Bitcoin’s mining difficulty climbed to 144.4 trillion after January storms briefly slashed hash rate, while some US miners offset downtime by selling electricity back to the grid. Bitcoin’s mining difficulty jumped about 15% to 144.4 trillion on Feb. 20, according to CoinWarz data, reversing an 11% drop earlier this month that marked the sharpest decline since China’s 2021 mining ban. The earlier decline followed a sharp drop in hash rate after severe winter storms swept across much of the United States, disrupting power grids and forcing miners offline. In late January, Foundry USA, the largest mining pool by hash rate, briefly saw its computing power fall to about 198 exahashes per second from nearly 400 EH/s, before recovering. Hash rate measures the total computing power securing the network, while mining difficulty adjusts every 2,016 blocks, about every two weeks, to keep block production near its 10-minute target. Read more
After four years contributing, BGD Labs said it would be leaving the DAO, citing changes to the organization and taking an “adversarial position“ to its liquidity protocol. BGD Labs, a core technical contributor to decentralized finance protocol Aave, said it will conclude its involvement with the project’s DAO on April 1 after four years. In a Friday forum post on Aave, BGD cited an “asymmetric organizational scenario,” which it said the DAO has “badly executed” without consideration of contributors’ expertise. The contributor added that Aave had taken an “adversarial position” of the third version (v3) of its protocol to promote features in the fourth (v4). “While all previous points that BGD should just keep contributing on the v3 side exclusively, the situation created makes it nonsensical to us: every time we think/will think about improving v3, there will be some type of implicit/explicit artificial constraint,” said BGD. “We are not really interested in being in that position, as we think it is a waste...
Bitcoin stayed rangebound within a "downward trajectory" as the Supreme Court concluded that some US trade tariffs were illegal and liable for a refund. Bitcoin (BTC) saw choppy price action after Friday’s Wall Street open as markets reacted to the US Supreme Court decision on President Donald Trump’s trade tariffs. Key points: The US Supreme Court rules that certain US tariffs are illegal, sparking a modest risk-asset response. Read more
Private equity, which has the second-highest risk weighting, carries a 400% weight under the current Basel III banking framework. Crypto treasury executives are calling on the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS), an international banking regulatory body, to revise the 1,250% risk weight for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies under the Basel III framework. The 1,250% capital requirement means that banks must back any Bitcoin (BTC) on their balance sheets at a 1:1 ratio with approved collateral, making BTC holding more costly than other asset classes. For comparison, cash, physical gold and government debt carry a 0% risk weight under the Basel III framework. Read more