machine

NASDAQ-listed company AVAX One Technology (AVX) announced the advancement of its AI infrastructure strategy. The company has signed a FEED plan for a 10MW AI/HPC microgrid data center, located in Alberta, Canada, leveraging the local low-cost natural gas power to create a high-cost-performance, scalable dedicated AI computing facility. The project is designed by BlueFlare and is one of the first AI computing centers in the area.At the same time, the company invested less than $500,000 to purchase 220 Bitmain S21 Pro mining machines, increasing Alberta's computing power from 150 PH/s to over 200 PH/s. This move serves as a transitional cash flow source during the construction period of the AI center, achieving a dual-track layout of "mining + AI computing power" to quickly monetize existing power capacity.

On the 26th of this month, the Urumqi Public Security Bureau High-tech Zone (New City District) reported that the Ergong Township Police Station discovered a suspected illegal repair site for electronic "mining machines" during a patrol in its jurisdiction. Police found an abnormal warehouse in a small micro-enterprise park on Yuhang Road in the New City District, where a large number of disassembled and awaiting repair mining machine equipment was piled up, suspected of violating China's relevant prohibitions on the production, sale, repair, leasing, and custody of "mining machines."During the enforcement process, the police also found serious safety hazards at the site, including unauthorized electrical wiring, fire safety facilities not undergoing annual inspections as required, and the absence of a fire management system, posing significant risks of fire and electric shock.After counting, a total of 310 mining machine devices awaiting repair were legally seized on-site, and relevant evidence has been secured. The parties involved have been ordered to immediately cease illegal activities. The case has now been transferred to the relevant departments for further handling.

On the 26th of this month, the Urumqi Public Security Bureau High-tech Zone (New City District) Branch reported that the Ergong Township Police Station discovered a suspected illegal repair site for electronic mining machines during a patrol in its jurisdiction.Police found an unusual warehouse in a small micro-enterprise park on Yuhang Road in the New City District, where a large number of disassembled and awaiting repair mining machine equipment were piled up, suspected of violating China's relevant bans on the production, sale, repair, leasing, and custody of mining machines. During the enforcement process, the police also discovered serious safety hazards at the site, including unauthorized electrical wiring, fire safety facilities not undergoing annual inspections as required, and the absence of a fire management system, posing significant risks of fire and electric shock. After counting, a total of 310 mining machine devices awaiting repair were legally seized on-site, relevant evidence has been secured, and the parties involved have been ordered to immediately cease illegal activities. The case has now been transferred to the relevant departments for further handling.

According to a report by Cointelegraph, an analysis report by Forrester senior analyst Meng Liu states that Stripe's newly launched Machine Payment Protocol (MPP) may mark a turning point for micropayments.The analyst noted that micropayments typically refer to small transactions worth a few cents or a few dollars, which have long struggled to gain widespread adoption due to cumbersome digital checkout processes and reluctance to approve small charges. However, AI agents executing payments while completing tasks, such as paying for data access or using online services, eliminate these barriers.

According to official news, the new stablecoin blockchain Tempo, incubated by Stripe and Paradigm, has announced its mainnet launch, aiming to achieve instant settlement, predictable low fees, high throughput, and global availability. Users can build on Tempo through public RPC endpoints.In addition to the mainnet launch, Tempo has also introduced the Machine Payment Protocol (MPP), an open standard for machine payments co-developed by Stripe and Tempo.

The "AI vs Human 1v1 Duel" trading competition hosted by Bybit has entered the final 9 days of the sprint. As of March 17, data shows that the AI legion is performing impressively: Gemini and Qwen are vying for the top spot, maintaining a return rate of around 38%, while two versions of DeepSeek have entered the top five, both surpassing a win rate of 52%.Despite the strong performance of AI, human traders, with their keen intuition and years of experience, are still holding onto an insurmountable moat in the duel. This afternoon at 4 PM, Bybit has invited NOFA.ai CEO Marc and two other founders to share AI trading strategies live on the Bybit APP. Users can click on the APP to participate in the hourly competition and witness the ultimate clash of technology and experience, sharing a prize pool of 362,388 USDT.

According to market news, Nvidia will make a "significant" investment in the American AI startup Thinking Machines and provide AI chips.

Chaitanya Jain, the head of Strategy at Bitcoin Treasury Company, stated on the X platform that Strategy purchased approximately 8,000 bitcoins for about $300 million throughout 2022, while in the first two months of 2026, the company has already invested about $4.3 billion to acquire approximately 48,000 bitcoins. This continuous and large-scale institutional buying pattern may permanently change the market structure of the Bitcoin bear market. In this context, Strategy's perpetual preferred stock STRC and MSTR will together form the "ultimate Bitcoin accumulation machine."

