Author: Cristian Lipciuc

Cristian Lipciuc is a blockchain journalist working with startup companies across multiple domains such as freelancing, app development & cryptocurrency. Cristian specializes in applied blockchain technologies, cryptocurrency integration, the adoption of new technologies by governments, and cybersecurity.

Categories
Crypto Exchange Cryptocurrencies Hackers

Cryptopia Hacked Again While Under Liquidation

Back in January of 2019, Cryptopia was hacked — leading to losses worth $1.97 million. 

The New Zealand-based exchange has since started liquidation procedures —  but they’ve been hit yet again.

Losses From First Hack Still Not Recovered

Following the 2019 hack that cost them nearly 2 million dollars, their liquidator, Grant Thorton, has started allowing former users of the exchange to send them claims for cryptocurrency lost back in 2019.

This incident alone constituted a loss of 15% of their entire digital currency stash and is considered the most damaging incident of theft in the history of New Zealand — and the proceeds are worth far more now than at the time of the theft, due to the explosion of multiple cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin chief among them. 

Stakenet — a U.S.-based creditor — stated that $45k worth of XSN had been transferred out of its cold wallet on the 1st of February. 

However, Grant Thorton stated that the transaction was not authorized — which makes one wonder how the hack could have occurred, as an attack on a cold wallet is much harder to pull off than an attack on a hot wallet, due to its intentional lack of connectivity to the Internet. 

Stakenet commented that Grant Thorton should take responsibility for the incident, assuming it happened on their watch.

“If this unauthorized transaction has happened under Grant Thornton’s watch then they need to explain to the users why they failed to secure … [their] assets like they were supposed to do and how someone was able to access them.”

Although Grant Thornton did not make a public statement regarding the issue, it’s been understood that they have contacted the police about the security breach and are investigating it internally. 

Categories
Cryptocurrencies Ethereum Mining

Nvidia Limits Mining Efficiency On RTX 3060

Nvidia has announced that they will be reducing the efficiency of Ethereum mining on its RTX 3060 series by 50%, in an effort to ease the shortage of graphics cards caused by crypto miners.

For over 2 years, graphics cards – usually snapped up by avid gamers – have seen numerous shortages, causing their prices to skyrocket on secondary markets. Between scalpers and miners, the market is tense – a move that has caused Nvidia to step in, hoping to restore high-end GPUs to their intended purpose.

However, in order to not leave crypto miners orders unfulfilled, Nvidia is also launching a GPU dedicated specifically for miners – the CMP .

Focused Due To Highest Yield Potential

To explain why they have specifically lowered the hash rate on the 3060 series, Nvidia stated that Ethereum has the highest global mining yield of any other cryptocurrency at the moment.

“It has the highest global mining yield for any GPU-mineable coin at the moment and thus is likely the main demand driver for GPUs in mining.”

By making Ethereum mining less efficient, Nvidia hopes it can deter miners from focusing on gaming GPUs and drive them towards their new dedicated CMP cards.

According to Nvidia, the CMP will remove focus from the graphics a high-end gaming card would be able to render and turn that power towards more energy-efficient mining processes.

However, critics have met this claim with a measure of skepticism – stating that more efficient mining hardware will do nothing to stop the card arms race – since miners with these cards will simply be competing against other miners with the same cards now, not against miners with regular graphics cards.

It’s worth noting that the current shortages have not only made the prices of GPUs skyrocket, but that of mining rigs as well, with some companies having their inventory sold out for the foreseeable future.

Categories
Australia Cryptocurrencies Scams

US DOJ Charges 3 North Korean For Cybercrimes That Caused Over $1.3 Billion In Damages

The US Department of Justice is charging 3 hackers – presumed to be associated with the infamous Lazarus Group that took on Sony back in 2014 – with theft and extortion of cryptocurrency between 2017 and 2020.

Possible Funding Of Nukes Via Crypto Theft

It’s been less than a week since the UN made allegations that North Korea may be funding its nuclear program using cryptocurrency stolen by its army of hackers.

To go along with the charging of the 3 individuals, the FBI, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Department of Treasury published a joint statement about a piece of malware known as AppleJesus. This malicious app poses as a legitimate cryptocurrency exchange, fooling users into downloading it and transferring their crypto to unknown sources – presumed to be run by North Korea.

