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Cryptocurrency Mining Chip Producer Nvidia Reports Significant Profits After Decline

The American Chip developing company Nvidia attests to its dip in shares due to the CMP (Cryptocurrency Mining Process) sales decline. The company stated that its 52% decrease for its Q1 of “OAM and other” investments was because of the decrease in CMP sales. Nvidia stated this, as explained in a filing on Wednesday.

In 2021, Nvidia recorded $24 million in returns from its CMP sources; this also recorded a discouraging decrease of 77% year-over-year.

Last year January, the corporation introduced the CMP product to discourage cryptocurrency miners from storing up existing mining devices like Ethereum’s famous GeForce RTX 3080 Ti.

Related Reading | Perp Traders Remain Quiet As Bitcoin Struggles To Hold $30,000

While the chipmaker didn’t explain the exact sales amount its CMP sales provided, it did tag the value “nominal” and over $155 million in loss from the previous year.

Nvidia Shares Tumble At The End Of Q1

The company experienced strong quarterly growth from 2021 last quarter to 2022 first quarter, increasing by 8% in returns. Thus, making up to $8.98 billion. Its shares also increased by 3% to $1.36 a share. In addition, the chipmaker stated that it’d continue its buyback program reaching 2023 end, and it is worth $15 billion.

Nvidia And The Q2

Nvidia has now been experiencing a steady decrease in interest in the CMP mining chips during this Q2. The reasons why this is so might probably be because of Ethereum’s porting to the Proof-of-staking mechanism. The current bear market, or the recently deployed products from the industry leader—Intel Corporation. We don’t know, but we do know that the tech giant isn’t experiencing a good time at its current turnover.

Q2 isn’t starting as interesting as Q1, and pundits project a 4% loss to $8 billion in turnover. During Thursday after-hours trading, Nvidia (NVDA) shares decreased by 7% to $157.8. Also, the NVDA stocks have experienced an almost 50% decrease in the year-over-year report, reflecting a poor outlook for tech stocks.

Related Reading | Bitcoin Bearish Signal: Whale Ratio Continues To Stay At High Value

During last year’s Q2, Nvidia encountered a 33% dip from expected returns, reaching $266 million, then $106 million in Q3, and $24 million in Q4. That value has still fallen. The chipmaker revised its expectations for the second quarter (Q2), summing it up to $8.1 billion because of the Russia-Ukraine war, and Lockdown in China.

Nvidia CMP And Cryptocurrency Mining

Nvidia’s Santa Clara-situated CMPs can be effective for mining Bitcoin, Ether, and other digital assets that use the Proof of Work consensus mechanism. In addition, the token’s graphics card, built for gaming, can be effective for mining cryptocurrency except restricted.

Cryptocurrency market falls by 1.20% | Source: Crypto Total Market Cap on TradingView.com

One notable fact is that CMPs are very scarce in supply. Even on secondary markets, it’s rare to find them. Therefore making the chances of sales slimmer and smaller.

Featured image from Pixabay, chart from TradingView.com

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Bitcoin Holds Steady As US Extends Sanctions Against Russia To Cryptocurrency Mining

Sanctions are being imposed on cryptocurrency mining companies for the first time in history. The US Treasury Department announced that it is taking action against virtual currency mining companies across Russia. This information came out when IMF issued a statement saying, “the Kremlin may employ these activities to avoid compliance with international economic punishment.”

In the wake of recent sanctions, cryptocurrencies have been barely affected. Bitcoin consolidated its gains while ‘altcoins’ also performed in green.

Related Reading | Crypto Quick Look: BTC Touches $42,000, ETH Notches10-Day Peak

For example, Bitcoin is holding at $41,500 – $42,000. On Wednesday, it managed to reach a high since April 11th, above $42,000. But selling pressure rejected the bulls’ advance and failed to confirm the overcoming of this important resistance level. This is crucial for the virtual token par excellence to regain $45,000.

Naeem Aslam, head of analysis at AvaTrade, warns that “traders know that Bitcoin has to stay above this critical price level for the’ bulls’ to succeed.” The shortest-term support is now back to $40,000.

