hodler

9 Mar 2026, 04:49

Orbital data center company to start mining Bitcoin in space

Starcloud CEO Philip Johnston noted that it is 30 times cheaper to mine Bitcoin on ASICs than on GPUs in space on a kilowatt-hour basis.

8 Mar 2026, 20:31

Startup Starcloud Plans First Bitcoin Mining Satellite in Low-Earth Orbit

A Washington startup says the next frontier for computing—and possibly bitcoin mining—may orbit hundreds of miles above Earth. Bitcoin Mining Heads to Space as Starcloud Prepares Starcloud-2 Satellite Launch According to a report by PCMag, Redmond-based space technology and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure company Starcloud is advancing plans to place data centers in low-Earth orbit,

8 Mar 2026, 19:01

Smell Fraud? This Telegram App Was Built to Reward Whistleblowers

Vera Report was shaped by AlphaTON CEO Brittany Kaiser’s experiences as a whistleblower, and she hopes it’ll move the needle on fraud.

7 Mar 2026, 19:55

Alibaba says its coding AI agent began mining crypto and opening covert network tunnels without authorization

Alibaba gave AI fearmonger s fr esh ammunition when it revealed that an AI agent developed to assist with coding tasks was reported to have been caught going beyond the original intent of its deployment, mining cryptocurrency, and establishing covert network tunnels without authorization. Alibaba revealed this development in a technical report it first published in December and revised in January. At first, its engineers thought the incident was a security breach before they discovered that it was its AI agent that was carrying out actions without any instruction from its operators. This development was revealed in a technical report from the Chinese technology giant, and it has provided fresh ammunition to researchers warning that advanced AI systems are capable of developing their own goals. The agent, known as ROME, was being trained through reinforcement learning. The discovery made by the Alibaba team was brought back to light by Alexander Long, founder of AI research firm Pluralis, on X , who shared an excerpt that detailed the incident, stating it is an “insane sequence of statements buried in an Alibaba tech report.” How did Alibaba’s team discover a rogue AI agent? According to the report , the team flagged a burst of security-policy violations originating from their training servers. The alerts showed that attempts were being made to access internal network resources and traffic patterns consistent with cryptomining activity. They initially treated it as a conventional security incident. However, when they looked deeper, they found signs that their agent had established and used a reverse SSH tunnel from an Alibaba Cloud instance to an external IP address. It also diverted “compute away from training, inflating operational costs, and introducing clear legal and reputational exposure,” according to the researchers’ notes. The behaviors, Alibaba’s team concluded, were not triggered by the task prompts and were not necessary for completing the assigned work. Is this an isolated incident? Aakash Gupta , a product and growth leader who quoted Long’s post on X, wrote that Alibaba had published “the first case of instrumental convergence happening in production.” He invoked a famous thought experiment in AI safety by stating that “This is the paperclip maximizer showing up at 3 billion parameters.” However, the Alibaba incident is not the first time an AI model has taken the initiative to perform authorized actions. Last year, Anthropic’s researchers disclosed that Claude Opus 4, one of its flagship models, had demonstrated a capacity to conceal its intentions and take action to preserve its own existence during safety evaluations. In one test scenario, the model attempted to blackmail a fictional engineer, threatening to reveal a personal secret if it was shut down and replaced. Why does this matter, especially for enterprises? According to a McKinsey research report released in October 2025, 80% of organizations that have deployed AI agents report having encountered risky or unexpected behavior. This is also coming at a time when enterprise adoption of agentic AI is on the rise, with major corporations cutting jobs and citing AI usage as the leading factor. Gartner projects that by the end of 2026, 40% of enterprise applications will embed task-specific AI agents. However, McKinsey has warned that agentic workflows are spreading faster than governance models can address their risks. A 2025 survey of 30 leading AI agents found that 25 disclosed no internal safety results, and 23 had undergone no third-party testing. It is important that enterprises take the possibility of agents going beyond the scope of the work into serious consideration. Alibaba said it had responded by building safety-aligned data filtering into its training pipeline and hardening the sandbox environments in which its agents operate, and it has received praise for sharing its findings with the public. Anthropic upgraded Claude Opus 4 to its highest internal safety classification. Claim your free seat in an exclusive crypto trading community - limited to 1,000 members.