The Paraguayan National Electricity Company ANDE has signed a memorandum of understanding with the cryptocurrency infrastructure company Morphware to launch the country's first government-led Bitcoin mining pilot project using Bitcoin mining machines seized by law enforcement.The first phase will deploy approximately 1,500 confiscated mining machines and utilize local surplus hydroelectric resources for compliant mining. According to the arrangement, ANDE is responsible for the ownership and regulation of the mining site, while Morphware provides technical and operational support. For the mined Bitcoin, the government is discussing selling it for public expenditure or using financial instruments to hedge risks and hold part of the assets.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin published a post on social media outlining the Ethereum execution layer roadmap, focusing on two major changes: the state tree and the virtual machine.Regarding the state tree, Vitalik supports upgrading the current hexadecimal Merkle Patricia tree to a binary tree based on a more efficient hash function through EIP-7864. This change can shorten the Merkle branch by four times, reducing the bandwidth cost for client data verification; at the same time, the hash function can be replaced with the Blake3 or Poseidon series, significantly improving proof efficiency.The binary tree design will also group storage slots into "pages," lowering the access cost for adjacent storage, allowing many DeFi applications to save over 10,000 Gas per transaction. Additionally, the binary tree structure is simpler and can reserve metadata bits for future state expiration features.On the virtual machine front, Vitalik proposed that the long-term direction is to replace the EVM, potentially adopting the RISC-V architecture. The new VM needs to meet four goals: higher raw execution efficiency, making most precompiles unnecessary; proof efficiency superior to the EVM; support for client-side generation of ZK proofs; and maximum simplification of code implementation.He pointed out that if Ethereum only stays at the "EVM + GPU" level, it may be "sufficient," but a better VM can make the protocol stronger. The deployment roadmap is divided into three steps: the new VM will first be used to replace precompiles; then users will be allowed to deploy contracts based on the new VM; finally, the EVM will be retired, transitioning to smart contracts written with the new VM, achieving full backward compatibility.

OpenMind and Circle have officially announced a strategic partnership to jointly launch the world's first payment infrastructure specifically designed for autonomous intelligent agents and real-world embodied AI. By deeply integrating Circle's USDC stablecoin with OpenMind's x402 protocol module, this collaboration enables robots and AI entities to achieve direct and autonomous payments for energy, services, and data in the physical world.Based on the collaboration between OpenMind and Circle, the FABRIC Foundation will accelerate the implementation and large-scale deployment from two main directions: Robot Birthplace and Acceleration of Adoption.The payment infrastructure provided by OpenMind + Circle offers machines an "economic brain," while the FABRIC Foundation is responsible for the entire closed-loop chain of "birth, production, operation, and evolution." The synergy among these three will jointly give rise to a true machine economy era—where robots are no longer mere tools, but independent economic entities with autonomous perception, decision-making, action, and payment capabilities. In the coming months, more real-world deployment cases (such as automatic charging stations) are worth continuous attention.

Bitcoin mining company Abundant Mines CEO Beau Turner disclosed that as the U.S. tax law restores full "Bonus Depreciation" policy in mid-2025, eligible Bitcoin mining equipment can now achieve a 100% tax deduction in the year of purchase.Turner pointed out that under the current tax framework, if investors directly hold mining hardware, they can immediately deduct the entire equipment cost as an expense, significantly reducing taxable income for the year. He stated that this has become "one of the most powerful tax strategies in the crypto industry." Reports indicate that as tax season approaches, changes in relevant tax policies are prompting the market to refocus on the asset allocation and tax planning value of Bitcoin mining.

Metaplanet CEO Simon Gerovich posted on the X platform, stating that the benefits of productivity booms are almost entirely flowing to the owners of computation and capital, rather than to workers or governments. He said, "Every company holding cash or bonds is extracting from a system where the tax base is disappearing, and the system's response will be to print money. This trend is accelerating."Simon Gerovich further emphasized that AI agents do not have bank accounts or brand loyalty, and when machines optimize the financial system, they will bypass traditional banking systems and payment networks, opting to use digital assets for transactions. When it comes to storing value, AI will not park in money market funds but will hold digital capital—especially Bitcoin. As the AI economy expands, digital assets may become the primary means of value storage in the machine age.

According to Antpool data, as the price of Bitcoin recently dipped to around $78,500, currently, the vast majority of Bitcoin miners, except for the latest generation of mining machines, are either operating at a loss or close to breakeven.Data shows that only the latest models, such as the Antminer S23 series, are still profitable, with the Antminer S23 Hydro generating a daily revenue of about $18.53 per unit; meanwhile, the earlier Antminer S21 series has seen its daily revenue drop to around $0.12, and the Whatsminer M63S is experiencing a daily loss of approximately $0.47.

Cobo & F2pool co-founder DiscusFish posted on X platform that Bitcoin has dropped nearly 15% this week. When the price of Bitcoin reaches $75,000, a mining machine with a power of 23.3 W/T will reach the breakeven point (i.e., shutdown price).

Aster announced on the X platform that the second season of the human-machine battle has officially begun and is now live on the Aster Chain testnet. Currently, 100 human and AI participants are gradually starting their trades, including 70 human traders and 30 AI agents. This season lasts for seven days, and it is reported that the AI has been upgraded this season.

The multi-chain DeFi execution engine Makina released the latest progress on the hacker attack that occurred yesterday. The attack only affected users providing liquidity to the Curve DUSD/USDC pool, while users holding DUSD, Pendle, and Gearbox positions were not impacted.Makina currently has leads on the identity of the hacker and is actively trying to contact them. Before the attack, Makina took a snapshot of the Curve DUSD/USDC pool. If users are still acting as liquidity providers in the Curve DUSD/USDC pool, please withdraw to DUSD unilaterally until further notice. The official team is taking further measures, disabling recovery mode and re-enabling the redemption function.Yesterday, Makina was attacked on the Ethereum network, resulting in a loss of 5,107,871 USDC. The vulnerability allowed the attacker to manipulate the price of the fund pool, artificially inflating the asset value of liquidity providers, thus executing an arbitrage attack.