Per the CEO of Hut 8, a bitcoin mining company listed on the Toronto stock exchange, major financial institutions have made inquiries to purchase bitcoin directly from the firm. Additionally, the Hut 8 executive emphasized the forthcoming halving event’s “big impact,” noting a surge in demand juxtaposed with a reduction in available bitcoins. Financial Giants […]
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Over 35 cryptocurrency entities, spearheaded by Nexo, have initiated a campaign to introduce a bitcoin emoji, uniting more than 170 million community members in the process. Campaign for Official Bitcoin Emoji Gains Momentum In a push for digital culture recognition, Nexo, alongside more than 35 cryptocurrency organizations, has launched a campaign aimed at securing a […]
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The Indian government has announced a new requirement for technology companies to secure government approval before publicly releasing artificial intelligence (AI) tools that are still in development or considered “unreliable,” Reuters reported March 4.
The move is part of India’s efforts to manage the deployment of AI technologies, aiming to promote accuracy and reliability in the tools available to its citizens as it prepares for elections.
According to a directive issued by the Ministry of Information Technology, any AI-based applications, particularly those involving generative AI, must receive explicit authorization from the government before their introduction to the Indian market.
Additionally, these AI tools must be marked with warnings about their potential to generate incorrect answers to user queries, reinforcing the government’s stance on the need for clarity regarding the capabilities of AI.
The regulation aligns with global trends where nations seek to establish guidelines for the responsible use of AI. India’s approach to increasing oversight over AI and digital platforms coincides with its broader regulatory strategy to safeguard user interests in a rapidly advancing digital age.
The government’s advisory also points to concerns regarding the influence of AI tools on the integrity of the electoral process. With the upcoming general elections, where the ruling party is anticipated to maintain its majority, there is a heightened focus on ensuring that AI technologies do not compromise electoral fairness.
The move follows recent criticisms of Google’s Gemini AI tool, which generated responses perceived as unfavorable towards Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Google responded to the incident by acknowledging the imperfections of its AI tool, particularly about sensitive topics such as current events and politics. The company said the tool was still “unreliable.”
Deputy IT Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar said the reliability issues do not exempt platforms from legal responsibilities and emphasized the importance of adhering to legal obligations concerning safety and trust.
By introducing these regulations, India is taking steps towards establishing a controlled environment for the introduction and use of AI technologies.
The requirement for government approval and the emphasis on transparency with potential inaccuracies are seen as measures to balance technological innovation with societal and ethical considerations, aiming to protect democratic processes and the public interest in the digital era.
The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has joined forces with the Bank of England (BOE) to gather public input on their forthcoming regulatory framework for stablecoins.
In a joint statement released on Nov. 6, the FCA and BOE unveiled a discussion paper to solicit feedback to shape the regulations governing stablecoins. This initiative represents the latest in a series of moves by UK authorities to establish comprehensive oversight of the cryptocurrency market.
“The proposed regulatory approach put forward by the FCA and the Bank looks to harness the potential benefits stablecoins could provide to UK consumers and retailers, in particular by making payments faster and cheaper,” the statement reads. “The proposals to regulate stablecoins aim to protect consumers, prevent money laundering with a robust set of rules and to safeguard financial stability.”
The discussion paper outlines how the BOE intends to oversee systemic stablecoins, mitigating potential threats to financial stability. Additionally, the Bank will assume regulatory authority over stablecoin issuers and wallet providers. On the other hand, the FCA will take on the responsibility of overseeing stablecoin issuance.
In essence, the regulators’ proposal ensures the safety of UK consumers and businesses participating in stablecoins transactions. Importantly, these actions follow earlier pronouncements from UK authorities, underscoring the imperative to shield users from the potential pitfalls of stablecoins, a sentiment accentuated by the collapse of TerraUSD.
Meanwhile, this collaborative effort between the BOE and FCA aligns with a related update from the UK Treasury focusing on stablecoin regulation.