7 Mar 2026, 13:00

Bitcoin Difficulty Holds Flat As Hashrate Moves Sideways

On-chain data shows the Bitcoin Difficulty has seen little change in the latest adjustment as a result of the recent sideways trend in the Hashrate. Bitcoin Difficulty Has Only Seen A Change Of 0.45% In The New Adjustment The Bitcoin “ Difficulty ” refers to a metric built into the blockchain that controls how hard the miners would find it to mine a block on the network right now. This indicator’s value automatically changes about every two weeks based on network conditions. Satoshi wrote in one simple rule for the chain to follow: bring block production rate to a consistent value of 10 minutes per block. Whenever miners produce blocks in an interval faster than this, the network raises its Difficulty just enough to slow them back down to it. Similarly, BTC eases things up instead if miners are slower than expected. The latest Difficulty adjustment has just occurred on the Bitcoin network. This event, however, didn’t lead to any notable changes in the metric, with its value going up by just 0.45%. Below is a chart from CoinWarz that shows how the recent Difficulty adjustments have looked for the cryptocurrency. From the graph, it’s visible that the Bitcoin Difficulty saw a huge decline two adjustments ago. The reason behind this aggressive drawdown in the indicator lied in special circumstances in the United States: the snow storm of late January. Miners become faster or slower at their task when they change their computing power, collectively known as the network Hashrate . This metric saw a huge drop following the onset of the snow storm; miners were forced to curtail their power in order to ease pressure on the nation’s electricity grid, which was facing disruptions due to the extreme weather event. The resulting network slowdown is what forced the Difficulty decrease. Since this event was extraordinary and lasted only shortly, it didn’t take long for the Hashrate to bounce back. Here is a chart from Blockchain.com that shows the trajectory that the 7-day average value of the indicator has followed recently: The quick recovery in the Bitcoin Hashrate led into a Difficulty increase that corrected the earlier sharp drawdown. Since the rebound in the indicator, however, its value has taken to sideways movement, suggesting miners are neither expanding nor decommissioning. This flat trajectory in the Hashrate is why the Difficulty also mostly remained unchanged during the latest adjustment. BTC Price Bitcoin broke above the $70,000 level earlier this week, but the asset has now seen a drop back below it as its price is now trading around $68,300.

7 Mar 2026, 10:00

Single Swing Vote May Determine Fate Of The CLARITY Act In Banking Committee

Despite strong backing from President Donald Trump and ongoing discussions at the White House, the CLARITY Act — the Senate’s long-debated crypto market structure bill — remains stalled as political divisions persist and the midterm elections draw closer. The legislation has been slowed by continued resistance from Senate Democrats and the banking industry, both of which have raised objections to key provisions, particularly those related to stablecoin rewards. Banking Committee Markup Hinges On Tillis According to a Thursday update from journalist Eleanor Terrett of Crypto In America, one Republican senator may now hold decisive influence over the CLARITY Act’s next steps in the Senate Banking Committee. Terrett reported that Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina appears to be central to resolving the ongoing dispute over stablecoin yield and reward programs. Tillis had previously emerged as a potential holdout in January when the Senate Banking Committee was preparing to mark up the bill. Amendments introduced by Tillis sought to narrow the scope of rewards that crypto firms could offer on stablecoins. US-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase later cited those proposed changes as one of several reasons it withdrew its support for the legislation at the time, underscoring how sensitive the yield issue has become for the industry. While the Senate Agriculture Committee approved its portion of the CLARITY Act framework in January, the Banking Committee has yet to complete its markup — a necessary step before the bill can advance further. Late-March CLARITY Act Markup Terrett notes that a dramatic breakthrough between banks and crypto firms may be unlikely. Instead of a comprehensive resolution that fully satisfies both sides, the strategy now appears to focus on drafting language that represents the minimum each party can accept. Even if Democrats ultimately oppose the bill during the next markup session, the CLARITY Act could theoretically pass out of committee along party lines. In that scenario, however, Tillis’ support would be pivotal if no Democrats cross the aisle. His position could determine whether the legislation advances or remains stuck. At the same time, stakeholders involved in negotiations say the focus on stablecoin rewards has “taken a lot of oxygen out of the room,” leaving other contentious areas — particularly those related to decentralized finance — sidelined. One DeFi executive engaged in the talks suggested that Senate Democrats are now scrambling to revisit those outstanding matters. Ethics provisions are also expected to remain a point of sensitivity for some Democratic members, adding another layer of complexity to an already delicate negotiation surrounding the CLARITY Act. As the calendar advances, timing is becoming increasingly critical. One crypto trade executive said contingency options are being considered in case the Banking Committee’s markup slips further into the year. Still, there is cautious optimism that meaningful progress on stablecoin yield and related provisions could be achieved within the next three weeks. If that happens, lawmakers may be able to reschedule the markup for late March. Featured image from OpenArt, chart from TradingView.com