Russia

Russian Crypto Mining Companies Are Expanding Capacity as the Country Becomes a ‘Preferred Hotspot’

20/02/2021 by Idelto Editor

Russian Crypto Mining Companies Are Expanding Their Capacity as the Country Becomes a 'Preferred Hotspot' for Foreign Miners

Crypto mining operations have been witnessing some changes within the industry in terms of locations. A recent interview with the CEO of the mining giant Bitriver, revealed that Russia is becoming a preferred hotspot for crypto miners.

Russian Mining Giant to Build Two Additional Facilities to Cope With the High Demand

According to Igor Runets, CEO and founder of the Russian mining company Bitriver, American and European investors are moving their infrastructure from China, Africa, and Latin America to Russia. The main reason behind the shifting move is the expensive costs of electricity in such regions.

That said, most crypto miners are looking to cut costs amid the bitcoin (BTC) bull-run seen over the last few months. Bitriver CEO told Kommersant that its existing capacity as a mining company is at the top. Runets said the company is hoping to reach 1 gigawatt (GW) “in the next 18 months.”

Such expectations encourage Bitriver to increase its capacity by building two new crypto mining facilities in Krasnoyarsk with 80 megawatts (MW) in total.

On the other hand, the firm seeks to establish another mining infrastructure in Buryatia in the Siberian region, with 300 MW of capacity.

However, its first stage will have an initial capacity of 100 MW. Per the CEO, the deadline set by Bitriver is by the end of summer of this year.

Increase in Wholesale Chinese Crypto Miners Customers

Other domestic mining companies are seeing several applications for crypto mining hosting. Sergey Arestov, the co-founder of Bitcluster, highlighted that a significant number of wholesale Chinese customer orders keep coming to the company.

He forecasts that the demand could witness “a strong increase in demand” starting in the fall of 2021, as the expectations for the BTC prices are still very bullish.

This trend on a large batch of orders made Bitcluster set a plan to expand their capacity by adding 60 MW at any point of 2021.

What do you think about this trend seen in crypto mining globally? Let us know in the comments section below.

Massive 70 MW Bitcoin Mining Rig Shipped to Russia

12/02/2021 by Idelto Editor

Massive 70 MW-Rig Shipped to Russia Could Power Three Months of Crypto Mining Operations to Entire Country

Big moves are happening within the bitcoin mining industry in Russia. An unnamed miner sent what seems to be the largest single batch of mining equipment to the country.

Delivery Took Place at the End of 2020

According to Kommersant, the unknown miner shipped almost 20,000 devices on 14 trucks, which have a total power capacity of 70 megawatts. The media outlet’s estimations show that the hardware shipped from Asia is worth approx. between $40 million and $60 million.

The Bitriver-powered data center is located in Irkutsk, the largest city of Irkutsk, in the Siberian Federal District, with over 600,000 residents.

Citing Igor Runets, CEO and founder of Bitriver data center, says that the delivery took place at the end of 2020, specifically in December. Right after the shipping, the data center’s staff installed the rigs to mine bitcoin (BTC).

Hardware From Four Major Manufacturer Brands

Runets also added that they deployed a separate hangar in Bratsk, in the same region, which will act as a tier-III level data center to provide “very high safety” to the rest of the batch. The ASIC-based equipment brands acquired include Bitmain, Whatsminer, Innosilicon, and Avalon, said the Bitriver data center’s CEO.

Artyom Eremin, the head of Chilkoot — one of the official distributors of crypto mining equipment in Russia — said the costs of the recent Bitriver’s acquisition could reach $50 million. However, he estimated using last year’s price before the surge of bitcoin’s quote across markets.

What do you think about this crypto mining move in Russia? Let us know in the comments section below.

The Many Facts Pointing to Chainlink’s Sergey Nazarov Being Satoshi Nakamoto

10/02/2021 by Idelto Editor

During the last few years, smart contracts and blockchain oracles have transformed the crypto industry, and one specific project called Chainlink is the most widely used oracle network to-date. Another interesting thing about Chainlink is the project’s creator, Sergey Nazarov has been a Satoshi Nakamoto suspect in recent times. Last year, a number of reports attempted to prove that Nazarov could be Bitcoin’s creator by leveraging circumstantial evidence and speculation.

