Cryptocurrency news by Protos

A 63-year-old Hong Kong investment manager has lost $1.5 million in family inheritance after being lured by a supposed female crypto investing expert into investing his money into a scam crypto trading site. This kind of widely reported scam is known as pig butchering. Victims are slowly groomed towards investing their money into various fake trading sites run by scammers. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is almost done investigating major crypto exchange Kraken for potential unregistered securities sales, a person familiar with the matter told Bloomberg.A settlement could be expected in the 'coming days,' the outlet reports, yet it remains unclear which tokens or offerings are under the US regulator's scrutiny. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tron founder and Poloniex investor Justin Sun is continuing to pad his colorful crypto industry resume, this time turning his attention to once-giant Chinese crypto exchange, Huobi.The exchange recently confirmed a long-standing rumor that Sun holds a leadership role at the company. Last year, Huobi hid Sun’s involvement behind the name of Huobi’s equity suitor, About Capital Management. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hackers hijacked the Twitter account of an obscure French politician earlier this week, using it to promote a Ripple (XRP) scam.According to reports, the account, belonging to Municipal Councillor Quentin Feres was taken over on Tuesday.While in control, the scammers tweeted, “XRP is ready to huge PUMP. To support our community, Brad Garlinghouse Ripple XRP CEO initiated XRP GIVE­AWAY…Note: you can take a gift only once. Please hurry up!” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Three Arrows Capital founder Kyle Davies made “only piecemeal disclosures” and refused to cooperate with investigations into the now-bankrupt hedge fund, according to a recent court filing. According to CoinDesk, Davies was issued a subpoena via Twitter back in January. However, the documents demanding access to 3AC’s financial records were all but completely ignored. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Fedimint addresses a significant attack vector of the Bitcoin network: centralized custodians, such as exchanges holding keys to large amounts of its customers’ bitcoin. The world needs to look no further back than FTX for an example of such a custodian’s multi-billion dollar loss.Fedimint claims to offer a “second-party custody” solution for Bitcoin. That wordplay refers to one’s friend or relative, instead of an otherwise corporate and impersonal third-party. Fedimint also aims to provide greater privacy in transactions using so-called federated Chaumian mints.So, how does it work? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

South Korean officials traveled to Serbia earlier this month as they stepped up their pursuit of elusive former Terra chief Do Kwon. As reported by Bloomberg, the delegation included a member of Seoul’s prosecutors’ office and a senior Justice Ministry official.Kwon has been on the run since the Terra (LUNA) ecosystem imploded in May last year, taking a raft of digital assets and crypto-related organizations with it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ishan Wahi, a former product manager at Coinbase, has plead guilty to two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in a case involving insider trading, according to Reuters. Wahi shared information about Coinbase listings with his brother and his friend, which prosecutors allege resulted in $1.5 million in profits. Ishan Wahi’s case represents a more aggressive strategy against cryptocurrency insider trading, focusing on wire fraud charges instead of criminal securities fraud charges. Wahi is also part of an ongoing civil suit brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) related to this behavior — it alleges that the tokens involved are securities. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The controversial FTX User Debt (FUD) token issued by unknown 'DebtDAO' soared in price to unexpected heights on Monday, resulting in a decision to burn 18 million tokens to bring its value back down to its initial supposed representation of FTX's debt.DebtDAO's bond token, FUD, was issued last week as an alleged portrayal of FTX's debt. Each token was meant to have a value of $1 which amounted to around $100 million owed to FTX creditors. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The London Court of Appeal has ruled that Craig Wright’s case against Bitcoin developers can proceed to trial. The case involves Wright’s allegation that his company, Tulip Trading, lost 111,000 bitcoin (worth $2.4 billion today) to hackers who stole its private keys.Wright is arguing that Bitcoin developers have an obligation to help asset owners recover those funds. Previously, a lower court had dismissed the case, however, the Court of Appeal overruled that dismissal, giving Wright a chance to pursue his case in front of a jury. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Huobi has announced that it’s listing the ‘FTX User Debt’ (FUD) token issued by the ‘DebtDAO.’ This is despite the lack of many basic details that would help explain its functionality.The project claims that FUD is a ‘bond token’ issued after it was notified of a ‘debt amount’ of $100 million related to the FTX bankruptcy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The UK’s top financial watchdog, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), has kicked off 2023 with strict warnings for the tech and crypto sectors, amid concerns that the cost of living crisis will make some more susceptible to financial scams.Last year, the FCA made companies change or remove 8,252 misleading or fraudulent promotions — 14 times more than in 2021.This sharp uptick in FCA regulation is expected to continue this year. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Australian Federal Police have announced their dismantling of the Xin Money Laundering Organization, which moved an estimated $10 billion.Among those arrested is the apparent leader of the organization, Steven Xin. Xin was the Australian business partner of former junket operator Alvin Chau. Together they ran the SunCity junket, apparently in coordination with ‘Broken Tooth’ Wan Kuok-koi, boss of the Macau branch of the 14 K Triad during the bloody Triad wars. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Altcoin fans have been warned that a popular new token is a scam designed to charge users a stealthy 99% transaction fee. According to Dingo Token’s four-page white paper, the crypto only charges a 10% fee per transaction.However, as reported by Info Security Magazine, researchers have discovered a backdoor that appears to have been put in place to “steal users’ funds.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Readers might remember the curious heist of Wormhole, the inter-blockchain bridge that linked assets between the blockchains of Ethereum and Solana. Not only was it history’s largest bridge loss at $325 million, it was also championed by fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried and capitalized by a multi-billion dollar trading firm, Jump. A large amount of those funds are now being used to buy stETH on margin. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Some Genesis creditors are deciding that it’s time to take the money and run — even if all they’re able to get is a fraction of what they paid into the bankrupt lender.Earlier this week, Stephen Sokolowski, a crypto mining executive, sold his $4 million claim against Genesis for just $1 million, or $0.25 on the dollar. It was bought by a fund managed by investment bank Jefferies, according to a court filing. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Draper was in Sri Lanka when he met recently elected President Ranil Wickremesinghe where he told his spiel about bitcoin adoption at the central bank. According to Bloomberg, he was met with icy feedback. In a meeting with Governor Nandalal Weerasinghe, Draper announced, “I come to the central bank with decentralized currency.”“We don’t accept,” Weerasinghe replied, reportedly taking a sip of fizzy ginger beer. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A group of anarchist coders is preparing to launch a next-generation crypto software that they say will “present a graver threat to governments than other internet advances of the past 20 years,” reports Politico. The group, which calls itself ‘DarkFi,’ claims that its new blockchain project “is not a corporate startup,” rather it’s “a democratic economic experiment, an operating system for society.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has been suing Ripple since December 2020, and they are within months of their final battle. The SEC alleged that Ripple and two of its executives raised $1.3 billion in an unregistered securities sale. Ripple has declined settlement offers to date, claiming that they never conducted such a sale.Both parties anticipate that the presiding judge could issue summary judgment within the next few months. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

US-based crypto exchange Kraken is shuttering its Abu Dhabi office as part of its ongoing global cost-cutting measures, reports Bloomberg.The move means that transactions in Dirham, the country’s official currency, will no longer be allowed. However, customers from the region will still be able to use the platform.The company took the decision less than 12 months after gaining a local license. Kraken no longer shows up in the registry for Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sam Bankman-Fried’s bankrupt crypto trading outfit Alameda Research has received $6 million in Tether and $2.5 million in ether from Bitfinex’s hot wallet and $4.5 million worth of USD coin from an unknown source. Alameda’s consolidation wallet further received 30,000 Lido tokens worth over $65,500.It received the $10.5 million from Bitfinex and an unknown source overnight, as it deals with ongoing bankruptcy proceedings. A Bitfinex spokesperson told CoinDesk, “Alameda had an account on Bitfinex and Bitfinex is collaborating with the liquidators to return what’s left.