An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phoronix: Merged yesterday to the latest development code for the LibreOffice open-source office suite is now recognizing Bitcoin "BTC" as a supported currency for use within the Calc spreadsheet program and elsewhere within this cross-platform free software office suite. Stemming from a recent bug report requesting Bitcoin as an official currency option within LibreOffice Calc, the necessary additions are now in place so it's a built-in preset like USD and EUR. Thus easier managing of Bitcoin transactions and the like from within LibreOffice Calc.

Bitcoin "vaulted to a fresh all-time high Friday, breaking above $118,000," reports Yahoo Finance: Year to date, the token is up roughly 21%, buoyed in part by crypto-friendly policies from the Trump administration, including the establishment of a strategic bitcoin reserve and a broader digital asset stockpile... "At the heart of this rally lies sustained structural inflows from institutional players," wrote Dilin Wu, research strategist at Pepperstone. "Corporates are also ramping up participation," he added. The analyst noted companies like Strategy and GameStop have continued to add bitcoin to their balance sheets. Trump Media & Technology Group this week also filed for approval to launch a "Crypto Blue Chip ETF", which would include about 70% of its holdings in bitcoin.

The timing of bitcoin's breakout also comes days before Congress kicks off its highly anticipated "Crypto Week" on July 14. Lawmakers will debate a series of bills that could define the industry's regulatory framework... The GENIUS Act is among the regulations the House will consider. The bill, which recently passed through the Senate, proposes a federal framework for stablecoins.
"After jumping above $118,000 on Thursday, technical analyst Katie Stockton, founder and managing partner of research firm Fairlead Strategies, believes bitcoin is on track to reach $134,500, about 14% higher than current levels," writes Business Insider . It's not just bitcoin that's jumped this week. Other cryptos are surging as well. Ethereum has rallied over 16% in the past five days, and as DOGE rose 8% in the last day alone... Additionally, over $1 billion in short positions were liquidated in the last 24 hours as the price of bitcoin surged and traders were forced to close their positions, [said Thomas Perfumo, global economist at crypto Kraken].

Dubai-based airline Emirates is partnering with Crypto.com to integrate Bitcoin payments into the airliner's payment systems and add NFT collectibles on the company's websites for trading. The airline is also hiring staff to support its blockchain, crypto, and metaverse ambitions, positioning itself at the forefront of digital transformation in aviation.

"NFTs and metaverse are two different applications and approaches," explained Emirates Chief Operating Officer Adel Ahmed Al-Redha, adding that the airline will also seek to use the blockchain in tracing records of aircraft. "With the metaverse, you will be able to transform your whole processes -- whether it is in operation, training, sales on the website, or complete experience -- into a metaverse type application, but more importantly making it interactive."

The official integration of crypto payments is expected to take place next year, according to the announcement.

Ripple Labs is applying for a U.S. national bank charter and a Federal Reserve master account, "following a similar move by stablecoin issuer Circle Internet Group as crypto firms look to be regulated to deepen ties with traditional finance," reports CoinTelegraph. From the report: Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse confirmed on X on Wednesday that the company is applying for a license with the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), following an earlier report by The Wall Street Journal. "True to our long-standing compliance roots, Ripple is applying for a national bank charter from the OCC," he wrote. Garlinghouse said if the license is approved, it would be a "new (and unique!) benchmark for trust in the stablecoin market" as the firm would be under federal and state oversight -- with the New York Department of Financial Services already regulating its Ripple USD (RLUSD) stablecoin. [...]

Ripple's Garlinghouse added that the company also applied for a Master Account with the Federal Reserve, which would give it access to the US central banking system. "This access would allow us to hold $RLUSD reserves directly with the Fed and provide an additional layer of security to future proof trust in RLUSD," Garlinghouse said. "Congress is working towards clear rules and regulations, and banks (in a far cry from the years of Operation Chokepoint 2.0) are leaning in," he added, mentioning the conspiracy that the Biden administration sought to cut off crypto from the financial system. Ripple applied for the account through Standard Custody, a crypto custody firm it acquired in February 2024.

TorrentFreak spotlights VP.net, a brand-new service from Private Internet Access founder Andrew Lee (the guy who gifted Linux Journal to Slashdot) that eliminates the classic "just trust your VPN" problem by locking identity-mapping and traffic-handling inside Intel SGX enclaves. The company promises 'cryptographically verifiable privacy' by using special hardware 'safes' (Intel SGX), so even the provider can't track what its users are up to.