Chainlink Founder Sergey Nazarov Deemed a Satoshi Suspect

Over the last few years, news.Bitcoin.com has written extensively on what some people believe is the greatest mystery of all within the cryptocurrency space. A great number of sleuths are hunting for Satoshi Nakamoto and the whereabouts of all the bitcoins the creator mined while kick-starting the network.

Our newsdesk has also created a comprehensive list of all the Satoshi Nakamoto suspects and the most recent on our list is a present-day theory. Last year, a couple of reports and a Youtube video outlined the possibility that the creator of Chainlink (LINK), Sergey Nazarov, could be Bitcoin’s inventor.

One report written by UX Sequence (uxsequence.io) gives a comprehensive look at all the evidence that allegedly ties Nazarov to the creation of Bitcoin. The following is the tenth installment of news.Bitcoin.com’s “The Many Facts” Satoshi Nakamoto series.

At the very least, speculators think that Sergey Nazarov was at least around during Satoshi’s incubation period. Nazarov is currently 32-years-old and his parents are Russian immigrants who migrated to New York.

Chainlink is a popular asset, as it currently holds the ninth largest market valuation at the time of writing. Basically, the project is a decentralized oracle network and the protocol connects smart contracts to a number of external elements and APIs. The project launched in 2017, but purportedly it was originally founded in 2014 by Steve Ellis and Nazarov. Chainlink is leveraged by many organizations including Open Law, Web3 Foundation, Google, SWIFT, Zeppelin, and a myriad of others.

Smartcontract.com Registered 6 Days Before the Bitcoin White Paper Published

The first piece of evidence that links Nazarov to the creation of Bitcoin is the fact that the Chainlink creator purchased the domain smartcontract.com six days before Satoshi’s white paper was published on Halloween 2008. Right now the website is tethered to the Chainlink (LINK) web portal, and in order to get a look at the history of it, one has to leverage archive.org.

The web portal’s creation days prior is hardly a smoking gun that points to Nazarov being Satoshi, but it is interesting circumstantial evidence. Hypothesizers, however, believe it is also odd that Sergey Nazarov and Satoshi Nakamoto also share the same initials.

Furthermore, in October 2020, Nazarov appeared in a video with Chainlink’s Ben Chan that shows him explaining how long he has been involved with blockchain. During the video, Nazarov says he’s been in the blockchain space for ten years and then corrects himself. If that’s the case, Nazarov would have been working on bitcoin at age 21-22 during the same time period Nakamoto was around.

QED Capital and the Russian Proxy

Nazarov also owns a number of blockchain-related domains that were registered in the early days. While smartcontract.com was registered on October 25, 2008, a site called trustedoracles.com was registered in April 2016. Other website domains show that Nazarov has a strong connection with a Russian firm called QED Capital.

Nazarov registered a few QED Capital websites in 2012, and the company was behind two of his past projects Secure Asset Exchange (SAE) and Crypto Mail. Believers in the present-day Nazarov-Nakamoto theory, have pointed to the recent discovery which shows Satoshi Nakamoto allegedly used a Russian proxy to hide his location and identity.

QED Capital’s web page details that Nazarov serves as the managing director and the firm is also mentioned in Nazarov’s original smartcontract.com Whois filing.

The Tale of Kokichi Mikimoto and the Perfectly Spherical Cultured Pearls

In addition to the connections with QED Capital, speculators also refer to a unique metaphor Nazarov published in 2013 about a person called “Kokichi Mikimoto.”

According to the tale, Mikimoto created super spherical pearls or pearls that are smoother than they are today. Mikimoto Pearls were also farmed and the entire metaphor is eerily similar to Satoshi Nakamoto’s story.

“In 1878, Kokichi Mikimoto discovered how to make superior pearls through man-made pearl farming, his pearls/product turned out to be better than the majority of the best pearls found in all-natural conditions,” Nazarov wrote at the time. “He made this discovery with no education in the ‘natural sciences’ and basically came to his innovative results through costly trial and error.” Nazarov story further said:

Before his discovery the vast majority of pearls did not even appear spherical to the naked eye, today 90% of all pearls sold are made using his method to create what appear to be perfectly spherical ‘cultured pearls.’

Chainlink’s Sergey Nazarov is not the only cryptocurrency developer who has been accused of being Satoshi Nakamoto. Reports have said Hal Finney was the mysterious creator, and one stylometry study also pointed the finger at Gavin Andresen. The creator of the first proof-of-stake cryptocurrency and the Peercoin network Sunny King has been a suspect. Moreover, the pseudonymous Grin founder Ignotus Peverell was also a candidate in the summer of 2019.

