

Published by Jenni Sidey

The first time Iran found itself in a major regional war with Donald Trump about to enter the White House, was April 13, 2024 when as part of escalating tensions with Israel, “Iran began an attack on Israel by launching dozens of suicide drones” on April 13, 2024. That said, it is s stretch to call that particular weapons exchange war, as both sides just wanted some theatrical appreciation rather than rearranging the borders of the middle East. What is more notable, is that the war started in the deep dark of a Saturday morning (April 13, 2024) when global markets were closed, and the only traded asset was crypto in general, and bitcoin in particular. The kneejerk reaction was sharply lower.  The second time Iran found itself in a major regional war with Donald Trump (already in) the White House, was a little over a year later, on June 21-22, when in a much more serious and aggressive attack, Operation Midnight Hammer saw airstrikes, cruise missile attacks and B-2 bombers drop Massive Ordnance Penetrators on three key …