The Bitcoin mining company Bitfarms has announced a hosting agreement with Stronghold Digital Mining, aiming to increase its capacity by an additional 2.2 exahash per second (EH/s) by October 2024. Under the agreement, 10,000 Bitmain T21 mining machines will be deployed at the Panther Creek facility in Pennsylvania, enhancing their competitiveness. The company has also initiated the acquisition of Stronghold, marking the start of its diversification strategy beyond Bitcoin mining, aimed at greater shareholder value creation.

Stablecoin issuers Paxos, Tether, Techteryx, and Circle have frozen nearly $5 million worth of stablecoins across two wallet addresses linked to the notorious North Korean state-backed Lazarus hacking group. The stolen assets were identified and tracked during an investigation led by blockchain investigator ZachXBT. However, Circle faced criticism for its delayed response, accused of only extracting profit from the ecosystem without concern for its well-being. After attacks on DeFi, Circle took around 4.5 months to freeze the tokens, unlike the heavily criticized Tether, which promptly reacts to such clear incidents.