Riot is launching an 8-megawatt immersion technology testing initiative to “assess the potential for higher productivity and lower cost mining opportunities in Texas,” per a press release. Testing is scheduled to start in Q1 2021.

If successful, CEO Jeff McGonegal told CoinDesk the company envisions “deploying immersion at a larger scale over time, particularly in warmer climates where cooling is a chief concern.”

In high heat and humidity environments, cooling mining machines with liquid immersion instead of air cooling offer significant advantages for miners with razor-thin profit margins.

Not only does liquid cooling offer significant noise reduction compared with fan cooling. Immersion cooling can also increase usable hashrate per machine by up to 50% in some cases, prolong the lifespan of some machines and allow miners to install more machines per square foot than if the same facility used fan cooling. But maintenance can be difficult.

The mining industry is still standardized around air-cooled designs, which means air-cooled facilities are still the first choice for miners,” said Ethan Vera, co-founder of Seattle-based mining company Luxor Technology, in a direct message with CoinDesk. “But in areas of high temperature and low humidity, miners use evaporative cooling as a cost-effective strategy to mitigate the heat.”

In hot, humid regions like Texas, Vera said, liquid immersion is “the cooling method of choice as it eliminates heat, dust and humidity issues.”

In planning this pilot project, the Castle Rock, Colo.-based mining firm is “looking to observe improvements operating in difficult mining temperature environments, combined with the additional performance that can be achieved as a result,” McGonegal told CoinDesk.

Participating in Riot’s pilot program are two bitcoin (BTC, +1.7%) mining hardware and energy software companies, Enigma and Lancium, that are providing the technology Riot plans to test.

In 2020, Riot shares have outperformed bitcoin year to date in 2020, gaining 660% since January and trading near $9.37 at last check. Over the same period, bitcoin gained 170%. The mining firm is now worth over $666 million.


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This comes after the company took a $30 million minority stake in the firm in early July, making its foray into prime brokerage space.

It is worth noting that Japanese behemoth SBI Holdings, the parent company of SBI Financial Services, is a long-term partner of San Francisco-headquartered Ripple. Its CEO, Yoshitaka Kitao, currently sits on the board of directors of the blockchain decacorn.

Speaking of B2C2, Kitao mentioned that the company's vision would help SBI to "expand" its footprint across markets around the globe:

Their (B2C2's) vision, expertise and offering complement SBI's, and we look forward to working in partnership as we expand our footprint across the global markets.

On top of the acquisition, SBI Financial Services will also launch a cryptocurrency dealing desk, which marks a potentially watershed moment for the nascent industry.

B2C2's founder, Max Boonen, claims that cryptocurrencies are no longer dismissed following Bitcoin's record run to a new all-time high earlier this month.

His company's headcount is expected to increase to 70 employees in the near future. Its Japanese team will work directly from the SBI offices.

As reported by no link shorteningday, SBI VC Trade debuted cryptocurrency lending for Bitcoin, Ethereum and XRP in late November.

The deal between the financial giant and B2C2 could significantly boost the adoption of cryptocurrencies. During a quarterly briefing in October, Kitao mentioned that crypto ecosystems had to be structured in a global manner.

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Despite the recent recovery in Bitcoin above $19,000, XRP continued to show weakness as it failed to reclaim the $0.5 support. As of now, it is trading around $0.495 with a daily 5% decrease.

The trend is still looking bearish in the short-term following a series of rejections at the descending resistance forming since November. Both the 4-hours RSI and MACD indicators confirm that sellers are in charge. However, there’s hope for a long-term bullish continuation as long as the market remains well above the $0.3 level.

Following the latest drops in price, the next support to keep an eye on is the November correctional level at $0.458. Below this, support lies $0.4, but the important level to look at is $0.33.

If the buyers manage to push back above $0.5, the first resistance would be $0.59 – where the latest sell-off was initiated. An increase above this resistance could push prices further to $0.7 and $0.78. But for now, there’s no sign of buyers in the market.

Against Bitcoin, Ripple now trades around 2580 SAT after dropping below the 2800 SAT level that suppressed bearish actions for two weeks. The price is now heading towards the 2400 SAT level for a retest, following a yearly breakout last month. Apart from that, the cryptocurrency had lost almost 7% of its value since yesterday.

Interestingly, the third-largest coin by market cap could resume the bullish trend if it can find strong support at the mentioned 2400 SAT level. More bearish actions are likely to come into play if it fails to hold. But unfortunately, the trend is still in favor of the bears, looking at the RSI and MACD indicators.

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After testing the $595 zone, Ethereum corrected lower. ETH traded below the $580 support level, but the bulls were able to protect the $575 support zone.

A swing low was formed near the $576 level before the price started a fresh increase. There was a strong upward move above the $580 and $585 levels. There was also a break above a key bearish trend line with resistance near $586 on the hourly chart of ETH/USD.

