Crypto

New Arkansas laws regulate cryptocurrency mining

Published

2 years ago

May 13, 2024

New Arkansas laws regulate cryptocurrency mining

Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders has signed two laws regulating cryptocurrency mining in Arkansas, following months of outcry from lawmakers and their constituents.

Much of the push for mining regulation comes from a woman named Gladys Anderson. She lives next to a crypto mine in Bono, a neighborhood near Greenbrier. It’s a rural farming community, where residents say they woke up one day to hear a constant shrieking and humming sound coming from the mine.

Anderson lives closest to it, just a few hundred feet away. Her story has since gone national; speaking on CBS News, she called the noise “torture.”

The criticisms of these machines, which generate cryptocurrency like Bitcoin, fall into three buckets; they’re too loud, they’re bad for the environment, and they have foreign ownership ties that make a lot of people uncomfortable.

The Arkansas Legislature’s fiscal session, which formally adjourned last Thursday, was designed by law to focus only on budget matters. But, this year, lawmakers made an exception for this one issue.

One of the bills was championed by Sen. Joshua Bryant, R-Rogers, who explained his support for the legislation this way.

“Once they’re up and operating under existing ordinances/laws that they don’t just get arbitrarily or capriciously banned,” he said.

In the 2023 legislative session, Bryant sponsored a bill which later became Act 851. The law almost entirely deregulated the mines, prohibiting local governments from putting restrictions on them. Since then, there has been an influx of crypto mines in Arkansas and, with them, controversy about the noise and operations. Bryant says he doesn’t want to repeal that law.

“Repeal really wasn’t the option. What was the option was to create a state framework like we did with auto racing in the ’90s, with auto and gas compressors in the 2000s, to have some state oversight on this industry in order to control it when counties don’t want to step up and do it themselves,” he said.

Bryant says he just wants to give counties the power to regulate the mines, as well as the state if counties choose not to. He says he’s met with leaders in the crypto industry, and doesn’t think the practice is inherently bad. He wants to crack down on “one or two bad actors.”

“[If] they would have complied or been better neighbors a year ago, this wouldn’t have really be a conversation,” he said. “Because crypto mines have been operating in our state for over a decade.”

The first new law allows the mines to operate if they comply with noise ordinances. They have to be 2,000 feet from a residence and can’t be controlled by a “prohibited foreign party-controlled business.” The second new law subjects mines which break the rules to civil penalties.

One of the few lawmakers to vote against the bills was Rep. Andrew Collins, D-Little Rock. He doesn’t like the part of the bill that bans foreign ownership of the mines. There is some evidence tying crypto mining in general to the Chinese government.

Collins says this could be a slippery slope.

“We need to be very careful when we say that somebody can’t do something, or doesn’t have the right to either own property or exercise the right to make a living based on being in a category,” he said.

Collins asked Bryant, who sponsored one of the bills, about this during a committee meeting.

“Effectively, if you’ve got somebody from, say, Venezuela, and they are trying to move to America and they are trying to become a citizen and they are functioning within the confines of the law, completely innocent, no issue. They are not allowed to make an investment.”

Bryant didn’t share his concerns.

“If you come here and you open a facility here that uses our natural resources, that has potential cyber security threats to our grid and other entities, and you are connected to said grid, where do your loyalties lie and what will they be asking of you?”

Collins said he wanted to see better evidence than what he heard in Byrant’s answer. He also says the laws don’t actually address one of the biggest issues; they don’t turn down the noise.

“[The] only thing that a crypto mine operator has to do is apply noise reduction techniques,” Collins said. “They can be very ineffectual.”

One of the laws lists examples of things such as liquid cooling which could be used to keep the mines quiet. But, it doesn’t force the mine’s owners to turn the sound down. Bryant says he is enforcing an industry standard.

“A lot of my colleagues didn’t want the government to control the noise,” he said. “Some thought if you live in a county and the county does not want to pass any ordinances that require, as a whole, the community to mitigate their noise, why are we telling a business to do something that we are not telling everybody to do?”

Gladys Anderson, who lives next to the Bono crypto mine, said she doesn’t trust what Bryant says about the law. But, she says she is trying to remain positive about it.

Faulkner County passed an ordinance capping noise at 60 decibels, a level both Anderson and Little Rock Public Radio have measured the mines exceeding. She is joining with other residents in her community to sue over the noise. Bryant says, because of the new laws, she now has options.

“They’ve got 90 days to comply. I think it will solve the issue. If not, the state will have jurisdiction once the rules are promulgated, or the community of the surrounding neighbors will have standing in court to make sure they follow one of those noise mitigating procedures.”

An attorney representing owners of the Bono cryptocurrency mine did not respond to Little Rock Public Radio’s request for comment.

Crypto

French police arrest six over crypto-related magistrate kidnapping

Published

5 hours ago

February 9, 2026

Press Room

French police arrest six over crypto-related magistrate kidnapping

French authorities have arrested six suspects, including a minor, after a magistrate and her mother were held captive last week for around 30 hours in a cryptocurrency ransom plot, prosecutors said on Sunday, February 8.

Four men and one woman were detained, three overnight and two on Sunday morning, Lyon prosecutor Thierry Dran told AFP. He later confirmed a minor had been arrested on Sunday afternoon.