The design goal is that no one, not even the VPN company, can link "User X" to "Website Y."

Lee frames it as enabling agency over one's privacy:

"Our zero trust solution does not require you to trust us - and that's how it should be. Your privacy should be up to your choice - not up to some random VPN provider in some random foreign country."
The team behind VP.net includes CEO Matt Kim as well as arguably the first Bitcoin veterans Roger Ver and Mark Karpeles.

Ask Slashdot: Now that there's a VPN where you don't have to "just trust the provider" - arguably the first real zero-trust VPN - are trust based VPNs obsolete?

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: The head of the federal government agency that oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac wants the mortgage giants to consider accepting a homebuyer's cryptocurrency holdings in their criteria for buying mortgages from banks. William Pulte, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees Fannie and Freddie, ordered the agencies Wednesday to prepare a proposal for consideration of crypto as an asset for reserves when they assess risks in single-family home loans.

Pulte also instructed the agencies that their mortgage risk assessments should not require cryptocurrency assets to be converted to U.S. dollars. And only crypto assets that "can be evidenced and stored on a U.S.-regulated centralized exchange subject to all applicable laws" are to be considered by the agencies in their proposal, Pulte wrote in a written order, effective immediately. Pulte was sworn in as the head of FHFA in March. Public records show that as of January 2025, Pulte's spouse owned between $500,000 and $1 million of bitcoin and a similar amount of Solana's SOL token. [...]

The policy change is meant to encourage banks to expand how they gauge borrowers' creditworthiness, in hopes that more aspiring homebuyers can qualify for a home loan. It also recognizes that cryptocurrencies have grown in popularity as an alternative to traditional investments, such as bonds and stocks. The agencies have to come up with their proposals "as soon as reasonably practical," according to the order. "This is a big win for advocates of cryptocurrencies who want crypto to be treated the same way as other assets are," said Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin.

Currently, stock investments are treated as qualifying assets that count toward reserves that banks want borrowers to have. But assets that are more volatile, like individual stocks or crypto, may be discounted by lenders, Fairweather noted. "As long as lenders are appropriately discounting crypto based on volatility, it's fine that crypto investments count toward reserves," she said.

Danielle Hale, chief economist at Realtor.com, added: "If Fannie and Freddie are going to accept cryptocurrency as collateral, that's a strong incentive for banks to shift their practices. Because people who might otherwise have to sell cryptocurrency to qualify -- and maybe that's a deal-breaker for them now -- under this new policy, they can qualify. It sort of expands the potential pool of eligible buyers."

The DOJ has filed a civil complaint to seize $225.3 million in cryptocurrency linked to pig butchering scams -- long-con frauds where victims are tricked into fake crypto investments. The funds were laundered through a blockchain network, and the DOJ says recovered money will go toward reimbursing victims. The Verge reports: The 75-page complaint (PDF) filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia lays out more detail about the seizure. According to it, the US Secret Service (USSS) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) tied scammers to seven groups of Tether stablecoin tokens. The fraud fell under what's typically known as "pig butchering": a form of long-running confidence scam aimed at tricking victims -- sometimes with a fake romantic relationship -- into what they believe is a profitable crypto investment opportunity, then disappearing with the funds. Pig butchering rings often traffic the workers who directly communicate with victims to Southeast Asian countries, something the DOJ alleges this ring did.

The DOJ says Tether and crypto exchange OKX first alerted law enforcement in 2023 to a series of accounts they believed were helping launder fraudulently obtained currency through a vast and complex web of transactions. The alleged victims include Shan Hanes (referred to in this complaint as S.H.), the former Heartland Tri-State Bank president who was sentenced to 24 years in prison for embezzling tens of millions of dollars to invest in one of the best-known and most devastating pig butchering scams. The complaint lists a number of other victims who lost thousands or millions of dollars they thought they were investing (and did not commit crimes of their own). An FBI report (PDF) cited by the press release concluded overall crypto investment fraud caused $5.8 billion worth of reported losses in 2024.

