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

Can Bitcoin Benefit From Artificial Intelligence? | The Motley Fool

Published

3 hours ago

February 7, 2026

Press Room

Can Bitcoin Benefit From Artificial Intelligence? | The Motley Fool

It’s possible, but it won’t happen tomorrow.

Artificial intelligence is starting to do things that were formerly the exclusive domain of humans, including tasks like holding and moving money. If the “agentic AI” trend sticks, it’s thus reasonable to assume that more financial activity will be initiated by software, and, perhaps even for the benefit of that software rather than for the benefit of humans.

That brings up a fun, slightly unsettling question for investors: Could Bitcoin (BTC 1.03%) benefit by becoming a preferred store of value for AI agents?

Image source: Getty Images.

What AI agents will actually optimize for

In practice, the AI agents of today don’t have any need for money in the sense that a human might. They’re machines designed to identify market patterns, assist with payment routing, manage liquidity in key accounts, and monitor fraud risk.

That set of jobs implies handling a very particular kind of money. In short, for an AI agent to excel at those tasks, it needs to operate within a system with low, stable costs and clear integration points for basic functionalities like identity verification and trade authorization. If those requirements aren’t met, the agent can’t do much of anything because the company or individual running it will be loath to eat the operational costs and regulatory risks associated with letting it continue, even if it’s possible to do so.

Today’s Change

(-1.03%) $-721.23

Current Price

$69220.00

Key Data Points

Market Cap

$1.4T

Day’s Range

$67656.00 – $71487.00

52wk Range

$60255.56 – $126079.89

Volume

67B

So even if AI agents become a real theme in the world of managing investments and making trades — and they probably will — the initial wave of agent activity will probably concentrate in quite narrow and controlled workflows rather than a sudden, industrywide automation of everything. And there simply aren’t many ways for AI to change or improve upon the Bitcoin mining process either.

Therefore, we should not expect AI agents to immediately cause noticeable changes in Bitcoin’s price, as they might not.

Where Bitcoin could see upside

The best case for Bitcoin here is not that it becomes a spendable asset for agents. It’s simply a bad fit for that purpose; it’s slow and expensive to use, and it lacks any smart contract infrastructure for automated systems to hook into gracefully. Nonetheless, Bitcoin could still gain a lot from the rise of AI if it becomes the reserve store of value that agents use to invest their earnings, assuming they ever have any.

It’s a decent choice for that purpose because it has a fixed supply schedule and a governance culture that makes major changes slow and contentious, both of which are good features for those seeking a long-lived store of value that doesn’t require a human to handle. Of course, there are other cryptocurrencies that could fill that same role, though none are as widely trusted as Bitcoin.

So, what should investors watch for if they want to see whether the AI upside in Bitcoin is actually going to play out as described here?

Look for financial institutions building agent-ready Bitcoin custody solutions with policy controls, and for large financial businesses explicitly describing Bitcoin as a strategic reserve asset inside their AI-driven operations.

Until those hints appear, it’s a lot more reasonable to treat AI as a modest tailwind for Bitcoin.

Crypto

Prediction: This Cryptocurrency Could Soar 80% in 2026 | The Motley Fool

Published

15 hours ago

February 7, 2026

Press Room

Prediction: This Cryptocurrency Could Soar 80% in 2026 | The Motley Fool

Hyperliquid is up 30% to start the year, buoyed by the imminent launch of new products for crypto traders.

Of the top 20 cryptocurrencies in the world, only a handful are in positive territory for the year. Market bellwethers Bitcoin (BTC +3.95%) and Ethereum (ETH +6.41%) are down more than 15% each, and more speculative altcoins are down as much as 25%.

But amid this market mayhem, there’s one cryptocurrency that has managed to soar in value by 30% to start the year: Hyperliquid (HYPE 4.74%). If the hype about HYPE is right, this cryptocurrency could soar 80% or higher in 2026.

The hype about HYPE

Last year, Hyperliquid exploded in popularity, amid all the hoopla about crypto perpetual futures (“perps”). Hyperliquid has quickly become one of the top decentralized exchanges for trading crypto perpetual futures, and trading volume has thus far been through the roof. This is a product with immense appeal for risk-seeking crypto investors: It enables them to bet on the future price of a cryptocurrency, with no fixed expiration date and maximal leverage.

