Swathes of cryptocurrency mining establishments are going out of business at the moment, mostly because of high energy prices and the rising difficulty of mining, which adds up to an unprofitable system . The reward of mining isn’t worth the effort. But Intel thinks it can fight high energy consumption with its new patent.

The chip maker successfully filed a patent this week for a processor that claims to offer high-performance Bitcoin mining, in an energy-efficient package.

The processor is specifically designed to mine cryptocurrencies built on the SHA-256 algorithm, like Bitcoin.

To make the processor more energy efficient than current systems, Intel appears to have developed a chip that goes a step further than a standard Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) miner.

Part of the mining process requires transaction specific data to be processed only once. Current ASIC miners, like Antminers , process this data in a number of stages. This makes the process less efficient than it could be, according to Intel.

The patent plans to hard-wire this part of the mining process into a section of the processor to reduce the amount of time, energy, and redundant processes required to verify a transaction and mine a block.

Indeed, energy consumption and cost are two of the greatest challenges cryptocurrency miners face at the moment. Just earlier this month, Japanese internet giant, GMO, declared its mining business had posted a $5.5 million loss during Q3 of this year.

If the cryptocurrency market continues on its current trajectory, it won’t be entirely surprising if nothing ever actually comes of this patent – at least until mining becomes profitable again.

Coinbase is now available to 3.4M more Europeans in 6 new markets

Coinbase is taking its cryptocurrency exchange and brokerage to six more European nations before the year is out.

The exchange platform announced on its blog yesterday that its services are now available in Andorra, Gibraltar, Guernsey, Isle of Man, Lithuania, and Iceland – this takes Coinbase to 3.4 million more people. Whether residents of these nations will actually be interested at this time of year, given the current market is another question.

Zeeshan Feroz, Coinbase’s UK CEO, told CNBC that the firm looks for markets that are “close to or within jurisdictions that we operate in today.”

According to the announcement, new customers from these nations will be able to make full use of Coinbaseom and the company’s iOS and Android apps. Bear in mind this is only for retail investors, Coinbase Pro and Prime are yet to be rolled out to the countries.

Coinbase seems intent on taking more cryptocurrencies, to even more people and is planning further expansion next year.

Over the course of this year Coinbase has doubled its lineup of available cryptocurrencies , with clear plans to keep adding more as time goes on.

Bitcoin wallets aren’t addresses — a secret guide for embarrassed crypto noobs

Welcome to Hard Fork Basics, a collection of tips, tricks, guides, and advice to keep you up to date in the cryptocurrency and blockchain world.

If you own any cryptocurrency, the chances are you’ve had to use an address, or a wallet, or both. It’s confusing, right? Well, it doesn’t have to be.

The fact of the matter is that a wallet and an address are not the same thing, but the differences are relatively easy to understand.

With this in mind, we’ll define what they each are and explain the differences without the unnecessary technical detail.

An address

When it comes to cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, an address is made up of random letters and numbers.

A Bitcoin address, for example, is usually made up of 26-35 alphanumeric characters and typically begin with the number 1, 3, or bc1.

All addresses represent a destination on the Bitcoin network. What you really need to know is that, unlike addresses in the real-world, Bitcoin addresses are only meant to be used once.

Basically, the idea is that for each Bitcoin transaction, users will generate a unique, single-use address to provide to senders.

Hard Fork has previously explained what they are and how they work in a bit more detail here .

A wallet

A wallet comes with an address by default, which is why things can get confusing at times.

But, although a wallet comes with an address, it’s important to remember that it’s not the same as an address.

A cryptocurrency wallet can consist of a string of different addresses. The fact that it’s called a wallet can be a little misleading because it doesn’t actually hold all your credit cards in the say way that Apple Pay does, for example.

Instead, a cryptocurrency wallet is more similar to a key ring because it holds a copy of each private key and its corresponding address. If it’s a good wallet, it should also automatically generate fresh Bitcoin addresses with every transaction.

So regardless of whether you own just Bitcoin, or Ethereum, or a host of several different cryptocurrencies, all you need to do is open your wallet to gain access to all the different addresses contained within it.

As you might expect, there are different ways you can access your cryptocurrency wallet: on a desktop, on a browser, or by using a physical wallet.  Otherwise known as “cold storage,” physical wallets are more secure because they’re offline and less susceptible to hacks.

For more information about choosing your first crypto wallet, check out our handy guide here .