Bitcoin continues its plunge and Dogecoin could be heading “to the moon” again. Here are the cryptocurrency highlights of week 3:
- Bitcoin exchange CEX has suspended its cloud mining service. The company states that the continuously falling price of Bitcoin has caused mining to become unprofitable. The maintenance of the mining hardware is paid in US dollars, which can therefore rise above the revenue made from mining. CEX will resume its cloud mining operations once the price of Bitcoin rises above $320 per coin. Cloud mining company ZeusHash made a similar announcement several weeks ago, and has now released a statement in which it announces it may be forced to shut down its mining operations altogether.
- For now, the price of Bitcoin keeps heading downward. One coin is trading at about $200 compared to $275 last week, equal to a loss of roughly 25 percent. At the lowest point the price of Bitcoin even briefly hovered around $170. The digital currency has been on a losing streak so far into 2015, shedding 38 percent of its value since the start of the year.
- The Silk Road trial has taken an interesting turn now that the lawyer of alleged mastermind Ross Ulbricht claims that their client was not the person behind the infamous “Dread Pirate Roberts”, that was running the online drug market place. In fact, the CEO of the collapsed exchange Mt.Gox, Mark Karpeles, is said to be the real Dread Pirate Roberts. Karpeles responded by denying any involvement.
- The collapsing Russian Ruble led to many Russians fleeing towards Bitcoin. Russia now seems to be actively countering this, as it has already blocked several websites related to the digital currency. The Russian Federation was already planning to impose fines on “anyone caught using or spreading information about digital currencies” in 2015.
- Is Dogecoin heading “to the moon” again? The Dogecoin community is now supporting a fundraiser for “Africa2Moon Mission”. The goal of the crowd funding campaign is to encourage scholars into science, which does seem rather odd on a continent on which most people are deprived of educational opportunities.
