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DeFi Economics Hackers Tokens

CREAM DeFi Token Falls 43% Amid News Hack Compensation Will Increase Supply

When Decentralised Finance (DeFi) lending protocol Cream Finance suffered a devastating US$130 million attack two weeks ago, the team decided to compensate users for their losses in CREAM by pushing up the total supply and in return pulling down the price.

Following the hack, the Cream team moved to redistribute 1,453,415 coins from its treasury to the impacted users. In September, Cream also paid back its users for a different attack that cost the protocol US$19 million.

In terms of changes in security, Cream has tightened its token listing strategy to no longer include long-tail assets or tokens that can be wrapped/unwrapped.

Collateral Cap limits are deployed across all markets to increase security, while additional monitoring and alerting solutions are undergoing assessment and implementation.

CREAM Finance

Price Drops as Compensation Inflates Token Supply

While Cream has 9 million coins in its total supply, according to CoinMarketCap only 150,000 of those are in circulation. A rapid increase in supply was bound to have an effect on demand, and therefore the price per coin.

CREAM price chart. Source: CoinGecko

The price of the coin had fallen from around US$88 to as low as $49.80 at the time of writing – a 43 per cent drop, according to CoinGecko. Before the October 27 exploit, Cream was trading above $152, suffering a 66 per cent drop in price since then. This is now the second significant drop in price the protocol has seen in a short span of time, and the mood among users is dark:

Individuals hit by the attack seem to have divided into two camps: some of those seeking recourse also seek to undermine the effort to compensate Cream’s users, while others realise the risk of DeFi and that it’s their responsibility to do their own research and understand the risks associated with the nascent technology.

Most of the time victims of such attacks never see anything in terms of compensation, which makes Cream quite the gift-giver, having paid out its users twice after attacks.

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Blockchain Crypto News Digital Asset Mining

Decentralised WiFi Token Helium Up 81% Following First Governance Vote

Helium (HNT) is in the process of building “the world’s first peer-to-peer wireless network” by utilising blockchain technology. The community has recently started participating in its first governance vote, spurring the token price to new all-time highs.

The altcoin project Helium (HNT) has opened its first on-chain vote, allowing community members to nominate Helium Improvement Protocols (HIPs) that let the community decide on some of the project’s governance mechanisms.

The explosive price movement also follows an announcement from DISH Network late last month detailing a new partnership with Helium, stating that “DISH will be the first major carrier to utilise the Helium Network’s unique blockchain-based incentive model with customers deploying their own 5G CBRS-based hotspots”.

Helium HNT/USD price chart.

Helium (HNT) shot from a low of US$29.60 on November 4 to US$54.05 in just seven days, an explosive 81 percent rally and a 150 percent total gain over the past two weeks.

A growing number of Aussies are also helping to set up a network of Helium wireless hotspots that reward their owners in Helium Network Tokens (HNT).

What Is Helium About? 

Helium is a decentralised internet network that currently has over 300,000 hotspots worldwide. These 5G hotspots are the backbone of the network the team is trying to establish, and it also has capabilities for creating distributed IoT networks of smaller devices connected to the network.

By connecting to the Helium network, connectivity costs are a fraction of those associated with cellular without the restrictions. Unlike cellular, Helium companies never have to pay for SIM cards, worry about data caps, or be charged for overage fees since users use a p2p network and not a cellular network.

At this stage, there are only a few nodes in major cities in Australia where people generate HNT for sharing their WiFi.

Helium coverage of Australia.

By using Proof-of-Coverage, a unique work algorithm that uses radio waves to validate hotspots is providing legitimate wireless coverage, where miners get compensated for verifying network transactions, adding new blocks to the blockchain, and performing other tasks.

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Bitcoin Crypto News Europe Hackers Ransomware

European Electronics Giant ‘MediaMarkt’ Victims of $50 Million Bitcoin Ransomware Attack

German multinational electronics chain MediaMarkt has suffered a ransomware attack disrupting the organisation’s IT systems globally, rendering all in-store computers inaccessible to employees. The business has been brought to a standstill unless it pays a US$50 million bitcoin ransom.

Multimillion-Dollar Ransom Demand

MediaMarkt suffered a Hive ransomware attack on November 7, causing network outages in its IT infrastructure across all branches in the Netherlands and Germany, with the attackers demanding a multimillion-dollar ransom in bitcoin (BTC). The attack has allegedly encrypted and blocked various key services of the retailer, including its ability to accept credit cards and accept returns in some stores. Online sales are reportedly unaffected. 

According to a report from Dutch news channel RTL, on every hacked computer there is a file containing the message: “Your network has been hacked, and all data has been encrypted. To regain access to all data, you must purchase our decryption software”.

MediaMarkt (Belgium) spokeswoman Janick De Saedeleer told local news channels: “We are investigating everything at the moment; I can only confirm that this is an international attack.”

The company immediately informed the relevant authorities and is working at full speed to identify the affected systems and repair any damage caused as quickly as possible.

MediaMarkt statement

Up to 3,100 Servers Possibly Affected

With over 1,000 stores across Europe and reported revenues of nearly US$25 billion per year, MediaMarkt is Europe’s largest and most profitable electronics retailer, making it a big red target for cyber criminals. Screenshots posted from Twitter claim that 3,100 servers were compromised, though this information is yet to be verified.

Copy of the ransom not found on MediaMarkt computers

Initially, the ransom demand was US$240 million, according to tech website Bleeping Computer, but that amount dropped almost immediately when MediaMarkt began negotiating.

Hive Hacker Group Behind the Attacks

While there are many groups that have active hacking campaigns, the MediaMarkt’s attackers are known as Hive. The group, which has previously hacked hospital computer systems, among others, handles its business quite professionally. It even has a sort of “customer service” division where victims can chat with the hackers to negotiate the ransom and get a few hostage files back as proof. Those who fail to pay in time will find that their information will be up for grabs on the group’s website. By leaking this data, the hackers put pressure on their victims.

