Bitcoin has seen a surge in recent weeks, sitting with a value of around $54,000 as of Friday, February 19. The cryptocurrency has reached a $1 trillion market capitalization. The milestone follows Tesla's recently revealed $1.5 billion Bitcoin purchase, as well as tweets about the cryptocurrency from Elon Musk, which helped fuel public interest in the volatile coins.
![NVIDIA CMP revealed for crypto mining (for $ETH) as RTX nerfed [UPDATE: No retro-nerf]](https://www.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/nvidaga-1280x720.jpg)
NVIDIA just revealed their next big plan for capitalizing on the current supply VS demand issues in graphics cards. Part one of their plan is nerfing GeForce RTX graphics card cryptocurrency mining power (hash rate) so said cards are less desirable to cryptocurrency mining operations. The second bit of the plan is creating a whole new category of product, the NVIDIA CMP, or Cryptocurrency Mining Processor.
BitPay announced this week that they've begun functioning with Apple Wallet. The self-professed "world's largest provider of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency payment services" announced that users of the BitPay Prepaid Mastercard can now add their card to their iPhone's Apple Wallet. With the BitPay Prepaid Mastercard in an Apple Wallet, the user can spend with Apple Pay.
Tesla has bought $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin, with the electric automaker revealing plans to start accepting the cryptocurrency as payment on its cars and SUVs. The news follows several weeks of Elon Musk promoting cryptocurrency on his Twitter, with the Tesla CEO hyping up bitcoin, Dogecoin, and others in the marketplace.
Robinhood, WeBull and other brokerages are down for the count, right now, thanks to extreme volatility in a wide variety of stocks across several markets. If we're looking at GameStop and AMC, we see massive market manipulation and calls from regulators to stop trading altogether. If we look at cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Dogecoin, we see a bit more of the same.
President Joe Biden's top pick for head of the US Treasury Department Janet Yellen responded to questioning this week by the US Senate Finance Committee. Questioning from Senator Maggie Hassan prompted Yellen to speak about cryptocurrency and the use of said digital currency by the public. Hassan asked Yellen about cryptocurrency and its use "for terrorist financing."
The SEC announced a lawsuit against Ripple Labs, Inc, and as such, XRP trading pairs are going offline on Coinbase. If any of that made any sense to you whatsoever, you probably know about cryptocurrency and quite possibly have some investment made in XRP. If you're using XRP on Coinbase right now, you'll want to finish up any sort of transactions you've got going before Tuesday, January 19, 2021 at 10AM Pacific Standard Time if you want those transactions to be fulfilled.
The credit card company Visa just announced that they'll be working with Circle Internet Financial for USDC. Earlier this week, Visa announced a partnership with BlockFi to offer a Bitcoin Rewards Credit Card that offers 1.5% of purchases rewarded as Bitcoin. It's almost as if Visa has accepted the idea that cryptocurrency is the way of the future, and the company wants to get in on the business before they find their business struggling to catch up.
The Facebook-backed Libra cryptocurrency hasn't even launched yet, but it's already rebranding, with its stablecoin product now set to debut as Diem. The move - which comes as the organization hires a number of high-profile execs - is being seen as an attempt to draw further distinction between the crypto project and the ever-controversial Facebook.
Although it hasn't disappeared, cryptocurrency and digital currencies seemed to have taken a backseat in recent months as far as news coverage is concerned. Given the global economy and health situation, however, interest in this new form of currency has apparently surged in the background. That may have given the group behind Facebook's controversial Libra cryptocurrency the motivation to finally push it to the market as early as January, even if it isn't the grand vision that Facebook and its remaining allies had for it last year.
The latest update to PayPal enables cryptocurrency - Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and the like - holding and trading. PayPal tested cryptocurrency features for a small set of users in the weeks between October and now - now it's time for all USA-based PayPal users to get a shot at using several digital currencies on the platform. As of yet, cryptocurrency features are available only inside the USA, while select international markets will launch in the first half of 2021.
At around 14:00 Central Time (Chicago) on July 15, 2020, several prominent Twitter accounts posted messages about Bitcoin. These messages appeared to suggest that the brands and individuals the accounts represented would be giving Bitcoin away to individuals in an effort to "give back to [the] community." Users were asked to send amounts of Bitcoin to a given Bitcoin wallet, at which point they'd return the Bitcoin at double the amount sent.