Iraq commitment to capture flare gas sparks crypto mining speculation

April 16, 2024 Coin Telegraph

Binance to launch Thai exchange in joint venture with local energy giant

November 16, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Binance

Crypto services from Binance and Gulf Energy’s joint venture, Gulf Binance, will initially be available to Thai residents on an invitation-only basis.

Binance will publicly roll out a Thailand-based crypto exchange in early 2024 via a joint venture with local energy giant Gulf Energy Development.

A Nov. 15 Stock Exchange of Thailand filing by Gulf Energy said the venture, called Gulf Binance, will initially be available on an invitation-only basis with a public rollout by early 2024, with the firm receiving Securities and Exchange Commission approval on Nov. 10.

A Binance spokesperson confirmed to Cointelegraph that the platform has initially launched as an invitation-only exchange and would give more details as information becomes available.

On May 26, Gulf Binance received digital asset operator licenses from Thailand’s Ministry of Finance, which enabled it to operate a crypto exchange regulated by the country’s SEC. At the time, Binance had planned to launch its Thai arm by Q4 2023.

*Gulf Energy announces the commencement of Gulf Binance services. Source: SE*

On the same day, Binance’s regional head of Asia, Europe and MENA, Richard Teng, said the exchange would harness "Gulf’s established local presence and network,” and Gulf Binance aims to show the potential of blockchain technology to local users.

Gulf Energy is one of Thailand's largest natural gas distribution companies, founded and run by Thai billionaire Sarath Ratanavadi. The company actively invests across different business verticals, including renewable power generation, infrastructure development projects and digital infrastructure businesses, among others.

Gulf Energy invested in Binance’s United States-based arm, Binance.US. In April 2022, the firm disclosed that it invested in “Series Seed Preferred Stock issued by BAM Trading Services,” the operator of Binance.US.

Last month, Binance assisted the Royal Thai Police to seize $277 million from scammers. Following the revelation, over 3,200 victims contacted the authorities to file for compensation.

#Binance Aids Royal Thai Police in Crackdown on Criminal Networks | @Binance Blog https://t.co/GzMGjTlzmI
— CZ Binance (@cz_binance) October 3, 2023

At the time, Binance’s head of financial crime compliance, Tigran Gambaryan, highlighted the company’s intent to partner with various authorities worldwide to help with “restoring the trust in the digital-asset ecosystem.”

Magazine: Breaking into Liberland: Dodging guards with inner-tubes, decoys and diplomats

India state refiner HPCL to use blockchain to verify purchase orders

October 19, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

Hindustan Petroleum, one of India’s largest oil and gas companies, is launching a blockchain system to enable automated verification of purchase orders.

India’s state-run refiner, Hindustan Petroleum (HPCL), one of India’s largest oil and gas companies, is launching a blockchain system to enable automated verification of purchase orders (POs).

HPCL has partnered with the blockchain software firm Zupple Labs to integrate its blockchain-based digital credentialing technology into the purchase order system, the firms said in a joint announcement.

Called LegitDoc, Zupple Labs’ verification tech enables HPCL to issue digital POs to its vendors without having to manually verify the PO requests. From a third-party verifier’s perspective, the project provides a facility to directly verify the validity of POs in an automated way on the HPCL website.

“The implementation helps to automate the verification of HPCL POs to external parties,” a spokesperson for HPCL told Cointelegraph. “This works by integrating the blockchain system with HPCL’s internal e-PO and generates tamper-evident verifiable POs,” the representative noted, adding:

“These POs will be dispatched to vendors which in turn can be shared with third parties. Any third-party verifier can directly verify these POs on the HPCL vendor portal verification application.”

According to the HPCL spokesperson, the company has been collaborating with Zupple Labs on the blockchain project over the past six months. “HPCL has completed building the blockchain PO system successfully and the same facility will be made official to the vendors within this month,” the representative stated.

The spokesperson said that HPCL has implemented the blockchain-based PO system on both private blockchain and public blockchain.