Today’s Change

(-4.74%) $-1.63

Current Price

$32.73

Key Data Points

Market Cap

$7.8B

Day’s Range

$31.59 – $34.67

52wk Range

$9.42 – $59.30

Volume

726M

After launching at a price of $3 in November 2024, Hyperliquid eventually hit a high of $59 in September 2025. But since then, it has collapsed in price, and is currently trading for just $33 as I write this.

That’s why I think Hyperliquid could see a rally of 80% or higher in 2026. The market is just now waking up to the fact that HYPE is badly undervalued. A rally of 80% would bring it back to its price of $59 from just a few months ago.

The big catalyst for Hyperliquid in 2026

There’s one big new potential catalyst for HYPE in 2026, and that’s the imminent arrival of new “outcome contracts” for the Hyperliquid trading platform, as well as new products for options traders.

These “outcome contracts” are a hybrid of prediction market contracts and financial derivatives, in which the final outcome is binary (i.e., yes or no). If they’re a hit with investors, they could propel Hyperliquid to even higher trading volumes and even greater popularity.

Trader watching multiple trading screens at night.

Image source: Getty Images.

Some have suggested that the Hyperliquid platform might even begin to woo away traders who might have otherwise used a platform such as Kalshi or Polymarket to make a prediction about the future price of a cryptocurrency. If that’s the case, Hyperliquid might go on to set another all-time high in 2026.

Lessons from the 2022 crypto collapse

Of course, any march higher by Hyperliquid is going to be complicated if cryptocurrency behemoths Bitcoin and Ethereum can’t get things rolling again. But it’s not impossible.

As a point of reference, I looked at returns from 2022, when the entire crypto market cratered in value. Bitcoin fell by 64% and Ethereum fell by 68%. Some altcoins lost as much as 95% of their value.

But a few names managed to shine, including GMX, a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange allowing users to trade with high leverage. Today, GMX is a forgotten crypto with a tiny $60 million market cap. But in 2022, it managed to deliver returns of 111% to investors, making it one of the top-performing cryptocurrencies of the year.

All of which leads me to think: 2026 could end up being the year of Hyperliquid. If HYPE is the new GMX, it could nearly double in value this year.

Crypto

Malicious packages for dYdX cryptocurrency exchange empties user wallets

Published

1 day ago

February 6, 2026

Press Room

Malicious packages for dYdX cryptocurrency exchange empties user wallets

Open source packages published on the npm and PyPI repositories were laced with code that stole wallet credentials from dYdX developers and backend systems and, in some cases, backdoored devices, researchers said.

“Every application using the compromised npm versions is at risk ….” the researchers, from security firm Socket, said Friday. “Direct impact includes complete wallet compromise and irreversible cryptocurrency theft. The attack scope includes all applications depending on the compromised versions and both developers testing with real credentials and production end-users.”

Packages that were infected were:

npm (@dydxprotocol/v4-client-js):

3.4.1
1.22.1
1.15.2
1.0.31

PyPI (dydx-v4-client):

Perpetual trading, perpetual targeting

dYdX is a decentralized derivatives exchange that supports hundreds of markets for “perpetual trading,” or the use of cryptocurrency to bet that the value of a derivative future will rise or fall. Socket said dYdX has processed over $1.5 trillion in trading volume over its lifetime, with an average trading volume of $200 million to $540 million and roughly $175 million in open interest. The exchange provides code libraries that allow third-party apps for trading bots, automated strategies, or backend services, all of which handle mnemonics or private keys for signing.

The npm malware embedded a malicious function in the legitimate package. When a seed phrase that underpins wallet security was processed, the function exfiltrated it, along with a fingerprint of the device running the app. The fingerprint allowed the threat actor to correlate stolen credentials to track victims across multiple compromises. The domain receiving the seed was dydx[.]priceoracle[.]site, which mimics the legitimate dYdX service at dydx[.]xyz through typosquatting.