The U.S. Senate has approved the GENIUS Act with a 68-30 final vote that "saw a huge surge of Democrats joining their Republican counterparts," reports CoinDesk. What the bill sets out to do is create the first federal regulatory framework for U.S. stablecoins, requiring issuers to maintain full 1:1 reserves in cash or Treasuries, adhere to regular audits and anti-money laundering rules, and gain regulatory approval -- all while allowing foreign stablecoin access under strict oversight rules. From the report: As written, the bill would set up guardrails around the approval and supervision of U.S. issuers of stablecoins, the dollar-based tokens such as the ones backed by Circle, Ripple and Tether. Firms making these digital assets available to U.S. users would have to meet stringent reserve demands, transparency requirements, money-laundering compliance and regulatory supervision that's also likely to include new capital rules. "This is a win for the U.S., a win for innovation and a monumental step towards appropriate regulation for digital assets in the United States," said Amanda Tuminelli, executive director and chief legal officer of the DeFi Education Fund, in a similar statement. [...]

While this is the first significant crypto bill to clear the Senate, it's also the first time a stablecoin bill has passed either chamber, despite years of negotiation in the House Financial Services Committee that managed to produce other major crypto legislation in the previous congressional session. The destiny of the GENIUS Act is also tied closely to the House's own Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, the more sweeping crypto bill that would establish the legal footing of the wider U.S. crypto markets. The stablecoin effort is slightly ahead of the bigger task of the market structure bill, but the industry and their lawmaker allies argue that they're inextricably connected and need to become law together. So far, the Clarity Act has been cleared by the relevant House committees and awaits floor action.

GameStop is leaning heavily to trading cards as part of its future strategy, according to CEO Ryan Cohen. The news comes as a part of larger strategy shift to buy and hold a lot of bitcoin. From a report: Cohen has said that continuing to focus on trading cards, including the incredibly popular recent Pokemon card sets, is a "natural extension" of GameStop's business. He added that the collectibles could have potential for high profit margins.

Pokemon cards have a seen a gigantic resurgence recently. Stores regularly sell of sets, including the Destined Rivals set that launched on May 30. Cards have become increasingly hard to find as scalpers buy up supply and sell Pokemon card products -- including cards, special boxes, and accessories -- at exorbitant prices.

"Twelve years ago, a baby was born after someone used bitcoin to pay for a frozen egg IVF," writes longtime Slashdot reader bobdevine. "I, for one, welcome..."

Blockworks tells the story of how it all came to be: In February 2012 -- almost two years after Laszlo's pizzas -- a fertility doctor named C. Terence Lee set about a personal and professional quest to onboard his patients to Bitcoin by accepting BTC for his services. He started with a "Bitcoin accepted here" sign in his window, and then a Reddit post.

"Jumping in to do my part to support the BTC economy. This may be a historic first?" Lee wrote in a post on the BitMarket subreddit, titled: "[WTS][USA] Male Fertility Evaluation." Lee was offering a 15-minute consultation to discuss fertility questions and a sperm analysis in exchange for 15 BTC, valued at $70 or so at the time. "Actual value over $100," he wrote. Within three months, he'd found a Bitcoin customer.

"The patient turned out not... so much having a burning desire to know about his fertility, but he was a Bitcoin enthusiast, and he liked the idea of participating in history, in this ritual ceremony of what could be perhaps the world's first Bitcoin medical transaction," Lee explained at a 2013 conference in San Jose. "So we chatted about Bitcoin. He taught me a lot about mining. That's how he acquired bitcoin. And we did a sperm test, and it turned out he had really good sperm ... after it was done he sent me 15 bitcoins... "

Lee changed up his strategy to only quiz his most trusted patients. There was one couple, who, on their fourth attempt at IVF, agreed to pay in bitcoin for a 50% discount, with Lee walking them through exchanging U.S. dollars for bitcoin via CryptoXChange, a now-defunct exchange operating out of Australia. The sperm stuck, leading CNN to reveal, on this day in 2013, "the world's first Bitcoin baby" -- a baby bought entirely with bitcoin. Thirty bitcoin to be exact, an amount then worth $500, or $3 million today.

In March an executive order directed America's treasury secretary to create two stockpiles of crypto assets (to accompany already-existing "strategic reserves"of gold and foreign currencies). And the Washington Post notes these new stockpiles would include "cryptocurrency seized by federal agencies in criminal or civil proceedings." But how big would America's "Strategic Bitcoin Reserve" be — and what other cryptocurrencies would the U.S. government hold in its "Digital Asset Stockpile"?