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A wash trade of a dead NFT collection made up 6.5% of the daily sales volume on OpenSea yesterday morning. The purchase of the single NFT from the Crop Collection was transacted at 409 ETH valued at around $648,000.Wash trading has been a very common feature in the NFT market with some reports alleging that at the peak of the NFT bull market, 80% of the total sales were, in fact, wash trading. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Solana is widely regarded as the personal project of Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF). He single-handedly set a floor price of $3 before one of the most spectacular bull runs in crypto history to $267.SBF is now under house arrest and many of his colleagues turned state’s evidence. With SBF’s fraudulent empire in bankruptcy, famously centralized Solana has had to find other ways to remake itself. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Wallet manufacturing giant Ledger has unexpectedly released an update to its Bitcoin App, adding Javascript, Rust, and Python code support for Miniscript.Thanks to Ledger embedded engineer Salvatore Ingala’s initiative, any common Ledger device is now able to create time-morphing vaults and other complex Miniscript transactions using Ledger’s official code. Millions of Bitcoin wallets are now compatible with the programming language. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Yesterday, social token platform Rally.io, which runs on its own Ethereum sidechain, announced it would suddenly cease operations. The decision leaves the funds of users and creators stuck on the chain, which “may simply become inoperable.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

FTX Japan has confirmed that its customers will be able to withdraw funds from “an unspecified moment in February.”In a post published this week, the company informed users that their assets will be made available via Liquid, a Japanese crypto exchange that was acquired by FTX in February 2022. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Cryptocurrency tax company CoinTracker has laid off 19 employees representing approximately 20% of its workforce. This is according to an internal email reviewed by Protos and confirmed by a statement from CoinTracker CEO Jon Lerner.In January last year, CoinTracker raised $100 million in its Series A at a valuation of $1.3 billion. The round included Y Combinator, Kraken Ventures, and Coinbase Ventures. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sam Bankman-Fried’s bankrupt crypto lending arm Alameda Research has filed a lawsuit against bankrupt crypto brokerage Voyager Digital, in an attempt to reclaim approximately $446 million in loan payments.The lawsuit described Voyager Digital as a ‘feeder fund’ that ‘fueled’ the misconduct of Alameda Research. A feeder fund is a structure where investors invest in that fund, and the investments are then fed into the ‘master fund’ which executes the investments — a key target for clawbacks in the Bernie Madoff case. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

An independent investigation has determined that now-bankrupt crypto lender Celsius Network was a Ponzi scheme by using client funds to buy up its native token and inflate price.Since September, former prosecutor Shoba Pillay has examined claims that the crypto lender was misappropriating funds and defrauding investors. The executive summary of Pillay’s 689-page report states that Celsius’ promises of “trust,” “transparency,” and “financial freedom” were a complete lie. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

NFT-like bitcoin inscriptions have become a hot topic in a long-running debate among Bitcoiners: How much non-financial transaction data should the Bitcoin community want to include on its blockchain?The debate is old enough to trace back to Satoshi Nakamoto. Indeed, in a 2009 proposal to decentralize domain names, Satoshi came down on the side of using alternative data storage instead of Bitcoin’s ledger. Satoshi reasoned that users should not have to download data from other applications (like BitDNS) to use Bitcoin’s network for its primary utility: peer-to-peer digital cash. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A UK court has branded a dark web site advertising bitcoin-for-hire hitmen an “absolute sham” and “palpable nonsense” after a woman, who allegedly tried to have a one-time fling murdered, lost $25,000 in bitcoin.Mother-of-five Helen Hewlett allegedly paid a £20,000 deposit for a hitman on the site Online Killers Market. It was agreed that money would exchange hands once her former fling, an ex-colleague, was murdered. However, the fake hitmen took Hewlett’s cash without going through with the deed. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Australian securities regulators were investigating FTX as early as March 2022, according to emails obtained by The Guardian.The investigation looks to have begun after it became clear that FTX was offering 20 times leverage on its investments. When regulators began to investigate, they discovered that FTX had acquired its license from a takeover of IFS Markets, which had itself acquired it by taking over Forex Financial Services.In order to understand whether or not FTX was maintaining the standards required by the license, regulators issued an S912C notice to gather information to assess its compliance. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A UK-based charity is being probed by regulators over its ties to collapsed crypto exchange FTX.In a statement issued on Monday, the Charity Commission announced that it is launching an official inquiry into Effective Ventures Foundation, which received much of its funding from Future Fund, the charitable arm of Sam Bankman-Fried’s now-bankrupt firm. The charity previously described the collapse as a “serious incident.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Syrian-Australian conspiracy theorist Maram Susli, known online as Syrian Girl, has stepped back from social media after asking her followers for donations and receiving $127 in bitcoin from a wallet with alleged ties to numerous scams and Russian terrorism.Pro-Russian Susli is a YouTuber who creates political content in support of Bashar Al-Assad’s regime in Syria while condemning the US and Israel. “Syrian patriot and Sunni Muslim from Damascus, anti-neocon, anti-NWO, anti-Zionist,” her YouTube profile reads. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Established in 1999, quantitative trading firm Jane Street has grown to become a multi-billion-dollar Wall Street giant. The firm employs thousands of employees and, even though it’s not required to file public financials, it disclosed $7.8 billion in earnings on $17 trillion worth of securities trades after its fiscal year 2020.However, perhaps the most interesting thing about the New York-headquartered company is that it employed five workers who subsequently went on to participate in Sam Bankman-Fried’s ill-fated FTX empire. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Proof Collective co-founder Kevin Rose is the latest high-profile NFT investor to fall victim to a “social engineering” attack. On Wednesday, he signed a single transaction that triggered the sale of the majority of his collection for free.Rose is a well-known tech investor. Before entering the world of NFTs, he co-founded Digg, had a stint at Google Ventures, and created apps focused on fasting and meditation. Proof Collective, which launched in late 2021 and created the popular Moonbirds series, counts Beeple and Gary Vee among its members. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A recent report by Goldman Sachs, naming bitcoin as the best-performing asset of the year so far has bitcoiners once again dreaming the $100K dream.This isn’t the first time that bitcoin has outperformed other assets. Indeed, there have even been reports that have tagged it as one of the best-performing of the last decade. But what are the odds of history repeating itself? In the event of a new bull market, will bitcoin be, as Paul Tudor Jones once said, “the fastest horse in the stable” once again? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Bitcoin maximalist Jack Dorsey significantly contributed to the popularity of social media platform Nostr overnight on December 14, when he chose to tweet about it. Thousands of Bitcoiners joined the platform thanks to his publicity of the platform, which promises to be a credible decentralized social site that could displace Twitter.His recommendation gained 428,000 organic impressions. The next morning, Dorsey donated 14 bitcoin (then worth $250,000) to Fiatjaf from Bitcoin gaming company Zebedee. Fiatjaf is the lead maintainer of Nostr and a developer on Damus, Nostr’s leading implementation.So, what is Nostr? And why is the Bitcoin community excited about it? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson recently went live on Twitter to discuss the bankruptcy of crypto exchange Genesis and how parent company Digital Currency Group may sell its media arm, CoinDesk. His expressed interest in buying the company has journalists nauseous. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the late 2022 depths of the bear market, sentiment for bitcoin miners was abysmal. Rig operators were suffering. Profits had evaporated. Equity valuations cratered.Now that bitcoin is above $20,000, more miners are turning their rigs back on. The average hashrate devoted to bitcoin rose to over 272 quintillion calculations per second by January 23. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dutch central bank De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) has announced a €3,325,000 ($3.6 million) fine imposed on crypto exchange Coinbase for operating unregistered in the Netherlands for two years, resulting in what the DNB called “very severe” non-compliance with the law. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Far-right extremist Senator Wendy Rogers has introduced a bill into the Arizona State Senate to add bitcoin as “legal tender” for Arizona.Critics of previous proposals have pointed out that the declaration of bitcoin as legal tender potentially violates constitutional limitations on states’ ability to issue their own money.Rogers’ bitcoin bill continues the trend of far right figures endorsing the cryptocurrency, including self-proclaimed dictator Nayib Bukele. El Salvador’s future is staked on the success of Bitcoin — and it’s not going well. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Washington-based doctor Ronald Craig Ilg has been sentenced to eight years in prison after he tried to get a bitcoin-for-hire hitman to kidnap his estranged wife and break the hands of a former colleague.  Neonatologist Ilg was willing to pay $2,000 in bitcoin via the dark web to have a fellow doctor “given a significant beating.” He also specified that the assault “should injure both hands significantly or break the hands.”Despite this attack not being carried out, Ilg returned to the dark web a month later with what he called “another, more complicated job.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Bankrupt lender BlockFi was revealed to have more than $1 billion in assets linked to FTX and Alameda Research when a creditor committee accidentally published unredacted financial records.As reported by CNBC, the hastily-unpublished documents showed that the company, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in November, has just under $416 million worth of assets tied to FTX and a little over $831 million in loans to Alameda. This is considerably more than the $1.02 billion claimed in previous financial disclosures. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ethereum’s leading Layer 2 protocols, Arbitrum and Optimism, surged in popularity in 2022. Combined, Arbitrum and Optimism account for four-fifths of all value locked across Ethereum’s Layer 2s.On January 12, these two protocols surpassed Ethereum’s daily transactions — showcasing their scaling potential. Optimism alone processed 800,000 transactions that day. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A temperature check vote proposing to deploy Uniswap v3 on BNB Chain has passed with over 80% of the vote. This is despite community concerns about moving the decentralized exchange (DEX) to a more centralized platform. However, despite the vote attracting “the biggest number [of participating wallets] for the whole Uniswap Governance History,” with just 0.1% of voting wallets making up 99% of the 24.9 million votes, Uniswap may have centralization problems of its own. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Crypto exchange Binance has acknowledged that it failed to keep backing for dozens of tokens issued on Binance Smart Chain separate, and instead commingled it with customer funds.On Binance Smart Chain, 94 tokens issued by the exchange are pegged to other cryptocurrency assets. The backing for dozens of these “B-tokens” was stored commingled in an exchange cold wallet, rather than kept separate. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Unfortunately, crypto’s hyperinflationist prognosticators got another prediction wrong. No, the Treasury Secretary will not be instructing the US Mint to forge a $1 trillion coin.During an interview with the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), Secretary Janet Yellen formally denied rumors, explained why the Federal Reserve wouldn’t purchase it, and called the hypothetical item a gimmick. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

People on cryptocurrency Twitter are overjoyed at the prospect of helping you, and are quick to offer life, diet, entrepreneurial, and other advice; but never financial.It’s a common-held belief that adding three simple words to the end of anything will absolve you of legal repercussions — despite digital asset lawyers warning that adding “not financial advice” on its own is “pretty useless.”Sam Bankman-Fried, Changpeng Zhao, and Anthony Pompliano have all apparently missed the memo that the Securities and Exchange Commission went after celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Floyd Mayweather for crypto promotion, despite including the disclaimer.Red flags aside, I sometimes feel as though I could use greater direction in my life. That’s why I’ve turned to the brilliant minds on crypto Twitter to advise me — but definitely not about my finances. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Crypto companies will be forced to keep customer assets separate from company assets under new guidance due to be published by the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS).As reported by Reuters, the state’s top financial regulator is pushing for new rules on co-mingling of funds. The move comes in the wake of the collapse of US-based exchange FTX and trading firm Alameda Research which left the companies’ clients billions of dollars out of pocket. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.