“This report catalogues AppleJeus malware in detail. North Korea has used AppleJeus malware posing as cryptocurrency trading platforms since at least 2018. In most instances, the malicious application – seen on both Windows and Mac operating systems – appears to be from a legitimate cryptocurrency trading company, thus fooling individuals into downloading it as a third-party application from a website that seems legitimate.”

This attack appears to have targeted users and companies in Australia, the U.S., Canada, Brazil, Argentina, New Zealand, India, China, Russia, Israel, Saudi Arabia, South Korea – among other countries.

Due to international sanctions, North Korea has turned to more unorthodox methods in order to turn a profit. In the past, these activities have run the gamut from farming in-game currencies on World of Warcraft to more typical methods.

In a press statement, Assistant Attorney General John Demers stated that North Korean hackers have been causing quite a lot of damage to banks – except this time, keyboards were used, instead of guns.

Categories
Australia Bitcoin Investing

More Australian Blockchain Heavy-Hitters Call For Increased Government Support

Following yesterday’s call by Steve Vallas – the CEO of Blockchain Australia, a coalition of blockchain-oriented Australian businesses – more big-league Aussie blockchain experts have joined the call for more government support for this budding industry.

Lagging Behind The USA By About 2 Years

Leigh Daniel Travers – the CEO of DigitalX, a Technology Fast 50 company specializing in customized blockchain solutions – stated that Australian companies typically don’t deal with international markets as much as companies from other countries might. He believes institutional investors are one of the many things that could spur on the rate of crypto adoption in Australia.

“Both of those markets in Australia haven’t seen a lot of adoption compared to global markets. Australians typically haven’t had too much involvement into international markets unless it’s managed on their behalf.”

In addition, he went on to say that there is a relatively well-known consensus in the industry that Australian regulation for new technology is around 2 years behind that of the US, and this has an impact on investors’ willingness to shop around on Aussie markets.

“Australia hasn’t had a Greyscale equivalent and that’s really prevented a lot of investors coming into the marketplace because they want to go through the process they usually go through. Having a familiar vehicle makes a lot more sense and that’s what we’re trying to bring to the market. I think there’s probably a well-understood investment cycle where Australia is 2-3 years behind US markets and that appears to be playing out in the crypto investment market as well.”

These aren’t empty words, either: in a recent update given to the ASX regarding its use of funds, DigitalX made note of the fact that they’ve increased their direct exposure to Bitcoin – as well as other digital assets by more than 70%.

Categories
Australia Blockchain Industries

Blockchain Australia And RMIT Call For More Government Support For Blockchain Tech

As the number one local coalition of blockchain-associated companies, Blockchain Australia Solutions stated that although the Australian government has been taking great steps to improve the fintech and blockchain ecosystem in Australia, measures taken are beginning to lag behind those taken by other countries.

Australia Is Well-Placed To Become A Tech-Savvy Economy

Steve Vallas – the CEO of Blockchain Australia – noted that although certain steps have already been taken by the Australian government – such as the National Blockchain Roadmap – have greatly improved the adoption of blockchain-friendly regulation across Australia, the country has started to lag behind other countries when it comes to blockchain – and in turn, this could hurt Australia’s chances of attracting investors.

“I think everyone knows that we have a very good regulatory framework, but the sign doesn’t say ‘Open for business’ with respect to this technology, so, when we look at some of the custodian businesses and the like that are taking shape in the United States, they’re not naturally coming to Australia because no one is saying that this is a welcoming environment and you can trust our regulatory framework, and we’re open to a conversation about what these businesses could do in Australia.”

Steve Vallas’ statements were accompanied by those of three lawyers and economists from RMIT, who noted that Australia is currently in a good spot to work on blockchain-related regulation – but that the government must act quickly before other governments take the lead and attract potential investors.

Dr. Darcy Allen – an economist affiliated with RMIT – also noted the importance of digitalizing the economy, and making blockchain-based records accessible to Australian regulators.

It’s worth noting that these remarks pertaining to expanding blockchain support to attract fintech investors to Australia echo the sentiments of Senator Andrew Bragg, a notorious “friend in high places” of blockchain technology.