Ether price climbed above the $590 level and even spiked above $595. A new monthly high is formed near $596 and the price is currently consolidating gains. An initial support is near the $590 level or the 23.6% Fib retracement level of the recent increase from the $576 swing low to $596 high.

Moreover, there is a crucial bullish trend line forming with support near $585 on the same chart. The trend line is close to the 50% Fib retracement level of the recent increase from the $576 swing low to $596 high.

On the upside, the price is clearly facing a strong resistance near the $595 level. The current price action suggests that ether could make another attempt to clear $595. The next major resistance is still near the $600 level. A close above the $600 level could accelerate gains.


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As Bitcoin continues to attempt to break its all time high price, we see another positive metric in the ecosystem: the number of wallets with a non-zero sum of Bitcoin deposited.

As of Dec. 12, the number of Bitcoin wallets containing a non-zero balance of Bitcoin reached its all time high of 32,925,521. This breaks the previous record of 32,925,198 addresses reached just the day earlier. This data was aggregated and charted by Glassnode, a monitor of on-chain metrics and exchange flows.

This news of an all time high of non-zero held Bitcoin accounts is a very positive sign in the space. It shows that more users are creating wallets and actually depositing Bitcoin on them. This highlights that users are interacting with the network.

Glassnode also pointed out that the number of Bitcoin addresses holding at least 1 BTC also broke its all time high with 825,988 addresses. This new record occurred on Dec. 12, and Bitcoin broke its ATH for wallets with at least 1 BTC just a day earlier.

On top of these statistics, according to Chief Economist of Chainalysis, Philip Gradwell, Bitcoin wallets that hold over 1,000 Bitcoin (currently worth about $19 million) also increased by 17% in 2020, pointing to increased intention by retail and institutional investors.


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India is rising as a bitcoin hot spot after their Supreme Court overturned a central bank diktat, opening the way for the second most populous country on earth to join the crypto party.

India and China now both account for 33% of bitcoin peer to peer (p2p) trading volumes according to Arcane Research.

India however has more recently briefly overtaken China in a sign that the crypto economy is starting to boom in the country.

Trading volumes there have shot up 87% since the central bank diktat was overturned in March 2020, making India a key region of growth.

This may be due to numerous factors. Inflation there is high at 7.6% with Indian Rupees (INR) constantly losing value against the dollar even as the latter weakens itself.

Then there’s the fact India is a huge remittance economy, with $83 billion worth of remittances sent in 2019, accounting for 2.9% of their GDP which stands near $3 trillion.

Some of this remittance may be sent in bitcoin or other cryptos for faster and even cheaper transfers, leading to the rise of Paxos which specializes in crypto remittances.

Then there’s the distrust caused by the withdrawal of high value notes which led to long queues at ATMs in 2016, making alternatives like bitcoin appealing as a backup.

There’s also the tech aspects. Ethereum’s smart contract based decentralized finance has brought new innovations like flashloans.

As the world’s outsourcing center for coding, India is well placed to take advantage of those innovations, with Gujarat in particular a potential crypto hotspot.

That can contribute to economic growth as Indian cryptonians develop blockchain related coding skills, giving rise to new startups to serve both India and perhaps globally.

On the latter, bitcoin can be very useful for international trade especially with small businesses in countries like South Africa where there are strict capital controls.

In countries like India where many don’t have bank accounts, bitcoin can also open access to the global digital economy, bringing India into the fold.

Thus volumes are now rising there and significantly as democracy once again shows why it wins over authoritarianism: the freedom to innovate, to tinker, to come up with better ways and with alternatives without anyone able to stand in the way of progress through capricious diktat.


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Crypto tracking service XRPL Monitor has spotted several mammoth-sized XRP transactions conducted by the blockchain behemoths, among which are Ripple, Coinbase, Bittrex, BitGo and others.

Well over 860 million XRP have been transferred in the last 15 hours by these companies.

XRPL Monitor has shared data regarding several gargantuan transactions of XRP and several smaller, but still quite substantial, ones.

San Francisco-based fintech heavyweight Ripple has shifted a whopping 365 million XRP with the largest transfers carrying 100 million and 225 million.

Uphold exchange transferred a lump of 325 million.

Coinbase has cumulatively shifted 437.3 million XRP. Bittrex has wired a total of 107 million XRP. Binance, BitGo and other platforms also took part in wiring these eye-popping XRP amounts.

Overall, 1.234 billion XRP have been wired by these top-tier crypto industry players.

This is happening as just one day remains before the snapshot of XRP Ledger will be taken for the Spark token airdrop of all XRP holders.

The airdrop and the snapshot will be conducted by Flare Networks, which plans to perform the first utility hard fork of XRP.



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