"New data on what crypto cash the U.S. government has seized may now provide some answers. It suggests the crypto reserves will together hold more than $21 billion in cryptocurrency... The stockpile will be funded with whatever crypto assets the Treasury holds other than bitcoin, leaving the stockpile's composition to be largely determined by a mixture of chance and criminal conduct. That unconventional method for selecting government financial holdings had the benefit of making the reserves cost-neutral for the taxpayer.

It also provided a way to estimate what exactly might go into the two pools before results are released from an official accounting of U.S. crypto holdings that is underway.Because government seizures are disclosed in court documents, news releases and other sources, crypto-tracking firms can use those notices to monitor which digital assets the U.S. government holds. Chainalysis, a blockchain analytics firm, reviewed cryptocurrency wallets that appear to be associated with the U.S. government for The Washington Post. The company estimated how much bitcoin it holds, and the other crypto tokens in its top 20 digital holdings as of May 13, by tracking transactions involving those wallets.

The United States' top 20 crypto holdings according to Chainalysis are worth about $20.9 billion as of 3 p.m. Eastern on May 28, with $20.4 billion in bitcoin and about $493 million in other digital assets. It has been scooped up from crimes such as stolen funds, scams and sales on dark net markets. Those estimates put the U.S. government's top crypto holdings at less than the approximately $25 billion worth of oil held in the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Their value is nearly double the Fed's listing for U.S. gold holdings, although that figure uses outdated pricing and would be over $850 billion at current prices...

The crypto tokens headed for the U.S. Digital Asset Stockpile according to the Chainalysis list include ethereum, the world's second-largest digital asset, and a string of other crypto tokens with punier name recognition. They include derivatives of bitcoin and ethereum that mirror those cryptocurrencies' prices, several stable coins designed to be pegged in value to the U.S. dollar, and 10 tokens tied to specific companies, including the cryptocurrency exchanges FTX, which imploded in 2022 after defrauding customers, and Binance.
Two U.S. states have already passed legislation creating their own cryptocurrency reserve funds, the article points out. But ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin complained to the Post in March that crypto's "original spirit...is about counterbalancing power" — including government and corporate power, and getting too close to "one particular government team" could conflict with its mission of decentralization and openness. And he's not the only one concerned: Austin Campbell, a professor at New York University's business school and a principal at crypto advisory firm Zero Knowledge, sees hypocrisy in crypto enthusiasts cheering the government's strategic reserves. The bitcoin community in particular "has historically been about freedom from sovereign interference," he said.

Artificial intelligence could soon outpace Bitcoin mining in energy consumption, according to Alex de Vries-Gao, a PhD candidate at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam's Institute for Environmental Studies. His research estimates that by the end of 2025, AI could account for nearly half of all electricity used by data centers worldwide -- raising significant concerns about its impact on global climate goals.

"While companies like Google and Microsoft disclose total emissions, few provide transparency on how much of that is driven specifically by AI," notes DIGIT. To fill this gap, de Vries-Gao employed a triangulation method combining chip production data, corporate disclosures, and industry analyst estimates to map AI's growing energy footprint.

His analysis suggests that specialized AI hardware could consume between 46 and 82 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2025 -- comparable to the annual energy usage of countries like Switzerland. Drawing on supply chain data, the study estimates that millions of AI accelerators from NVIDIA and AMD were produced between 2023 and 2024, with a potential combined power demand exceeding 12 gigawatts (GW). A detailed explanation of his methodology is available in his commentary published in Joule.

The SEC on Thursday voluntarily dismissed its lawsuit against Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange. It brings an end to one of the last remaining crypto enforcement actions brought by the agency. Reuters reports: The SEC had accused the defendants in 2023 of artificially inflating trading volumes, diverting customer funds, failing to restrict U.S. customers from Binance's platform, and misleading investors about its market surveillance controls. It also accused Binance of unlawfully facilitating trading of several tokens that prior SEC leadership deemed unregistered securities. Developing...

Pakistan will allocate 2,000 megawatts (MW) of electricity in the first phase of a national initiative to power bitcoin mining and AI data centres, its finance ministry said on Sunday. The allocation is part of Islamabad's plans to use its surplus electricity to bitcoin mining and AI data centres.

Kraken is launching tokenized versions of U.S. equities for 24/7 trading outside the U.S., giving global investors blockchain-based access to major companies like Apple and Tesla. Reuters reports: Tokenization refers to the process of issuing digital representations of publicly-traded securities. Instead of holding the securities directly, investors hold tokens that represent ownership of the securities. The tokens' launch outside the U.S. comes amid growing interest in blending traditional finance with blockchain infrastructure. While tokenized securities have yet to gain widespread adoption, proponents say they hold the potential to significantly reshape how people access and invest in financial markets.

