Square Inc., a crypto-friendly mobile payments company, is planning to invest $5 million in a solar-powered Bitcoin (BTC) mining facility for Blockstream Mining, offering further insight into Jack Dorsey’s continued support for blockchain infrastructure. Chris Cook, Blockstream’s chief information officer, announced the collaborative partnership on Saturday, where he outlined plans to build the open-sourced mining facility at one of Blockstream’s United States operations. "Together, we plan to provide public transparency by sharing the project economics and knowledge we’ve gained from building a Bitcoin mine powered by renewable energy,” he said, adding: “Ultimately, we hope to demonstrate how bitcoin mining in …

Playboy, the lifestyle and entertainment brand famous for its distinctive logo — among other things, has launched its first collection of five animated NFTs, on a new NFT market placed dubbed “Raretoshi” which is backed by Blockstream’s Liquid sidechain. The NFTs were unveiled during the lead up to the 2021 Bitcoin Miami conference on June 3: Announcing Reimagining the Rabbit: Miami, Playboy’s first collection of animated NFTs, featuring @aylaelmoussa @mbsjq @rek0de @JonNoorlander- Debuting 6.3.21 at Bitcoin 2021 on the Raretoshi marketplace. Video credit: Ayla El-Moussa. Learn more at https://t.co/2JkHnyq3J9 pic.twitter.com/fUSCHuvYuS — Playboy (@Playboy) June 2, 2021 All of the NFTs …

Canadian-based Blockchain tech company Blockstream announced the launch of a security token backed by the company's mining production on March 29. It offers an alternative to investing in Bitcoin mining stocks, with the company providing non-US qualified investors exposure to Bitcoin mining through the Blockstream Mining Note security token. BMN represents 2,000 terahash per second of hashrate from Blockstream's mining facilities. The Bitcoin mined for BMN will be held in cold storage for three years, and will be distributed to the final token holders at the end of that time frame. Blockstream plans to begin BMN mining operations by July …

Italian luxury car manufacturer Mazzanti Automobili has launched its security token offering on regulated digital marketplace STOKR. As part of the offering, Mazzanti aims to raise 999,999 euros ($1.2 million) on STOKR to develop a special edition of its hypercar model Evantra Millecavalli R. According to a Thursday announcement, Mazzanti’s STO will allow investors to purchase MZZ tokens, priced at 1 euro each. The token is issued by Mazzanti via Blockstream AMP, a platform for the tokenization of securities built on the Liquid sidechain of Bitcoin, which has been directly integrated with STOKR. As part of the STO, MZZ investors …

Blockstream has added six more members to the federation that governs Liquid, the firm's Bitcoin sidechain for inter-exchange settlement network. The six new Liquid Federation members include Bitcoin web wallet Coinos, crypto custodian Komainu, network privacy firm Nym, blockchain development company Vulpem Ventures, broker Watchdog Capital, and Liquid Network settlement platform Sideswap. The #LiquidNetwork Federation grows to a total of 59 with six new members announced today. The six new members are @coinoswallet, Komainu, @nymproject, @side_swap, @vulpemventures, and @WatchdogCapital. https://t.co/QkluG8ivIh pic.twitter.com/CudS30Xyjv — Liquid Network (@Liquid_BTC) January 11, 2021 Liquid was announced at the end of 2015 as a Bitcoin sidechain …

Finance Redefined is Cointelegraph's DeFi-centric newsletter, delivered to subscribers every Wednesday. Today the crypto world is celebrating Bitcoin’s new all-time high. We did it guys! We’re back to $20,000 after three grueling years. So for this reason, this will be a bit of a Bitcoin-themed newsletter. How is Bitcoin related to DeFi, you ask? Well, for one thing, DeFi’s total value locked has a delta of about 0.2 to Bitcoin’s price. This means that for each 1% that BTC price goes higher or lower, DeFi TVL changes by 0.2%. Most of that relationship is due to the peculiar accounting choice …

Blockstream’s Samson Mow wants to move the conversation away from Bitcoin’s (BTC) performance in transactions per second and toward its role in ushering in “a new financial paradigm,” that is, serving as a permissionless medium for the store and transfer of value. #Bitcoin moves nearly half a million dollars in value around the globe permissionlessly every second. It was never about transactions per second and coffee. It's all about value transacted per second and a new financial paradigm. #VTPS not #TPS. Nothing comes close to @BTC. pic.twitter.com/aXfDauPx9b — Samson Mow (@Excellion) December 2, 2020 Mow’s argument is that “VPTS [value …

A new report has determined that London was the most likely place Satoshi Nakamoto worked on Bitcoin (BTC) between 2008 and 2010. Report author Doncho Karaivanov reviewed several factors in order to justify the conclusion, including an analysis of timestamps of Satoshi’s published materials, his use of regional colloquialisms and word spellings, and the fact that The Times headline embedded in the genesis block was specific to England’s print version of the periodical. The idea that Satoshi was British is not new, as hundreds of journalists, sleuths and investigators have thoroughly pored over traces of the Bitcoin creator’s activity and …

A Bitcoin services startup based in South America has just launched the first Bitcoin node connected to the Blockstream satellite network within Venezuela. According to a Sept. 25 blog post from startup Cryptobuyer, the launch of the node will keep the Bitcoin (BTC) blockchain updated for Venezuela users without being dependent on a local internet connection. Crypto training course provider AnibalCripto deployed the node while CryptoBuyer provided financial and logistical support. “Having a 24/7 always-available digital money system independent of local internet infrastructure is now a reality,” said AnibalCripto CEO Anibal Garrido. “With this development, we are no longer subject …

It is a question that many in the crypto community must have asked themselves at least once. The news of Wladimir van der Laan taking a temporary hiatus, prompted us to explore what some might consider to be an improbable, yet highly impactful situation. A Bitcoin Core developer that is also a maintainer of the project's GitHub account (i.e., someone who can “merge code into the master branch”) is a rare commodity. To put this in perspective, if a Bitcoin Core developer is a black belt, then someone like van der Laan is a third-degree black belt. To set the …

Bitcoin Core developer Pieter Wuille has migrated from Blockstream to Chaincode Labs. Wuille has been with Blockstream from the beginning, having co-founded the company in 2014. When asked about Wuille's departure, Blocksteam’s CEO Adam Back said: “Pieter’s doing what he always has — working on Bitcoin — and he’s still a Blockstream advisor and continues to collaborate with our research team Andrew Poelstra, Jonas Nick and Tim Ruffing on muSig along with independent researchers and contributors. So I think that means Blockstream contributors on MuSig research roughly going from 4/5th to 3/5th of the people actively working on muSig cryptor.” …

On August 24, INX launched a tokenized initial public offering or IPO which was cleared by the SEC. The company describes its mission as bringing "regulated digital asset opportunities to institutions and retail investors". The following day, several crypto influencers tweeted what appeared to be promotional statements about the company and its token. Stefan Jespers, known as WhalePanda on Twitter, compared the INX token to Binance's BNB: Source: Twitter. A similar sentiment was voiced by Jameson Lopp, the CTO of Casa and a self-proclaimed cypherpunk: Both Jespers and Lopp are considered Bitcoin maximalists — a group that some categorize as …