Sheldon Mills, an Executive Director at the FCA, noted that stablecoins hold significant promise for enhancing payment systems. As such, soliciting input from stakeholders regarding their regulation is deemed crucial.
Sarah Breeden, a Deputy Governor at the BOE, emphasized that stablecoins have the potential to bolster digital retail payments in the UK.
Breeden continued that the proposals are designed to foster secure innovation, providing firms with clear guidance on risk management and instilling public confidence in all facets of digital currency and payments.
Notably, the UK’s aspirations to establish itself as a cryptocurrency hub have been accompanied by stringent regulatory measures. In Oct., the FCA introduced the financial promotions regime, which imposes strict compliance requirements on crypto firms.
(Bloomberg) — The relentless selloff in Chinese stocks has made the market the worst performer in the world over the past three years. And that is exactly the reason some funds are looking to unearth pockets of value.
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They see a contrarian signal in the extreme pessimism toward Chinese assets in recent months amid an economic slowdown, unpredictable government crackdowns and rolling property woes. Global funds as a whole have slashed their China stock positioning to the lowest since October, which to some means more room for potential buying.
“China has a growth problem today, but not a systemic crisis,” said John Lin, Singapore-based chief investment officer for China equities at AllianceBernstein, which oversees $694 billion globally. “The way you make money is you have to go company by company. There’s a lot of nice cashflow companies, nice dividend-yield companies that are still under-appreciated.”
The MSCI China Index has tumbled 55% from a high set in February 2021, while a gauge of mainland firms traded in Hong Kong has slumped 50% and is the worst performer of 92 global indexes compiled by Bloomberg over the past three years.
One of the major drivers of the downtrend has been selling by global funds. After making net purchases earlier this year, offshore money managers offloaded a record $12 billion of mainland shares in August via trading links with Hong Kong, and have sold another $3.2 billion this month.
That bearish positioning opens up the prospect of a rebound, while signs of stabilization in parts of the economy mean it makes sense to look for value now, bulls say.
A Shares
AllianceBernstein’s Lin says he favors firms in China’s local share market, which is primarily traded by domestic investors.
“We like A shares because they are more domestic oriented, and therefore are less susceptible to capital flows based on geopolitical tensions,” he said. “You can find a lot of interesting stocks that have their own idiosyncratic dynamics.”
Some of the most attractive firms are industrial-cyclical stocks such as bus-makers and diesel-engine makers that export to places like Asean, central Asia and Middle East, and also have a presence in the domestic market so they will participate in the eventual local economic recovery, he said.
Health Care
For Amundi SA, China’s health-care stocks are where it sees value.
Medical shares have been beaten down amid an anti-corruption clampdown but the sector has probably already reached a bottom with all the bad news in the price, said Nicholas McConway, head of Asia ex-Japan equities at Europe’s largest money manager in London.
McConway is focusing on companies that are self-funded with robust drug pipelines. The prospect that global central banks are nearing an end to interest-rate hikes may also favor these companies as they can take years to turn profitable so tend to perform better in a lower-rate environment, he said.
Pharma
Guinness Global Investors favors pharmaceutical names that are transitioning from generic drugs to developing new products themselves or acquiring them through mergers and acquisitions.
Examples include CSPC Pharmaceutical Group Ltd., Sino Biopharmaceutical Ltd. and China Medical System Holdings Ltd., said Sharukh Malik, a fund manager at Guinness Global in London who has spent the last eight years investing in Asian stocks.
“We estimate that for these three companies, valuations are now low enough that investors are paying nothing for the cashflows from future growth capex,” he said. “If we think these companies will eventually successfully make novel drugs themselves, the risk reward ratio is very favorable for us.”
Tech Giants
Some of the largest firms in the beaten-up technology sector now look attractive, according to Mondrian Investment Partners, which manages $45.6 billion in assets.
Tech has seen some of the biggest losses over the past three years due to a government crackdown after authorities blocked a planned $37 billion initial public offering by Ant Group in late 2020. The sector was a relative bright spot in second-quarter earnings, which has led to analyst estimate upgrades.