In a January opinion piece for the Washington Post, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev said tokenization could also allow retail investors to access private companies' stocks. Kraken's tokens, called xStocks, will be available in select markets outside the United States, it said, without naming the markets. The move was earlier reported by the Wall Street Journal. The offering is currently not available for U.S. customers.

Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase said Thursday it is offering a $20 million reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of criminals who attempted to extort the company for the same amount after stealing customer data.

The criminals bribed customer support agents in overseas markets to access records containing addresses, phone numbers, government IDs, and partial bank and Social Security details of more than 80,000 customers. "It sucks but when we see a problem like this we want to own it and make it right," Coinbase Chief Security Officer Philip Martin told Fortune.

The company will reimburse customers who fell victim to subsequent social engineering scams. No login credentials or wallet access were compromised in the breach. The extortionists had threatened to publish the stolen information unless paid $20 million in Bitcoin.

The UK financial regulator is preparing to ban retail investors from using borrowed funds such as credit card balances to invest in cryptocurrency as it seeks to overhaul supervision of the fast-growing digital assets market. The Guardian: The soaring values of virtual currencies such as bitcoin after Donald Trump's election have put pressure on the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to take a tougher line while it also lays the groundwork for the industry to flourish in the UK.

According to a recent YouGov survey, the proportion of people in the UK using borrowed funds to make crypto purchases more than doubled from 6% in 2022 to 14% last year. Borrowing to fund investments, when asset values could change dramatically, meant consumers risked losing their entire investment and potentially other assets, such as their home. These characteristics closely resembled gambling, the Treasury committee found.

Bitcoin mining has crossed a critical economic threshold, with costs now exceeding market value for most operators. According to data cited by CoinShares, large public mining companies spend over $82,000 to produce a single Bitcoin -- nearly double last quarter's figure -- while smaller operations face even steeper costs of approximately $137,000 per coin.

With Bitcoin currently trading around $94,703, the math no longer works for most miners. The economics become particularly challenging in high-electricity-cost regions like Germany, where mining a single coin requires approximately $200,000. Industry analysts suggest larger mining operations are adapting by optimizing energy consumption and positioning their computational infrastructure for alternative uses. These companies can potentially lease their mining setups for other computational tasks during unprofitable mining periods, then resume mining when market conditions improve.

For individual miners, however, the era of profitable home operations appears effectively over, as industrial-scale facilities with strategic positioning and optimized technology have fundamentally altered the mining landscape.

Onchain investigator ZachXBT flagged a suspicious $330.7 million Bitcoin transfer that was quickly laundered into Monero, causing XMR's price to spike by 50%. CoinTelegraph reports: The transaction, reported on April 28, saw funds moved from a potential victim's wallet to the address bc1qcry...vz55g. Following the transfer, the stolen stash was quickly laundered through over six instant exchanges and swapped into privacy-focused cryptocurrency Monero. The large-scale conversion led to a 50% spike in XMR's price with the token reaching an intraday high of $339, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

At the time of writing, XMR has settled slightly but remains up 25% in the past 24 hours, trading at $289. When asked whether North Korea's Lazarus Group was behind the attack, ZachXBT dismissed the theory, stating it was "highly probable it's not," suggesting independent hackers were responsible. "While there are concerns of more criminals moving to privacy coins for anonymity, the vast majority of criminal activity still uses mainstream cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and stablecoins," Chainalysis said. "Cryptocurrency is only useful if you can buy and sell goods and services or cash out into fiat, and that is much more difficult with privacy coins, especially as many mainstream exchanges have offboarded the use of privacy coins, such as Monero."

The head of the Swiss National Bank said on Friday that cryptocurrencies failed to meet the institution's currency reserve standards, rebuffing calls by crypto advocates that it hold bitcoin as a hedge against growing global economic risks. From a report: Cryptocurrency campaigners are ramping up pressure on the SNB to buy bitcoin, arguing that the economic turmoil triggered by U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs made it more important for the central bank to diversify its reserves. They have launched a referendum campaign to change the Swiss constitution and require the SNB to hold bitcoin in its reserves alongside gold. SNB Chairman Martin Schlegel, however, rejected the idea at the central bank's shareholder meeting in Bern.