Categories
Australia Bitcoin Investing

Australian Teenager Investors Are Growing In Number – And Thriving

When you’re a young lad, your interests tend to revolve around the same things they have for centuries – enjoying the outdoors, chatting with your mates, and occasionally trying new things for the thrill of it.

Disclaimer: Be careful when trading Cryptocurrencies. They could can easily go to zero as well as going up. Please read our basic guides to learn more.

$10k Before Sweet Sixteen

To say the world is changing is an understatement. In Australia, for instance, older high-stakes pastimes are being phased out for more profitable ones – in this case, crypto investing.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, these days teens are more likely to be trading in crypto – and making a tidy sum off of it, in many cases.

Sam from Cronulla Beach is an avid surfer – and he’s put his earnings from his job as a surfing instructor towards the crypto market, where he’s managed to turn a profit of 8.5k so far before hitting 16.

Sam Cornock, 15, uses apps such as CoinGecko and YouTube to research the market in cryptocurrencies. – Source: The SMH

Waking up to catch some waves before school leaves you plenty of time to check the market before others wake up – and in crypto trading the early bird tends to get the worm.

Sam knows this and says that he’s planning to cash out before the market becomes shaky.

I just figure if everyone is talking about it and FOMOing, surely, it’s going to pop soon. Maybe I’ll take a little bit of money out, so I don’t get burnt on the way down.”

In order to trade, he’s using a crypto trading account opened in his father’s name – who is quite proud of his sons’ success in a very volatile market.

“As a parent, I’m amazed by how many hours of reading and research he is doing. He’s researching economics and what the market is doing.”

It’s important to note that cryptocurrency – like any investment – tends to be incredibly volatile, and should be approached with caution and a good amount of research.

Sam trades in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Polkadot – but admits he’s also lost some on riskier ventures. Haven’t we all though?

Big up to you Sam!

Categories
Crypto Debit Cards Cryptocurrencies Payments

MasterCard Announces Crypto Support Coming This Year

In a recent blog post, Mastercard announced that they would begin supporting various cryptocurrencies later this year.

Stablecoins To Be Prioritised

Although MasterCard has not yet confirmed which cryptocurrencies will be supported natively, they have stated that they will most likely be offering more support for stablecoins.

This is due to the fact that as a credit card company, they want to offer as much stability as possible to clients.

However, the company has stated that they would not be hosting stashes of cryptocurrency directly – instead, they’ve created partnerships with companies such as Wirex, BitPay, and LVL who will convert fiat to crypto and vice versa – and only then will the “crypto” enter the Mastercard network.

Mastercard went on to say that their entire philosophy revolves around offering customers as much freedom of choice as possible – and given the widespread interest in cryptocurrency that shows no sign of stopping, adding support for cryptocurrencies was the logical choice.

“Our philosophy on cryptocurrencies is straightforward: It’s about choice. Mastercard isn’t here to recommend you start using cryptocurrencies. But we are here to enable customers, merchants, and businesses to move digital value – traditional or crypto – however, they want. It should be your choice, it’s your money. Doing this work will create a lot more possibilities for shoppers and merchants, allowing them to transact in an entirely new form of payment.”

The credit card company has also stated that they’ve engaged several central banks looking into creating CBDCs – a cryptocurrency that is backed by a central banking system. Examples of countries looking into CBDCs are Australia, China, France, Germany, and the USA. According to the blogpost, MasterCard provided some of these banks with a virtual environment to test these out.

MasterCard isn’t the only company dabbling in cryptocurrency, however; Visa has also been expanding its horizons and investing in crypto-affiliated fintech firms.

Categories
Crypto Wallets Dogecoin Investing

Crypto Wallet Service Attempts To Promote Itself, Gets Firmly Rebuffed By Elon Musk

Freewallet, an online-hosted crypto wallet service attempted to promote their service by jumping on the Dogecoin bandwagon started by Elon Musk.

However, their ill-advised PR stunt promptly – and very publicly – backfired.

Heavy Criticism Due To Non-Ownership Of Keys

The company retweeted one of Elon’s many Doge-related tweets, announcing that Doge is readily available on their app.

