Next time someone tries to poo-poo the renewable credentials of Bitcoin (BTC) mining, remember AmityAge Mining Farm. Founded by Gabriel Kozak and Dušan Matuska, the Bitcoin mining facility uses human and animal waste to generate electricity for mining. Matuska, the man “who met Satoshi Nakomoto”, told Cointelegraph that “methane from biodegradation processes runs our machines.” As human and animal waste isn’t running out any time soon, their BTC mining process is both environmentally friendly and renewable. According to Matuska, using renewable energies such as biogas “shows that we can really accelerate the adoption of these renewables and make their return …

Dušan Matuska is — among many other things — a Bitcoin educator and consultant. The Slovak’s dream is to educate 100 million people about Bitcoin by 2030 through talks, podcasts, webinars, workshops and even a Bitcoin education center in a far-flung destination (plans are currently under wraps). Alongside his Bitcoin teaching aspirations, he assists on a small-scale Bitcoin mining facility in Slovakia, he co-founded the crypto café known as Paralelni Polis in the country’s capital, Bratislava and he’s translated well-known Bitcoin books into his native tongue, Slovak. But, how did he get here? And, what does meeting Satoshi have to …

A Slovak blockchain startup serves as the chief example of pandemic venture capital developments in central and eastern Europe (CEE), in a new report from Reuters on July 31. In the former Eastern bloc — where venture funding hit close to $1.6 billion in 2019 — uncertainty during the COVID-19 crisis has hit the start-up sector hard, particularly when it comes to early-stage deals. Alftins, a Slovak startup that is developing an online platform to trade digital assets, has recently secured funding from publicly-funded venture firm Crowdberry. The latter had earlier missed out on a version of the deal in …

Major Slovakia-based antivirus software provider ESET has discovered a banking trojan that can steal cryptocurrencies and is especially widespread in Latin America. Primary targets Known as “Casbaneiro” or “Metamorfo,” the newly found malware family targets banks and cryptocurrency services located in Brazil and Mexico, ESET’s editorial arm WeLiveSecurity reports Oct. 3. According to the report, Casbaneiro uses a social engineering execution method, which displays fake pop-up windows misleading potential victims to enter sensitive information. The capabilities of the malware are typical of Latin American banking trojans that can take screenshots and send them to command and control server, simulate keyboard …

Bitcoin ATMs are a necessary part of the cryptocurrency infrastructure. Until there will be a robust Bitcoin economy without the need of frequent exchanges to fiat money, their existence could hardly be in doubt. Cointelegraph spoke to two BTM operators in Slovakia: Marián Jančuška, CEO of IT company 0011 and operator of the first European BTM, and Peter Bešina, CEO of Cryptodiggers.eu. Topics include the patterns of people using BTMs, technical reliability of the machines, their future, new projects, and what is the atmosphere like in the Bitcoin community. Cointelegraph: What was the demand like during two years of BTM …