According to Zupple Labs co-founder and business lead Neil Martis, the PO verification system has involved the implementation of “two parallel blockchains” used as settlement layers, including the public Near blockchain and the private Hyperledger Fabric blockchain. Martis noted that the latter was used as part of HPCL’s Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery strategy. According to Zupple Labs, HPCL issued 3,000 POs via the facility as of mid-October 2023.

Magazine: The Truth Behind Cuba’s Bitcoin Revolution: An on-the-ground report

Argentinian oil company to start mining crypto with gas power leftovers

September 27, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Argentina

Tecpetrol hopes to reduce environmental impact by avoiding gas emissions, and generate some additional profits in the meantime.

A Buenos Aires-headquartered oil company, Tecpetrol, has decided to convert excessive gas into energy for cryptocurrency mining.

As reported by local media on Sept. 24, Tecpetrol will launch its first gas-powered crypto mining facility in the Los Toldos 2 Este region, located north of Vaca Muerta in the Argentine Patagonia. The company claims its approach would allow it to advance its crude oil production project and optimize gas utilization, thereby reducing waste.

The company is planning to drill at least 35,000 barrels of oil daily at the facility, but, given the absence of infrastructure to consume the gas, being released in the process, it decided to explore crypto mining as a strategic choice to consume it. As Ricardo Markous, the CEO of Tecpetrol, explained:

“Given our inability to release the gas into the environment, we have opted to implement cryptocurrency mining operations."

Tecpetrol hopes to commence the crypto mining between late October and early November. The primary goals are to reduce environmental impact by avoiding gas emissions and to generate some additional profits. The company has already signed contracts and is collaborating with an unnamed firm that has experience implementing similar strategies in the United States.

A recent paper published by the Institute of Risk Management (IRM), states that Bitcoin mining can reduce global emissions by up to 8% by 2030 by converting the world’s wasted methane emissions into less harmful emissions. The report cited a theoretical case saying that using captured methane to power Bitcoin mining operations can reduce the amount of methane vented into the atmosphere.

Magazine: Are DAOs overhyped and unworkable? Lessons from the front lines

Additional reporting: Ray Jimenez Bravo, Mariuscar Goyo

Venezuela extends reorganization shutdown of crypto agency to March 2024

September 26, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

The government will spend six additional months to ‘reorganize” the entity, which de-facto stopped its work in March 2023.

Venezuela was one of the first Latin American countries to establish its own crypto oversight body, the National Superintendency of Crypto Assets (Sunacrip). Now, the government says it will take six extra months to ‘reorganize” the entity, which de-facto stopped its work in March 2023.

According to the presidential decree, published on Sept 19, the head of State, Nicolás Maduro, ordered the extension of the period of forced reorganization of Sunacrip for another semester. The period of the new extension officially started on Sept. 17 and will last until March 24, 2024.

Sunacrip was closed in March 2023, when the government announced its reorganization due to the corruption scandal involving its former top management. At the time at least ten people were arrested, including Joselit Ramirez Camacho, who led the crypto department from its inception in 2018. According to Venezuelan prosecutors, Ramirez stole more than $3 million from the state during his time at Sunacrip. He was in charge of overseeing the crypto regulation in the country, as well as the implementation of Venezuelan national cryptocurrency tied to oil reserves, Petro.

The shutdown of the regulatory body led to chaos in the Venezuelan crypto industry, firmly tied to the state, which has been using digital assets to evade the U.S. financial sanctions — crypto mining facilities in several states were shut down, and some crypto exchanges were ordered to cease operations.

Sunacrip was established by the Venezuelan government in 2018 to inspect the entirety of crypto-related commercial activities in the country and the “creation, emission, transfer, commercialization and exchange” of all crypto actives.

In 2018, the country launched the oil-backed cryptocurrency Petro. By the summer of 2023, there were reports that the government planned to liquidate the currency, however, its official webpage is still functioning at time of publication.

The Agenda podcast chats with Energy Web on how to fight climate change with the help of blockchain

July 28, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Biogas

Energy Web CEO Jesse Morris explains why blockchain can make “going green” more efficient, how fighting climate change is easier, and why Energy Web is building on Polkadot.