Bitcoin trading above $42,000 with a 1.75% increase | Source: BTC/USD chart from Tradingview.com

However, the expert warned that we should be careful. The IMF is in the spotlight because it says that some countries are using cryptocurrencies to avoid sanctions.

Countries like Russia and Iran use cryptocurrency to sell their oil and gas. However, there is also concern that they might be utilizing these resources for cryptocurrency mining, which provides another source of revenue and bypasses any sanctions against them.

“The IMF’s warning will certainly bring more regulatory attention to crypto companies, crypto exchanges, and crypto mining,” Aslam commented. 

U.S. Treasury Designates Facilitators of Russian Sanctions Evasion

OFAC, the United States Office of Foreign Assets Control, sanctioned Bitriver AG, a Swiss-based holding company for cryptocurrency mining operations with offices in Russia and ten subsidiaries. This is the first time the U.S. Treasury has sanctioned cryptocurrency miners. Bitriver is amid a token pre-sale called BTR. 

To curb Russia’s influence on cryptocurrency mining and trade worldwide, the U.S. has imposed new sanctions against BitRiver. The company operates vast server farms that sell virtual currency mining capacity internationally. In addition, this company helps monetize Russian natural resources.

The U.S. Treasury press release says that Russia has the advantage of energy resources and a cold climate for cryptocurrency mining. However, mining companies rely on imported computer equipment and fiat payments, making them vulnerable to sanctions.

The United States aims to make sure that no asset, no matter how complex, the Putin regime can use to reduce the impact of sanctions.”

Bitcoin And Altcoins Rising Despite The Risks

Despite these risks, the market positively responds and leaves rises for Bitcoin and altcoins. This has brought the total capitalization of cryptocurrencies to $1.92 trillion.

Related Reading | TA: Bitcoin Technicals Suggest Bulls Aim Sharp Move Above $42K

Ethereum’s price is currently trading between $3,000 and resistance at $3,200. The cryptocurrency has followed Bitcoin’s behavior and seeks to gain momentum toward overcoming the $42,000 resistance. 

Terra is one of the most promising tokens on today’s gainer’s list, up 6%, along with Solana and Polkadot.

Featured image from Pixabay, chart from Tradingview.com

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Hackers Are Now Using Compromised Cloud Accounts To Mine Crypto

Attackers are exploiting poorly configured cloud accounts to mine crypto, Google warned users in a recent report.

Cryptocurrency mining is a computationally intensive activity. And Google Cloud customers can access it at a cost. However, miners are now hacking Google Cloud accounts for mining purposes.
In the report titled “Threat Horizons,” Google’s cybersecurity team assessed various threats to Cloud users, providing details of the breaches.

Related Reading | Data Shows Crypto Hacks And Fraud In 2021 Are On Track For A New Record

The report also provided cybersecurity threat intelligence to cloud users. The aim is to enable them “better configure their environments and defenses in manners most specific to their needs.”

Crypto Miners Hacking Google Accounts

In the report, the cybersecurity team analyzed 50 recently compromised Google Cloud accounts. And out of those, 86% were related to crypto mining. “Malicious actors were observed performing cryptocurrency mining within compromised Cloud instances,” Google wrote.

Related Reading | Ethereum Miner Revenue Outpaces Bitcoin In 2021

The report also stated that in the majority of these incidents, the hackers downloaded crypto mining software to the compromised accounts within 22 seconds. The attacks were scripted, and it would have been impossible to manually stop them. Additionally, in 10% of these incidents, the hackers scanned other publicly available resources on the Internet to identify vulnerable systems. While in 8% of the instances, they attacked other targets.

However, as reported by the cybersecurity team, the crypto mining hacks were not the only attacks.

“The cloud threat landscape in 2021 was more complex than just rogue cryptocurrency miners, of course,” wrote Bob Mechler, Google Cloud Director of the office of the Chief Information Security Officer, and Seth Rosenblatt, Google Cloud Security Editor, in a blog post.

Other Threats To Google Cloud Users

Another threat the team identified was a phishing attack by the Russian group called APT28, or Fancy Bear. The attackers targeted 12,000 Gmail accounts in a mass phishing attempt. They attempted to trick users into handing over their login details. Google, however, said it had blocked all the phishing emails, and no user was compromised.