Unfortunately for them, Twitter can often be the Wild West, and Elon Musk promptly criticized their services. Stating that the “always online” approach should not be trusted when it comes to cryptocurrency, Elon Musk replied to the promotional message with his views on their service.

Freewallet defended themselves, stating that hosting tokens on their own servers allows them to offer “bank-level” customer support and security. It’s worth mentioning that if we’re taking into account the customer support some banks offer, this may have been a poor choice of words.

“The accusations relating to this fact are never followed by a support ticket. People saying ‘stay away from Freewallet’ express prejudice towards custodial wallets because they believe that a ‘true’ blockchain wallet is supposed to leave the management of private keys to the user (no). However, there are other services (like exchanges) that have access to user private keys.”

Avid crypto users have criticized online storage for a long time, stating that an app that is always online can be attacked by bad actors – an event that, although rare, still does happen. To be fair, despite strong messages in favor of storing crypto on your own hard wallets from many sources – such as Aussie exchange Swyftx – many are still keeping their assets on exchanges. For instance, up to 92% of institutional investors do not host their own crypto assets.

Categories
Australia DeFi Stablecoins

Aussie Programmer Refinances His Property Loan With DeFi In A Single Day, Following Red Tape From Banks

A software engineer has paid off his mortgage to the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and refinanced it through fixed-rate lending protocols, after finally having enough of getting nowhere with traditional banks.

Offsetting Loans

According to the software engineer, he decided to – quite literally – become his own lender after going around in circles with banks.

As a self-employed professional, he believes banks took advantage of this in order to deny him even a credit card for multiple years – especially seeing as the world is currently going through a period of economic turmoil.

In order to do so, the software engineer first paid off his loan in AUD – after which he borrowed USDC from Notional, using liquidity he already owned in order to avoid high fees.

He then added about $1 million in wrapped Bitcoin and Ethereum as collateral for a new 500,000 USDC loan.

Although the borrowing rates requested by Notional are around 6% some of that can be offset – provided you provide liquidity that you can earn money off of.

The newly (and self)made one man banking system stated that everything went much faster than it would have, had he stuck to traditional banks.

“I feel like I’m in full control of my situation. People should be all over this stuff. It felt like it would’ve taken months of applications, finding tax returns and bank statements for the bank to refinance me, but I was able to do it all in one day, under my own agency.”

Although the whole procedure took quite a bit of forethought, it paves the way for more transactions of the sort – AAVE, in particular, have hopped on the mortgage train recently following their marked increase in popularity.

Although this may be a one-off thing, it’s not improbable that in the future we will see plenty more early bird investors buying a new house due to a bitcoin faucet they used a decade ago.

Categories
Australia Bitcoin Cryptocurrencies

Trader Who Laundered $13 Million Worth Of Bitcoin Faces Up To 25 Years

Last Friday, a cryptocurrency trader who goes by the name of Hugo Sergio Meija took a guilty plea deal for his actions, which reportedly led to the laundering of up to $13 million via Bitcoin between May 2018 and September 2020.

He will appear in court next month, where he is expected to plead guilty in accordance with his confession – which would spare him from a longer sentence.

Mr. Meija advertised his sources on various internet forums, but reportedly also let news of his services spread by word of mouth. Mr. Meija would charge a commission on every transaction he would carry out in order to provide fiat in exchange for “dirty money”.

Law Enforcement Posed As Meth Dealers

According to law enforcement, in order to catch Mr. Meija they posed as a methamphetamine dealer based in Australia, and made sure to inform the trader of this beforehand in order to have proof that the trader was willfully engaging in money laundering and not just offering to buy large amounts of cryptocurrency for cold, hard cash.

The law enforcement officials then conducted a total of 5 transactions with the cryptocurrency trader before springing the trap and having him arrested for money laundering.

In total, slightly over $250,000 worth of Bitcoin changed hands by the time he was arrested. As part of the plea deal, Mr. Meija agreed to hand over all assts, digital or otherwise, that resulted from the exchange. The U.S. government seized a total $233,987 in cash and silver – both coins and bullion – and cryptocurrency worth $95,587 at the time of writing. All in all, a profit of nearly $80,000.

Depending on how the trial goes, Mr. Meija may face less than 25 years in prison for his actions.