This summer, parts of the United States are wilting under a multimonth stretch of sweltering heat, and data suggests that summer temperatures will continue to creep up in the coming years. The planet is on what seems to be a pretty clear path to soon reaching 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming for the first time since the preindustrial era, a milestone number that the world’s countries pledged to try to remain under in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

Humanity’s continued burning of fossil fuels combined with the return of the El Niño weather phenomenon has created a dangerous cocktail of rising temperatures that have been breaking records all around the world. In fact, July 6 was the world’s hottest day ever recorded — and possibly the hottest day in 100,000 years — with the month of July on track to be the hottest in recorded history.

Scientists say that short of drastic and monumental geoengineering projects, the only way to prevent the planet’s warming from remaining under 1.5 degrees Celsius is to rapidly phase out and ultimately stop the burning of fossil fuels. But modern society requires massive amounts of power to operate, so where will all that energy come from if fossil fuels are no longer practical?

The answer, according to organizations like Energy Web, lies in clean energy, or energy that does not release greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.

On Episode 15 of The Agenda podcast, hosts Jonathan DeYoung and Ray Salmond speak with Energy Web CEO Jesse Morris about his views on climate change, decarbonization and how blockchain technology can help facilitate the move to clean energy.

The tech is actually already built and readily available

A particular highlight from the conversation was Morris’ comment that it’s the economics of the climate change industry that need adjustment. Morris said:

“Let’s just make it so that all these technologies that can help us decarbonize are cost-effective, and businesses will just adopt them.”

Of course, it’s slightly more complex than that, but according to Morris:

“One of the big overarching challenges is we just need our electricity to be green. And one of the ways we can make the electricity to be more green, the entire electric system, is to take this concept where, let’s say we have all of these different technologies that I was talking about earlier: electric cars, batteries, solar systems, heat pumps.”

In Morris’ view, better public policy messaging couched in digestible data and a more reasonable approach to governments’ climate change and environmental preservation objectives are needed. Morris said the first step is to “electrify everything” and:

“We have all those assets out there, which is kind of a naturally decentralized, distributed landscape with all of these assets that are out there. If we can network those things together digitally and basically use those to actually balance the grid instead of these big natural gas or coal-powered facilities, that’s a really efficient way to manage the electricity system — basically telling all of those different batteries and electric cars precisely when to and when to not use electricity. It’s kind of like a big distributed, decentralized battery that’s a really efficient and incredibly economically powerful tool for balancing the grid.”

What’s blockchain got to do with it?

Given the fact that environmentally friendly solutions are already in existence and ready to roll out, both DeYoung and Salmond were curious about the actual role and need for blockchain in these technologies. Morris explained that after six years of building and trialing different solutions, Energy Web honed in on “Green Proofs’ as the primary solution with a good product-to-market fit.

Green Proofs have applications ranging from green biofuels to Bitcoin (BTC) miners using only renewable and green energy and tracing how green the materials were that came in to create a battery.

According to Morris, “Blockchain plays a pretty key role. We use blockchains to actually represent those assets.”

“So basically, if I’m a fuel producer, I log in, I register, I upload data. An on-chain representation of that data is then used and can be moved around that ecosystem to sort of track who owns the digital certificate representing that unit of green fuel, for example.”

To hear more from Morris’ conversation with The Agenda, listen to the full episode on Cointelegraph’s Podcasts page, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And don’t forget to check out Cointelegraph’s full lineup of other shows!

Magazine: Tokenizing music royalties as NFTs could help the next Taylor Swift

This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

PacWest Bank plummets 50%! How will Bitcoin react?

May 5, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Banking

Cointelegraph analyst and writer Marcel Pechman explains how PacWest’s plummeting share price and the continued banking crisis could impact Bitcoin.

Macro Markets, hosted by crypto analyst Marcel Pechman, airs every Friday on the Cointelegraph Markets & Research YouTube channel and explains complex concepts in layperson’s terms, focusing on the cause and effect of traditional financial events on day-to-day crypto activity.

