Crypto firm Mawson sells Texas sites for $8.5M ahead of vote on anti-mining bill

Crypto mining firm Mawson Infrastructure Group will be exiting Texas following an $8.5-million sale of its local subsidiary as well as lease agreements and contracts related to operating in the state. In an April 19 announcement, Mawson said it had arranged the sale of its subsidiary Luna Squares Texas to Singapore-based fund manager M Turing VCC Oracle Phase 1 Fund for $8.5 million in cash and stablecoins. CEO James Manning said the sale was conducted as part of a strategy to focus the company’s operations in Pennsylvania and reduce existing…

Blockchain Rech Companies and Exchanges and Crypto Miners Reveal that M&A Activity Is Strong

Second, if we look at a wider time horizon (as illustrated below), the mining group still outperforms the Nasdaq between April 2020 and April 2023., winning 90% to 63%. The blockchain group is down 12%. Crypto miners benefitted from a huge bubble in the first half of 2021 (traded between 30x and 70 EV/revenue). From early 2022 to mid-2022, those extreme valuations normalized and converged around 3.5x EV/revenue. The Blockchain group, meanwhile, pretty closely tracks the Nasdaq, though with less volatility. Source

Crypto Is the Great Wealth-Redistribution Machine

Yeah, so there’s one thing I think is very important, and I’m surprised that this isn’t the consensus view, which is that [artificial intelligence] is inevitable. The idea that every government, private company, every individual hacker in the world is going to sign and agree to, like, slow down AI research is jokingly nice. And it’s very scary to me that people would rather hand over control of all this development to some sort of, you know, vague, global body that controls how we can develop and interact with AI…

Belarus to decide on issuing CBDC by year’s end: National bank chair

The National Bank of the Republic of Belarus has prepared a pilot program for a central bank digital currency (CBDC), according to the official BelTA news agency. The country will make a decision on the issuance of a digital Belarusian ruble by the end of the year, chairman of the national bank Pavel Kallaur said.   “By the end of the year, after discussions and consultations, we should determine the possibility and feasibility of introducing a digital ruble in our country,” Kallaur said. “The decision will be made at the…

Space and Time and Microsoft Make Blockchain Data Accessible on Azure Marketplace – Press release Bitcoin News

press release PRESS RELEASE. Seattle, WA, April 19, 2023 — Space and Time and Microsoft announce that developers can now deploy the Space and Time data warehouse directly from the Microsoft Azure Marketplace, an online store providing applications and services for use on Azure. The one-click deployment provides customers with an accelerated on-ramp to easily access, manage and perform analytics on blockchain-native data. As a leader in intelligent computing and AI, Microsoft is committed to supporting its customers and partners with their business needs, including Web3 scenarios and use cases.…

MS Stock Slightly Down, Morgan Stanley Reports Lower-Than-Expected Q1 2023 Revenue

Morgan Stanley has retained its stance as one of the top banks in the United States with influence spread around the world. American multinational banking giant Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) has released its performance and revenue report for the first quarter of this fiscal year, showcasing a result that is lower than analysts’ expectations. Based on the company’s report, its revenue came in at $14.52 billion as against the $13.92 billion estimate by Refinitiv analysts. Additionally, the company said its Earnings Per Share (EPS) was pegged at $1.70 as against…

New Trump NFTs sell out on day one

A second collection of nonfungible tokens (NFTs) licensing the name and image of former United States President Donald Trump sold out on Apr. 19, one day after its initial launch. The collection featured 47,000 Trump digital collectibles priced at $99 each, netting over $4.65 million. On secondary market OpenSea, the Trump Digital Trading Cards Series 2 collection has since reached 750 Ether (ETH) in trading volume. The Trump NFTs utilize the former President’s “name, likeness, and image” under a paid license and are not owned, managed or controlled by either…

Andreessen Horowitz Says It’s Working on a Rollup Client for the Optimism Blockchain

The project is a new client for OP Stack, the standardized, open-source development stack that powers Optimism. The client is written using the Rust programming language and is meant to serve as a faster alternative to op-node, the only existing rollup client that’s maintained by OP Labs and written in the Go programming language. A16z’s thesis is that more clients makes for more robust decentralization for Optimism, and the addition of a Rust-based client will attract more developers. Source