AMC Theatres CEO Adam Aron has announced a plan to support more cryptocurrencies than just Bitcoin, highlighting the growing role these digital coins play in society. The company previously said that its customers would be able to pay for concessions and buy tickets online using Bitcoin, the most popular crypto, but it turns out that Litecoin and others will also be options.
As of the 7th of September, 2021, El Salvador became the first country in the world to accept Bitcoin as legal tender. "For the first time in history, all the eyes of the world will be on El Salvador," said El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, "The bitcoin achieved this." Officials in the country hope that Bitcoin will open opportunities for new business in the country, "reduce costs and attract tourists from anywhere in the world."
Earlier this year, Twitter introduced a feature called Tip Jar that allows users to give creators tips directly on their profiles. The feature is one of the multiple new ways Twitter is enabling its users to monetize their tweets, a particularly useful feature for artists, musicians, and anyone else who creates content and has built an online audience.
On Friday, thousands of Coinbase users received a message telling them that their account's two-factor authentication had been changed. This, as you'd expect, sent many users in a panic, including some who said they sold off their digital assets out of concern their accounts had been compromised. Over the weekend, Coinbase revealed the message was an error.
PayPal-owned Venmo has announced another cryptocurrency feature that is available to its credit cardholders: crypto cashback rewards. Credit card users already receive cashback rewards based on their usage; that, as you'd expect, comes in the form of actual cash. Going forward, however, users also have the option of getting those rewards in bitcoin or select other digital coins rather than dollars.
![Amazon Bitcoin rumor sends crypto soaring [Update: Amazon denies]](https://www.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/bitcoin_slashgear_09-1280x720.jpg)
Amazon is working on accepting Bitcoin payments and could even create its own token, according to a new leak, though it's unclear just how eager the world's biggest retailer is to wade into the volatile world of crypto. Though it may have cornered the market in online sales, Amazon's taste for currency currently skews old-school.
Officials in Malaysia have taken drastic measures to ensure more than a thousand mining rigs won't make their way back onto the market to siphon more energy from the nation's power grid. Local media has published a video of 1,069 mining rigs spread across the ground where they're systematically flattened using a massive steamroller.
In early June, Jack Dorsey revealed that Square was looking into the possibility of launching its own Bitcoin hardware wallet, one that, he said at the time, would be built "entirely in the open, from software to hardware design, and in collaboration with the community." Fast-forward a little more than a month and Dorsey is back with an update on the plan.
Residents in upstate New York are angry because they say a large bitcoin mining operation is heating up Seneca Lake. Seneca Lake is one of the largest Finger Lakes in upstate New York. Typically, the lake is used heavily for boating, fishing, swimming, and other leisure activities in the summer. However, residents say that a gas-fired power plant nearby pollutes the air and heats up the lake.
An NFT called "Source Code for the WWW" was sold on June 30, 2021 for a winning bid of 5,435,500 USD. This NFT was created by Tim Berners-Lee, the writer of the code that would become the internet. This NFT (non-fungible token) is roughly the equivalent of if Jonas Salk had at some point written down the formulation and production processes for his polio vaccine and put said piece of paper up for auction.
Chinese government officials cut power to cryptocurrency mining operations on Monday morning, resulting to an immediate drop in price for the coin and related cryptocurrency. This is the latest in a line of similar targeted operations in China aimed at cutting down on mining operations throughout the country here in the year 2021. Officials suggested this year that cracking down on crypto mining is aimed at bringing the country closer to environmental goals as a significant amount of the energy used was (and continues to be) generated by coal power stations.
El Salvador plans to use volcanic power to mine Bitcoin, the latest unexpected twist as the country makes the cryptocurrency a parallel legal tender. While El Salvador will continue to use the US dollar, as it has since 2001, it will also accept Bitcoin at the same time, a move which had frustrated environmentalists concerned about the energy requirements to mine the virtual coins.