New crypto mining hot spots emerge; Korea crypto controversy escalates | The Daily Forkast

Transcript

Welcome to The Daily Forkast, June 22nd, 2021. I’m Angie Lau, Editor-in-Chief of Forkast.News, covering all things blockchain.

Coming up, new crypto hotspots emerge following China’s clampdown, a Korean crypto conflict intensifies, and Sotheby’s sets to accept crypto for a diamond auction.

Let’s get you up to speed from Asia to the world.

With the crypto clampdown hitting China hard, we’re beginning to see a variety of hotspots emerge for crypto mining. Destinations proving popular for Chinese miners to relocate to so far include Kazakhstan, North America and Northern Europe.

Xive, a Kazakhstan-based mining company that offers hosting services, has been inundated with requests to visit their facilities in the country.

“A lot of cheering Chinese miners — and not only Chinese, maybe also Koreans who are hosting in China or doing mining operations in China — they are reaching us, like asking to provide hosting services, asking for some large capacities and asking to help them find electricity.”

And China-based Canaan Mining says that as well as supporting operations in Kazakhstan, its sales have increased more broadly around the globe.

“The overseas market contributes over 80% of our first-quarter sales, which mainly are coming from North America, Northern Europe and CIS countries, especially Kazakhstan.”

Lu, says miners are generally looking for places with surplus electricity as that keeps costs low.

Over in neighboring South Korea, a fight is intensifying between the country’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange and one of the coins it listed last year. The exchange Upbit last week delisted the Pica Project’s native Pica token. Now it’s action came amid a bitter fight involving the coin count in the market and allegations of misappropriated money. And now the exchange is suing the Pica Project.

Upbit said, before delisting Pica that one of the reasons for its action was a disparity between the number of coins the Pica Project said it would circulate and the number it actually circulated. Pica said it would mint 120 million coins. But Upbit says the real number of tokens was more like 330 million.

Well, in a blog post in response to that claim, the Pica Project claimed that the complaint was unreasonable. It said that Upbit had abolished its disclosure system earlier this year and that the change in circulation was instead posted on a publicity platform Xangle.

But here’s where it gets interesting. After the delisting, the Pica Project also set that Upbit had asked it for five million Peka coins for marketing promotion during the token’s listing back in January. Pica said that less than 10% of those coins had been used for the promo. Well, Peka claims the five million coins may have been sold to users by a Upbit as well outside of the marketing event.

Upbit has denied the allegations and says it will proceed with legal action against Pica, alleging that it spread false information.

On the markets, Bitcoin was down 1.3% at a little over US$32,500 as of 4:00 pm Hong Kong time. And in the top 10 for cryptocurrencies, rough day for Dogecoin. It sank about 20.5%, and Polkadot fell by 11%.

And finally today, crypto for Diamonds? Sotheby’s is set to accept crypto in payment for a record diamond auction. The auction house says it’s the first time a diamond of over 100 carats will be able to be paid for in this way and that no physical object of such a high value has been available in exchange for cryptocurrency.

The gemstone is one 101.38 carat or around the size of a walnut with a flawless clarity. And it’s due to go under the hammer in Hong Kong on July 9th. Not the diamond — the diamond auction.

Bitcoin or Ethereum will both be accepted as will fiat — if you prefer to do things, of course, the old-fashioned way. Well, swapping diamonds for crypto could be the modern girl’s new best friend.

And that’s The Daily Forkast from our vantage point right here in Asia. For more, visit Forkast.News. I’m Editor-in-Chief Angie Lau. Until the next time.