Mondrian Investment has been adding to positions in e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. as its stock price failed to capture the potential payouts that will be distributed to shareholders during its six-way split, said Ginny Chong, head of Chinese equities in London with over 20 years of experience in emerging markets.
She has also been also adding shares of Tencent Holdings Ltd., and sees Baidu Inc. as undervalued.
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During the 2021 bull market, many large mining companies took on massive loans to buy equipment and the proper infrastructure required to mine cryptocurrency. Yet the collapse of crypto exchange FTX and Celsius left many of these companies filing for bankruptcy.
The current bear market, coupled with high Bitcoin network hash rates and low profits, has yet again left the crypto industry wondering if miners will be able to recover from losses. While this remains questionable, it’s become evident that mining companies today are focusing more on alternative energy resources to cut costs, ensure profits and, in some cases, reduce their environmental impact.
Steven Lubka, managing director for Bitcoin-focused financial services company Swan Bitcoin, told Cointelegraph that while the average rate to mine a single Bitcoin (BTC) is around $26,000, mining companies focused on renewable energy sources are seeing rates between $5,000 and $15,000 per BTC.
A spokesperson for Riot Blockchain, a United States-based publicly traded Bitcoin mining company, told Cointelegraph that wind and solar energy generated across Texas has helped Riot ensure some of the lowest costs to mine crypto. “As stated in our Q2 investor deck, it costs Riot $8,389 to mine 1 Bitcoin,” he said.
Kent Halliburton, president and chief operating officer of Sazmining — a hosted Bitcoin mining provider — told Cointelegraph that the biggest expense for mining has always been electricity:
“Bitcoin miners are naturally incentivized to find the lowest-cost power. Excess electricity is the lowest priced. With renewables, there is often excess electricity, which makes it a perfect fit for Bitcoin mining.”
Halliburton added that independently sourced data from the Bitcoin Mining Council shows that the Bitcoin network may indeed be one of the most sustainable industries. According to the source, 59% of mining operations are carbon-free and growing at a rate of nearly 4.5% per year.
“All of our mining operations in Wisconsin and Paraguay are utilizing excess hydroelectricity,” he said.
The shift to alternative energy sources seems to be a trend for miners thinking about long-term success. Phil Harvey, CEO of crypto mining infrastructure provider Sabre56, told Cointelegraph that the company is currently working with dozens of mining companies to get machines set up across Sabre56’s three facilities located in Wyoming and Ohio.
Harvey explained that Sabre56’s facility in Gillette, Wyoming — known as “Bonepile” — hosts nearly 2,200 mining machines that are powered by a combination of energy sources, including a material contribution from renewable energy. The 5,200-square-foot site draws on Basin Electric’s mixed energy portfolio. According to Basin Electric’s website, this includes 24% wind, 0.6% recovered energy and 4.3% hydro, which adds up to 28.9% renewables.
Harvey said, “The machines at our Bonepile site consist of a mixture of MicroBT Whatsminer M50s and Bitmain Antminer S19s. In terms of the site design and methodology, we leverage a forced-air design, meaning air is forced into the facility to cool the machines.”
According to Harvey, the Bonepile facility is designed to ensure surplus air provision. Harvey explained that this method reduces overheating and strain on the mining equipment while also allowing the miners to naturally exhaust hot air through overpressure.
“This is different from the standard design widespread in the mining industry, which is often extracting the hot air with an additional mechanism while not having a system in place to aid air into the facility,” he remarked.
OceanBit, a company developing renewable energy platforms using ocean thermal sources, is taking a different approach. Michael Bennett, co-founder of OceanBit, told Cointelegraph that the company is integrating Bitcoin mining into its ocean thermal energy power plant design. “This will allow us to balance variable loads, deliver power faster to offshore operations, and monetize excess energy to improve plant profitability,” he explained.
