According to Bitcoin miner and hosting provider Blockstream CEO Adam Back, the crypto industry will eventually find a way around, even in the face of regulatory pressure. Once an exchange shuts down or stops servicing one market, people will just move to another exchange, or move to an international exchange. If U.S. wire transfers are restricted, Bitcoin traders will move to open bank accounts in euros or Swiss francs to start trading in a different currency. The market is resilient and new options will always emerge.（Decrypt）
2.
Bitcoin infrastructure firm Blockstream expects to unveil its long-awaited Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) miner — a culmination of years of engineering work — around the third quarter of 2024. The company acquired Israeli mining hardware manufacturer Spondoolies in 2021, an brought the manufacturer’s core team into Blockstream’s mining division. The new ASIC was originally slated for a 2022 launch but Back now anticipates having the miner available in the latter half of 2024.（CoinDesk）
3.
Bit Digital announced its unaudited financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2023. Total revenue was $8.3 million for the first quarter of 2023. The majority of revenue was earned from bitcoin mining business. The Company earned 362.0 bitcoins during the quarter. The Company had cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash of $29.2 million, and total liquidity (defined as cash equivalents and restricted cash, USDC, and the fair market value of digital assets) of approximately $71.3 million. Total assets were $92.2 million as of March 31.
4.
According to BTC. com, Bitcoin has seen a mining difficulty adjustment at block height 794,304, with the mining difficulty increasing by 2.18% to 52.35 T, breaking a new record high again. The current network-wide average hashrate is 383.87 EH/s.
5.
Bitdeer announced its unaudited mining and operations updates for May 2023. Approximately 62,000 of the Company’s own mining machines for its self-mining business and Cloud Hash Rate business. Approximately 129,000 mining machines for the Company’s hosting business. Aggregate electricity capacity was 795MW across five mining datacenters. The Company’s Gedu mining datacenter in Bhutan is expected to be delivered in July 2023.
6.
Ransomware hackers have a new money-laundering trick: mining new coins to replace “tainted” ones, blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis said in a blog post on Thursday. Chainalysis said in a blog post on Thursday. The firm located 372 exchange deposit wallets that received both mining profits and ransomware proceeds, Chainalysis wrote. These addresses altogether have received $158.3 million from ransomware-related wallets since 2018.（CoinDesk）
7.
Three models of Bitmain mining rigs account for 76% of computing power on the bitcoin network, according to new research published by Coinmetrics on Tuesday.
The Antminer S19j Pro accounts for 34.3% of the network hashrate and the S19 for 28.1%, and they have been the most used machines on the network since March 2021, Coinmetrics found. The Antminer S19 XP accounts for another 13.7% of the network hashrate, said the report. Meanwhile, MicroBT’s M50 is below the threshold of detectability, the researchers said.
The report also found that the bitcoin network consumes 13.4 GW of power, 13% less than the commonly used index published by the Cambridge University’s Centre for Alternative Finance.（CoinDesk）
8.
According to glassnode analysts, miners sent $70.8 million worth of BTC to exchanges between June 5 and June 11. In addition, bitcoin reserves on U.S. crypto exchanges have fallen to their lowest level since January 2017, according to CryptoQuant. ETH holdings are also falling, with about 56 percent of total exchange assets located outside of the country. And the U.S. stablecoin market cap fell 35% in 2023, a decrease of $15 billion.（Forklog）
9.
Ivan Chebeskov, head of the Russian Ministry of Finance’s Financial Policy Department, estimates that Russian miners earn about $4 billion a year from cryptocurrency mining, with profits of about 100 billion rubles ($1.198 billion). According to his calculations, a tax on the industry under current conditions could generate about 20 billion rubles (about $240 million) for the budget. The previous bill on legal regulation of cryptocurrency mining was submitted to the State Duma in the fall of 2022, and Ivan Chebeskov expects it to be adopted at the spring session of the State Duma.（Forbes）
10.
Hut 8 and U.S. Data Mining Group, Inc. dba US Bitcoin Corp (“USBTC”) will combine in an all-stock merger of equals (the “Transaction”). The combined company will be named “Hut 8 Corp.” (“New Hut”) and will be a U.S.-domiciled entity. The Transaction is expected to establish New Hut as a large scale, publicly traded Bitcoin miner focused on economical mining, highly diversified revenue streams, and industry leading environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices.
New Hut has filed a further amendment to its Form S-4 Registration Statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. As disclosed in the Amended Registration Statement, New Hut’s expected installed self-mining capacity has increased from the previously disclosed 7.02 EH/s to 7.5 EH/s at mining facilities in Medicine Hat and Drumheller in Alberta; Niagara Falls, New York; Kearney, Nebraska; and Granbury and King Mountain, Texas upon the close of the Transaction.（PR Newswire）
11.
The Chengdu Development and Reform Commission recently sent out another SMS announcement: “virtual currency mining activities” belong to the “outdated production process equipment” content, related business activities are illegal financial activities, the relevant personnel will also be held accountable for disciplinary actions.
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