Bitcoin Daily: Scrabble Adds ‘Bitcoin,’ Experts Uncover 2.5M Crypto-Jacking Instances

Scrabble has added the word ‘bitcoin’ to the list of words that players can officially use in its popular board game, CNBC reported. That is, Merriam-Webster included the cryptocurrency in its newest official dictionary for Scrabble. According to its dictionary, bitcoin is defined as “a digital currency.”

How many points can a player score by using the word in the game? Nine points, per the game’s rules. Bitcoin is no stranger to the publisher, however: The word ‘bitcoin’ made its debut in the regular unabridged Merriam-Webster dictionary about two years ago. However, CNBC noted that “the Scrabble Dictionary is updated less frequently, and the popular form of digital currency was not included in the previous edition released in 2014.”

Crypto mining company Bitmain has reportedly filed for a “preliminary [initial public offering] IPO prospectus,” Business Insider reported. Through that document, the company claimed revenues of $2.8 billion in the first months of the year. Last year, the company’s revenues were $2.5 billion for the entire year.

In terms of product categories, 94 percent of the company’s sales were generated by mining hardware products. For the entire worldwide mining market, though, the company contended in its filing that it has a 74.5 percent share. Beyond the hardware business, Bitmain has 11 mining firms, as well as the BTC.com and Antpool.

On another note, a McAfee Labs report indicated there were 2.5 million new occurrences of crypto-jacking malware in the second quarter of the year, The Next Web said. That, according to the outlet, marks a spike of 86 percent in malware that mines digital currency.

The outlet also noted that “most” malware coming onto the scene comes from older crypto-jacking scripts. In the report, McAfee Labs noted, “Cybercriminals continue to follow the money. Although this statement is familiar, our latest Threats Report clearly shows the migration from certain older attacks to new threat vectors as they become more profitable.”