The report also pointed out an attack by a North Korean government-backed group. This hacker group posed as Samsung recruiters, sending fake job opportunities to employees at South Korean information security companies. They attached a malicious link to malware stored in Google Drive. Google said it also blocked it.

Another threat to cloud users is ransomware attacks, whereby hackers encrypt users’ data until they pay. In the report, Google mentions the formidable Black Matter ransomware group. And although the group announced that it was shutting down earlier this month, Google is still cautious. “Google has received reports that the Black Matter ransomware group has announced it will shut down operations given outside pressure. Until this is confirmed, Black Matter still poses a risk.”

Total crypto market at $2.4 Trillion | Source: Crypto Total Market Cap from TradingView.com

Google attributes some of these attacks to users’ poor security practices. And also vulnerabilities in third-party software that the users install.

The report also recommends a few ways to prevent these attacks. One of which is enabling two-factor authentication.

Featured image by Dreamstime, Chart from TradingView.com

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Blockchain Startup In Pakistan Dubbed Bazaar Secures $30 million In Funds

Bazaar Technologies, a Pakistani blockchain marketplace, successfully raised about $30M in Pakistani’s biggest Series A round.

An announcement made by Bazaar states that August 24th will be the closing of its raise. It also reveals that Singapore’s Wavemaker Partners and Silicon Valley-based Defy Partners were the leaders of the funding round.

Many other investors also participated in the funding round, including Japan’s Saison Capital, LinkedIn, Endeavor, and numerous present-day investors such as Alter Global and Indus Valley Capital.

Related Reading | PayPal To Facilitate UK Customers With Cryptocurrency Trading Feature

In Pakistan, Bazaar asserts that they are the leading Business-to-business marketplace group for small-scale merchants. They serve up to 750,000 merchants across 400 villages and towns.

The majority of those that make use of Bazaar are small-scale ‘mom-and-pop grocery stores known locally as “Kiryana Stores.” They buy stock from suppliers through this platform.

Bazaar’s round this period has grown its funding to $37.8 million. This figure grew from its $6.5M seed round of January 2021 after eight months of its launching and its pre-seed round of $1.3M in June 2020.

The seed-round was co-led by the Global Founders Capital based in Berlin. The seed round was the firm’s first Pakistani investment. Also, VC Indus Valley Capital is another partner in the June seed round last year.

Bazaar Seed Round Is The Largest In Pakistan

Furthermore, the data shows that this latest seed round is the largest of its kind ever raised in Pakistan at a startup level. As a result of this raise, Bazaar right now has a total of $7.8 million. This makes it the largest funded startup in all of Pakistan.

Furthermore, Bazaar also brought in top global and regional organizations as well as angel investors. For example, Wavemaker Partners based in Singapore, Early-stage VC S7V, Saudi’s Derayah Venture Capital, and Next Billion Ventures based in the United States participate in the seed round.

Hamza Jawaid and Saad Janda founded Bazaar in 2019. Janga was formerly the product manager of Careem, a local Uber subdivision, whereas Jawaid worked in McKinsey, a management consulting company.

In recent months, the Pakistani government has initiated strategic ways of building a better regulatory apparatus that will be permissive to the country’s crypto sector.

Related Reading | 37% Of U.S. Investors Decline To Liquidate Cryptocurrency Assets in Bearish Situations

The Pakistani Securities and Exchange Commission issued a consultation paper in November. The paper surveyed the advantages of cryptocurrency assets as well as tokenization. In addition, the paper also embraced the industry feedback regarding the development of local regulations.

In March, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a Pakistani province, announced how it would manage two hydro-powered cryptocurrency mining farms for a government-supported mining pilot.

Featured image from Pixabay

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Thousands of These Computers Were Mining Cryptocurrency. Now They’re Working on Coronavirus Research

CoreWeave, the largest U.S. miner on the Ethereum blockchain, is redirecting the processing power of 6,000 specialized computer chips toward research to find a therapy for the coronavirus. These graphics processing units (GPUs) will be pointed toward Stanford University’s Folding@home, a long-standing research effort that unveiled a project on February 27 specifically to boost coronavirus […]