Bitcoin Daily: Ether Hits Record $44K; McDonald’s Debuts McRib NFTs; Kazakhstan Crypto Miners Could Bring In $1.5 Billion In Next 5 Years

Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency, hit a new high above $4,400 on Friday (Oct. 29), Bloomberg writes.

The report says the digital asset was up 4.8% at $4,459.20, which was an improvement on the previous record of $4,379.62.

The news comes as Ether has been doing better overall than Bitcoin this year. Ether has had a sixfold increase as retail and institutional investor interest in cryptocurrency have been going strong.

Data from CoinGecko.com notes Ether’s value has now hit $520 billion.

In addition, other tokens like Binance Coin and Solana rallied last week, too.

“On-chain activity metrics for Ethereum appear to have found support and are reaching multimonth highs,” said Sean Farrell and Will McEvoy, digital asset strategists with Fundstrat in a report Thursday, per the report.

Meanwhile, McDonald’s is rolling out a set of NFTs based on the popular McRib sandwich, a press release says.

The NFTs will be in celebration of the sandwich’s 40th anniversary. The release says the fast food chain will give them away to some fans beginning Nov. 1.

Those interested will be able to enter for a chance to win by following McDonald’s on Twitter and retweeting the Sweepstakes Invitation tweet between Nov. 1 and Nov. 7 from a public account.

The restaurant plans to pick the 10 winners on Nov. 12.

Finally, in Kazakhstan, crypto miners are bringing over $230 million in tax revenue, a Bitcoin.com report says.

The National Association of Blockchain and Data Center Industry says the government will be able to bring in over $300 million in taxes in the next five years, with miners bringing in $1.5 billion to the economy.

The data adds that the current $230 million is only the economic effects from those companies officially engaged in mining activities — not those “gray” miners, the report notes.

And the report says miners currently pay over $30 million to KEGOC, the state-run power utility, to access electricity and services from the Financial Settlement Center of Renewable Energy.