The individuals were taken into custody following the discovery of the 35-year-old magistrate and her 67-year-old mother on Friday morning, found injured in a garage in the southeastern Drôme region. Two of those arrested overnight were detained as they attempted to take a bus to Spain, according to a source close to the case speaking on condition of anonymity.

Authorities continue to actively search for further suspects, a second source close to the case said, adding that the woman in custody is the partner of one of the four male suspects.

During a press conference Friday after the pair’s escape, prosecutor Dran said the magistrate’s partner – who was not home when the two victims were abducted overnight Wednesday to Thursday – has a leading position in a cryptocurrency start-up.

A massive police search involving 160 officers was launched after the magistrate’s partner had received a message and a photo of her from the kidnappers demanding a ransom to be paid in cryptocurrency.

The captors threatened to mutilate the victims if the transfer was not made quickly, Dran told reporters, declining to specify the amount demanded. But the two women managed to free themselves and call for help without any ransom being paid, by banging on the garage door in Bourg-les-Valence.

“Alerted by the noise, a neighbour intervened. He was able to open the door and allow our two victims to escape,” Dran said.

Crypto-linked kidnappings

French authorities have been dealing with a string of kidnappings and extortion attempts targeting the families of wealthy individuals dealing in cryptocurrencies.

In January 2025, kidnappers seized French crypto boss David Balland and his partner. Balland co-founded a crypto firm called Ledger, valued at the time at more than $1 billion.

Balland’s kidnappers cut off his finger and demanded a hefty ransom. He was freed the next day, and his girlfriend was found tied up in the boot of a car outside Paris.

In May, the father of a man who ran a Malta-based cryptocurrency company was kidnapped by four hooded men in Paris. The victim, whose finger was also severed by the kidnappers and for whom a ransom of several million euros was demanded, was released 58 hours later in a raid by the security forces.

Read more The rise and fall of a gang of crypto-ransom kidnappers

Le Monde with AFP

Crypto

Cryptocurrency and Charity: The Blockchain's Growing Role in Philanthropy

Published

17 hours ago

February 8, 2026

Press Room

According to Kraken’s BTC to USD rate, Bitcoin alone is worth $2.09 trillion of that. Some leaders of nonprofits are now thinking about whether accepting cryptocurrency donations could help their organizations make charitable giving more open and easy to track.

Crypto

Is This 1 Massively Undervalued Cryptocurrency a Screaming Buy for Investors With $5,000? | The Motley Fool

Published

1 day ago

February 8, 2026

Press Room

Is This 1 Massively Undervalued Cryptocurrency a Screaming Buy for Investors With ,000? | The Motley Fool

Ethereum isn’t being recognized for the improvements it’s making.

Most assets simply can’t reinvent themselves every few quarters, but Ethereum (ETH +4.21%) arguably does just that. After pushing two major upgrades, Pectra and Fusaka, in 2025, the chain has another two big improvements on the docket for 2026.

Nonetheless, the coin’s price is down by 38% during the past three months alone, largely for macro reasons that are well beyond its control. Thus it’s likely undervalued, and potentially by quite a lot. Does that make it a screaming buy with a hearty investment of $5,000?

Image source: Getty Images.

The upgrade pipeline is solid, but it can’t guarantee returns

Ethereum’s 2025 upgrades were a lot more than cosmetic improvements, and they laid the technical groundwork for a lot of the follow-on work that’s going to happen this year. This stuff might sound boring (and it might actually be) but knowing what’s going on with it is key to appreciating the chain’s place in the crypto sector’s competitive landscape, not to mention its future opportunities for growth.

The Pectra upgrade went live in May 2025, and it bundled changes aimed at providing better wallet UX, more efficient staking, and more throughput for Layer-2 (L2) chains. Fusaka followed on Dec. 3, and its headline feature, peer-to-peer data availability sampling (PeerDAS) is also a game changer for the chain’s ability to provide rapid performance at scale, and substantially cheaper than before. Today, the chain’s average transaction fees are roughly 75% lower than three years ago, with an average token swap now costing about $0.30, so these successive upgrades are definitely succeeding in making Ethereum a cheaper and easier technology to use.

Today’s Change

(4.21%) $85.83

Current Price

$2123.98

Key Data Points

Market Cap

$256B

Day’s Range

$2014.22 – $2136.13

52wk Range

$1398.62 – $4946.05

Volume

32B

For 2026, the next upgrade, Glamsterdam, will build on those past successes while also adding new censorship resistance features. But, if the coin’s price performance after past updates is any indication, investors simply can’t count on a boost.

There’s no rush to buy it

There’s not exactly a rush to buy Ethereum before Glamsterdam drops.

Ethereum’s upside comes from being the settlement layer that L2s and on-chain finance route through. Given that its upgrades tend to reduce transaction costs rather than increase them, the coin’s value capture from the traffic it supports is still very weak, and it would likely take a deluge of new traffic to move the needle for investors. Realistically, the new traffic will probably ramp up slowly over time, assuming it arrives at all, so buying the coin means getting exposure both to the value generated from the improvement of its underlying tech and also the value generated from people using it to pay for decentralized finance (DeFi) apps and services.

But it’s still very much an asset worth owning, as it’s one of the most important in the crypto sector. An investment of $5,000 buys roughly 2.5 coins, which is enough exposure in case 2026’s development road map plays out such that the coin’s price significantly rises, which is still possible.

Of course, if you’re usually intolerant of risk, it’s probably better to aim for a much smaller allocation.