What do you think about the claims that say Sergey Nazarov may be Satoshi Nakamoto? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

Expert warns Hackers are Targeting Russian Government’s IT Infrastructure to Mine Cryptocurrencies

09/02/2021 by Idelto Editor

Expert Warns on Hackers Targeting Russian Government's IT Infrastructure to Mine Cryptocurrencies

A state-affiliate cybersecurity expert warned about hackers exploiting the Russian government’s IT facilities to mine cryptocurrencies. The deputy director of the National Coordination Center for Computer Incidents believes such threat actors have been very active in recent times.

Global Cybersecurity Landscape Remains ‘Tense’

According to TASS, Nikolai Murashov pointed out that hackers managed to inject unknown malware into the infrastructure of Russian government entities, medical institutions, defense contractors, and even research institutes.

The cybercriminals then look for IT resources to use to illicitly mine cryptos. He added:

For the first time, there have been cases of the introduction of malicious software that encrypts user data into the information infrastructure of medical institutions.

However, the expert didn’t provide more details about the attacks during his speech at the XXIII National Information Security Forum “Infoforum-2021” in Moscow. Also, he didn’t clarify if some of these attacks are related to ransomware incidents.

Murashov raised red flags on the global cybersecurity landscape, as he considers it currently “tense.” He backs up his statement by saying that hackers have been actively targeting government bodies across the board to “steal information.”

The National Coordination Center for Computer Incidents was created by the Federal Security Service (FSB) in 2018. Among their tasks include detecting, warning and mitigating cyberattacks in Russia.

Report: Crypto Mining Is Not a Major Method of Funding for Hackers

But crypto mining remains a low-profile type of cyberattack in current times. At least, that’s one of the findings published by the cybersecurity firm Group-IB in their “Hi-Tech Crime Trends 2020–2021” report.

Per the firm, crypto mining is not a highly attractive method for threat actors to provide funding, at least in Russia.

In fact, hackers actively rely on encrypting malware and then threatening to leak the encrypted info, asking for a ransom payment.

What do you think about the warning issued by the Russian government-affiliate cybersecurity expert? Let us know in the comments section below.

Former UK Cyber Intelligence Official Pushes for Law Change to Stop Bitcoin Ransomware Payments

27/01/2021 by Idelto Editor

Former UK Cyber Intelligence Official Urges for Law Change to Stop Bitcoin Payouts in Ransomware Incidents

A former U.K. cybersecurity chief has raised concerns that ransomware incidents are close to “getting out of control.” Ciaran Martin has also called for laws to prevent people from paying bitcoin to cybercriminals.

Former Official Claims Most of the Cybercriminals Are Based in Russia

During an interview with The Guardian, Martin, who was the head of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), pointed out that insurance firms are indirectly funding organized crimes in ransomware incidents.

Martin believes that companies’ insurance claims from ransomware attacks help perpetuate the criminal circle. Moreover, the former cybersecurity official states that the national health systems could be hit during the pandemic by such attacks:

I see this as so avoidable. At the moment, companies have incentives to pay ransoms to make sure this all goes away … You have to look seriously about changing the law on insurance and banning these payments, or at the very least, having a major consultation with the industry.

The former NCSC official says the problem lies in the lack of legal barriers that stop companies from paying ransoms.

The Guardian quotes him as saying that most of the threat actors come from Russia and some other former Soviet states. “People are paying bitcoin to criminals and claiming back cash,” Martin added.

Ransom Payments to Cyber Gangs Are Not Banned Under British Laws

Although British laws strictly prohibit payments of ransoms to terrorists, the rule doesn’t cover cybercriminals. The report gives the following explanation:

Britain’s extortion laws prohibit the payment of ransoms to terrorists, and were drawn up largely in response to the threat of kidnapping. But cyber-attacks are not carried out by terror groups, and so there is no bar to paying ransom demands – and it is possible to make an insurance claim if no personal data was involved.

Per a report shared with news.Bitcoin.com, malware lab Emsisoft said that 2020 was another “banner year for cybercriminals” during ransomware incidents in the United States.

Also, a study by blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis found that cryptocurrency-related crime has fallen significantly. The criminal share of all crypto activity fell to just 0.34% in 2020.

What do you think about the former intelligence official’s concerns? Let us know in the comments section below.