According to Bennett, ocean thermal energy is the largest untapped energy source on the planet. “It’s a base load source of renewable energy, like hydro or geothermal, but uses the temperature difference in ocean water to generate electricity.”
Bennett believes Bitcoin is the missing piece needed to scale the energy source to global adoption since it solves a number of ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) commercial challenges.
Nathaniel Harmon, co-founder and CEO of OceanBit, elaborated, “The byproduct of OTEC generation process is four degrees Celsius cold water, which makes it ideal for cooling ASICs, while the byproduct of ASICs is low grade heat, which makes it ideal to use in the OTEC process. The combination increases the efficiency while decreasing the cost of both.”
Bennett shared that OceanBit plans to unveil its R&D power plant in Hawaii in 2024.
Pennsylvanian crypto mining company Stronghold Digital Mining is using coal refuse to power its mining operations.
This refuse — also known as gob, culm or boney — is the result of the refining process of coal mining. These unrefined bits of coal mixed with shale, slate or other impurities are piled on thousands of acres of abandoned mine lands in Pennsylvania.
Greg Beard, CEO of Stronghold Digital Mining, told Cointelegraph that his firm is working with the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and local environmental authorities to clean up piles of waste coal and use them to power Bitcoin mining operations.
He said, “Acid mine drainage from these piles is one of the largest sources of water pollution in Pennsylvania. The waste piles have also been catching fire for decades by way of spontaneous combustion, releasing toxic pollution into the air. Stronghold converts the coal refuse into power by way of specialized facilities and then either supplies the power to the local grid or uses the power to mine Bitcoin.”
“Bitcoin mining is required to continue the waste coal cleanup activities, making it a much more efficient operation than miners seeking out power sources,” added Beard.
While this does provide a method of cleaning up the tons of coal refuse, from an environmental perspective, it also poses something of a Catch 22.
The special plants that can use refuse coal are still burning hydrocarbons. The Pennsylvania arm of the Energy Justice Network project has even contended that refuse coal-firing plants pollute more than new coal plants.
Stronghold itself further came under the scrutiny of environmental groups when it applied for a permit to burn tire-derived fuel at its Panther Creek plant.
Clean Air Council activist Russell Zerbo recently said on a podcast that the plant “uses the electricity it produces to generate cryptocurrency; rather than selling that electricity to the energy grid, the plant should be completely repermitted as a solid waste incinerator that would be subject to increased air pollution monitoring requirements.”
While it’s notable that crypto mining companies are using alternative energy sources, certain challenges could hamper adoption. Halliburton claimed that misinformation regarding alternative energy sources is common:
“Local populaces may throw-up roadblocks because they don’t realize that Bitcoin miners are providing a net benefit to their local communities through job creation and monetizing wasted or excess electricity. Electricity is also misunderstood; it’s extremely expensive to store, and if electricity is not utilized or stored when it’s generated, it gets wasted — quite literally put into the earth.”
Moreover, the challenges that come along with using renewable energy are also evident. Harvey mentioned that the altitude of Gillette, Wyoming results in much thinner air quality. As such, the machines at Sabre56’s Bonepile facility can struggle with pulling in enough air required for cooling.
Then comes the challenge of thermal pollution, as hot air is released into the atmosphere from the mining machines, which Cointelegraph witnessed firsthand at the Bonepile site in Wyoming. Given this, some mining companies are finding unique ways to reuse heat production. For instance, Genesis Digital Assets uses hot air produced by mining equipment to grow vegetables in the Nordic regions.
All things considered, the future of mining operations will likely rely on renewable sources. Margie Feng, head of marketing at Bitmain — a leading producer of crypto mining equipment — told Cointelegraph that the company has shifted gears and is currently working hard on promoting hydro-cooling technologies, as she believes that demands for this type of equipment will only grow in the future.
Feng added that Bitmain has found that almost a quarter of all Bitcoin miners use water to power their setups, while wind and nuclear are the second- and third-biggest contributions, respectively.
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