PacWest Bancorp’s 50% price decline and the ongoing banking crisis are the first topics of this week’s show. The bank holds $40 billion in assets, although 80% of its lending portfolio has been assigned to commercial real estate loans and residential mortgages. The issue? As usual, rising interest rates. Meanwhile, the total underwater bond position of United States banks is $600 billion, not including derivatives.

However, the U.S. Treasury has been bailing out every one of the latest three bankruptcies: Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), Signature Bank and First Republic. SVB’s losses are estimated at $20 billion, or 15% of the total Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) capacity.

Pechman explains how Bitcoin’s (BTC) price should react in case PacWest Bancorp fails and why gold has recently flirted with its all-time high above $2,050. More importantly, how the banking crisis impacts government debt, which is spiraling out of control — consequently, extremely positive for Bitcoin in the long run.

The next concluding segment of Macro Markets focuses on oil prices, as the energy commodity traded down 17.5% in three weeks. Pechman shows how the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) doesn’t really control production and how the U.S. government played a key role in diminishing the demand for oil imports.

According to Pechman, the biggest take for Bitcoin is the potential oil demand flatline due to weaker economic conditions, which can be deemed a short-term negative driver for risk assets, including cryptocurrencies.

If you are looking for exclusive and valuable content provided by leading crypto analysts and experts, make sure to subscribe to the Cointelegraph Markets & Research YouTube channel. Join us at Macro Markets every Friday.

Nuclear and gas fastest growing energy sources for Bitcoin mining: Data

September 27, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Bitcoin mining

Some governments can negatively impact Bitcoin's environmental footprint by banning BTC mining, according to new data from Cambridge.

The electricity mix of Bitcoin (BTC) has drastically changed over the past few years, with nuclear energy and natural gas becoming the fastest growing energy sources powering Bitcoin mining, according to new data.

The Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) on Tuesday released a major update to its Bitcoin mining-dedicated data source, the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI).

According to the data from Cambridge, fossil fuels like coal and natural gas made up almost two-thirds of Bitcoin’s total electricity mix as of January 2022, accounting for more than 62%. As such, the share of sustainable energy sources in the BTC energy mix amounted to 38%.

The new study suggests that coal alone accounted for nearly 37% of Bitcoin’s total electricity consumption as of early 2022, becoming the largest single energy source for BTC mining. Among sustainable energy sources, hydropower was found to be the largest resource, with a share of roughly 15%.

Despite Bitcoin mining significantly relying on coal and hydropower, the shares of these energy sources in the total BTC energy mix have been dropping over the past several years. In 2020, coal power powered 40% of global BTC mining. Hydropower’s share has more than halved from 2020 to 2021, tumbling from 34% to 15%.

*Bitcoin mining electricity mix from 2019 to 2022. Source: CCAF*

In contrast, the role of natural gas and nuclear energy in Bitcoin mining has been notably growing over the past two years. The share of gas in the BTC electricity mix surged from about 13% in 2020 to 23% in 2021, while the percentage of nuclear energy increased from 4% in 2021 to nearly 9% in 2022.

According to Cambridge analysts, Chinese miner relocations were a major reason behind sharp fluctuations in Bitcoin’s energy mix in 2020 and 2021. China’s crackdown on crypto in 2021 and the associated miner migration resulted in a major drop in the share of hydroelectric power in the BTC energy mix. As previously reported, Chinese authorities shut down a number of crypto mining farms powered by hydroelectricity in 2021.

“The Chinese government's ban on cryptocurrency mining and the resulting shift in Bitcoin mining activity to other countries negatively impacted Bitcoin's environmental footprint,” the study suggested.

The analysts also emphasized that the BTC electricity mix hugely varies depending on the region. Countries like Kazakhstan still rely heavily on fossil fuels, while in countries like Sweden, the share of sustainable energy sources in electricity generation is about 98%.

