BT Daily News: Binance launches $500M lending project to support crypto miners
1. Binance launches $500M lending project to support crypto miners
Binance Pool, a mining subsidiary of Binance, launched a $500 million lending project to support the crypto mining industry. It will provide loans to private blue-chip Bitcoin crypto miners.According to the official blog post from Oct. 14, the Binance Pool will provide access to a $500 million loan fund on several conditions, which include an 18-to-24-month term, 5% to 10% interest rates, and some physical or digital assets as a security. The company will look at a wide range of metrics, including current performance, mining power and security quantity, to define the borrower’s creditworthiness.
Binance Pool will also launch cloud mining products, directly purchasing the cloud mining hashing power from Bitcoin mining and digital infrastructure providers.
The company did not specify the maximum amount of a single loan, referring to the specifics of each applicant’s situation.
2. EthereumPoW Ecosystem Continues to Grow as Support for Mining Remains
The minable version of Ethereum has garnered a lot of attention since it spawned as a hard fork this time last month. In a move remnant to the 2017 genesis of Bitcoin Cash (BCH) from its big brother, EthereumPoW may have started another fork war between proponents of each respected network.The fork was spawned by former Ethereum miner and ICO investor Chandler Guo, who tweeted on Oct. 14 that more than 100 projects have been launched on the network in just a month.
The token spiked as high as $60 when it launched in mid-September, but like so many others, it has tanked since then.
ETHW is currently trading at $7.54 following a 2.3% drop on the day, according to CoinGecko. It has already lost 87% from its all-time high last month as initial hype and degen activity have waned. ETC is down a similar amount from its peak, currently trading at around $24.
Considering those depressed prices and the rate of network expansion, ETHW could be one to watch when crypto spring finally arrives.
3. Maple Finance Launches $300 Million Bitcoin Miner Lending Fund, Oryen Network the Better Option?
The costs of mining the cryptocurrency have skyrocketed, with energy prices climbing continuously. In addition to this, the value of Bitcoin itself is around 60% lower now than at the start of the year, meaning some mining companies are currently operating at a loss.Those that wish to wait out the downtrend will need a capital injection, and Maple Finance has stepped up to provide this. Offering a temporary respite from the bearish trend will be costly, however, with interest rates as high as 20% offered by the lender.
Some view this as a smart play from the Maple Finance team, who will look to generate several million dollars from the scheme.
Questions are beginning to arise, though, about the potential sustainability of mining Bitcoin for the long term. With high expenses, low returns, and mining difficulty stepping up continuously, there may be better options.
4. Crusoe acquires peer mining firm
Crusoe Energy Systems, a Bitcoin miner based in Colorado, has announced that it will acquire the operating assets of Great American Mining (GAM), a portable BTC mining company, in light of the rising difficulty and decreasing profitability of Bitcoin mining.Crusoe claims that the deal will result in the integration of GAM’s operations into Crusoe’s, increasing Crusoe’s capacity by roughly 9% and adding over 4,000 application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC) crypto mining rigs.
Following the acquisition, Crusoe will have approximately 125 of these gas-powered waste containers operational, which it claims could reduce the annual emission of approximately 170,000 cars.
The sector is under pressure from both the traditional and cryptocurrency markets, and the ever-increasing difficulty of BTC mining is hurting miner profitability. The consolidation of these two mining operations comes at this time.
5. Walmart CTO says crypto will become a ‘major’ payments disruptor
Walmart’s global chief technology officer Suresh Kumar has tipped cryptocurrency to become a “major” area of disruption, particularly in how customers pay for virtual and physical goods in the future.Speaking at the Yahoo Finance All Markets Summit on Oct. 17, Kumar outlined Walmart’s positive stance on digital assets, noting that “crypto will become an important part of how customers transact” for both physical and virtual goods.
“I think that there are three major areas of disruption. Crypto falls in sort of the middle of it,” he said, explaining that “the way in which customers are getting inspired and discovering products” is changing.
Kumar also suggested that a significant amount of customers will be marketed to through the Metaverse and live streams on social media apps, and that crypto could be an important payment option in these kinds of areas.