The surge of nuclear and gas energy in Bitcoin's electricity mix allegedly reflects the “shift of mining power towards the United States,” the analysts stated. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, most of the nation’s electricity was generated by natural gas, which accounted for more than 38% of the country’s total electricity production. Coal and nuclear energy accounted for 22% and 19%, respectively.

Among other insights related to the latest CBECI update, the study also found that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with BTC mining accounted for 48 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MTCO2e) as of Sept. 21, 2022. That is 14% lower than the estimated GHG emissions in 2021. According to the study’s estimates, the current GHG emissions levels related to Bitcoin represent roughly 0.1% of global GHG emissions.

Combining all the previously mentioned findings, the index estimates that by mid-September, about 199.6 MtCO2e can be attributed to the Bitcoin network since its inception. The analysts stressed that about 92% of all emissions have occurred since 2018.

*Total greenhouse emissions related to Bitcoin as of mid-September 2022. Source: CCAF*

As previously reported, the CCAF has been working on CBECI as part of its multi-year research initiative known as the Cambridge Digital Assets Programme (CDAP). The CDAP's institutional collaborators include finance institutions like British International Investment, the Dubai International Finance Centre, Accenture, EY, Fidelity, Mastercard, Visa and others.

The new CDAP findings noticeably differ from data by the Bitcoin Mining Council (BMC), which in July estimated the share of sustainable sources in Bitcoin's electricity mix at nearly 60%.

“It doesn’t include nuclear or fossil fuels so from that you can imply that around 30-40% of the industry is powered by fossil fuels,” Bitfarms chief mining officer Ben Gagnon told Cointelegraph in August.

According to CBECI project lead Alexander Neumueller, the CDAP’s approach is different from the Bitcoin Mining Council when it comes to estimating Bitcoin’s electricity mix.

“We use information from our mining map to see where Bitcoin miners are located, and then examine the country, state, or province's electricity mix. As I understand it, the Bitcoin Mining Council asks its members to self-report this data in a survey,” Neumueller stated. He still mentioned that there are still a few nuances related to lack of data in the study.

Eurozone hits record inflation of 9.1% amid gas and energy crisis

August 31, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

Eurozone inflation is up from 8.9% in July as the continent faces skyrocketing energy, gas and food prices due to the ongoing crisis in Ukraine.

August marks the ninth consecutive month of rising inflation for the Eurozone at 9.1%. In July, the official inflation numbers landed at 8.9%. The Eurozone consists of 19 countries, including Germany, France and Belgium.

This comes as the European Union (EU) faces a massive energy and gas crisis, largely as a result of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Current prices for daily necessities such as food, gas and electricity have soared across the continent.

Over the last month energy prices made up the largest price push, up by an annual rate of 38.3%. While food, alcohol, and tobacco all rose by an annual rate of over 10%.

Former EU member state, the United Kingdom also hit a 40-year-high inflation rate of 10.1% in July, as reported by the Organizaton of National Statistics (ONS).

Eurozone countries Estonia and the Netherlands both experienced noticeable inflation spikes of 2% up from July.

Florian Glatz, an EU-based lawyer specializing in blockchain technology, co-founder of the German Blockchain Association and member of the EU Crypto Initative, told Cointelegraph:

“Europe is facing historic challenges, with inflation eroding away the economic security of middle and lower income households.”

Moreover, Glatz believes the crypto industry has been warning global governments that current monetary and economic systems “don‘t hold up to the challenges” at hand.

Among those who have already adopted crypto, it's often seen as a hedge against inflation. Though, for this to work it the crypto community must continue to push mass adoption and proper implementation.

Glatz says the EU needs to become relevant in the digital economy to present a better value proposition for the financial future of its people.

“We need a new deal for EU citizens that is powered by financial inclusion, opportunities in new digital markets and the desire to make Web3 the long-awaited Digital Revolution made in Europe.”

This comes as the European Central Bank released its guidelines on licensing digital assets, such as cryptocurrencies, on Aug. 17.

Amid Colorado’s Gas Flare Ban, Report Shows Half Dozen Gas and Oil Firms Are Raking in a Lot of Bitcoin

August 30, 2022 Bitcoin.com

Oil and Gas