Alongside the rise in crypto prices this year, ransomware attacks have also increased in frequency and levels of damage. According to blockchain data company Chainalysis, by May the tally of stolen crypto from ransomware attacks had already reached US$81 million.

In July, Australian software provider Kaseya was hit by a ransomware attack affecting various Aussie retailers. Members of the REvil group were found to be responsible and police seized more than US$6 million in stolen funds.

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Crypto News Tokens

Decentralised Video Streaming Token Livepeer Pumps 150% Amid Flurry of Announcements

Livepeer, the Ethereum-based altcoin, has made considerable gains in the past few days, breaking the top 100 crypto assets. This comes after a flurry of announcements made by the project after reaching some of its major anticipated milestones.

Tokens Surge as Market Pushes New Heights

As bitcoin (BTC) pushes new all-time highs, the crypto industry at large has also recently broken its high of US$3 trillion market capitalisation, showing that the market is getting an increasing amount of attention.

Decentralised video streaming project Livepeer (LPT), an altcoin backed by Coinbase Ventures and Digital Currency Group, soared to a new all-time yesterday of US$100.99, rallying more than 140 percent within a 24-hour period. The price of LPT is currently sitting around US$70, and the altcoin is now the 98th-largest crypto by market cap.

Livepeer price chart. Source: CoinGecko

Livepeer has been busy brewing up a storm of announcements throughout October, which turned out to be a month of firsts for the project. It made its first acquisition, buying MistServer, a media server that offers broadcasters an alternative to high-cost cloud providers. It commissioned its first NFT, and logged a first week above 3.6 million minutes. The momentum carried through to NFT.NYC last week, where Livepeer co-hosted COLLIDE, the first-ever concert with live NFT minting:

Livepeer’s mission is to build the world’s open video infrastructure … Together, Livepeer and MistServer provide a disruptive infrastructure that offers a high-quality, low-cost alternative to the traditional proprietary vendors running on expensive big tech cloud platforms.

Livepeer announcement

Hype and Excited Markets

In a market as bullish as crypto, certain announcements can make coin prices soar through the roof. With loads of exposure across social networks, news travels fast and if the market sees it as a buying opportunity, it could mean a possible parabolic spike in a coin’s price. For example, when Facebook announced its rebranding to Meta, many metaverse tokens saw considerable gains, including SAND token, which pumped 158 percent during last week.

Popular meme cryptocurrency Dogecoin (DOGE) also made headlines again last month when the cryptocurrency recorded an up to 40 percent increase in value, following an announcement that Chainalysis would start providing insights on crypto.

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Bitcoin Cryptocurrencies Cryptocurrency Law Payments

Could Zimbabwe be the Next Nation to Adopt Bitcoin as Legal Tender?

The government of the southern African republic of Zimbabwe is closely examining the possibility of adopting cryptocurrency and blockchain technology after an ICT Summit last weekend.

According to a local news outlet, the Computer Society of Zimbabwe (CSZ) held an information communication technologies (ICT)-centred summit in Victoria Falls. At the summit, Cabinet Brigadier General Charles Wekwete, permanent secretary and head of Zimbabwe’s e-government technology unit, revealed that talks with the private sector were under way to discuss the possibility of using bitcoin (BTC) as a legal payment method.

Wekwete stated that Zimbabwe is in the process of weighing its options of possibly adopting cryptocurrency as a legal payment service in the country, which has been plagued by a financial crisis for more than a decade.

Government has put in place mechanism(s) to try and gather views from various sectors of society in order to eventually formulate policies. There have been pronouncements by the Minister of Finance and the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, and it’s such a complex area. Sooner or later government will make statements, but we have not gotten there yet, [though] the consultative process is already under way.

Brigadier General Charles Wekwete, head of Zimbabwe’s e-government technology unit

Policy Creation of Utmost Importance

During the summit, CSZ members asked what the government was doing to adopt cryptocurrency in light of new global trends where transactions are done online, on the blockchain, with low fees. Now Wekwete has invited private sector players who have ideas on how best to facilitate the technology, and how it can be structured to make presentations to government for further consideration.

Wekwete also said that cryptocurrencies are something many governments around the world are still not very clear on. However, more countries are starting to take the idea seriously, with nearly half of Brazilians voting “yes” in a poll to make bitcoin legal tender.

With Zimbabwe possibly following in the footsteps of El Salvador, Wekwete stated: “Governments are still trying to understand and properly trying to create policies on how to deal with it. In our case, initially we were trying to understand the implication [of cryptocurrencies] because they are a fundamental departure from previously known financial instruments.”

It is only a matter of time before Zimbabwe allows its citizens to use bitcoin as legal tender and begins to publicly buy and hold the asset in reserve.

Zimbabwe Should Look to Local Solutions

The Zimbabwe Blockchain Technology Think Tank has published a comprehensive study about the adoption of crypto in the country, titled Towards Virtual Assets Regulation and Adoption of Blockchain Technologies in Zimbabwe’s Context. The initial research has been done to start testing out cryptos, but for something so transformative the government is still in its “consulting phase”.

Golix, Africa’s cryptocurrency exchange, could have proven a test case in the Zimbabwean context, but at that stage crypto was banned in the country, leaving the project high and dry.

Another instance was Minister of Finance Mthuli Ncube stating that he had found a remittance solution in Dubai that could be used for Zimbabwe, while there is a local start-up called Uhuru that does exactly that. By empowering entrepreneurs in the country, the government can create a win-win scenario that can put Zimbabwe back on the economic rails.

Categories
Crypto News DeFi Hackers

DeFi Lender bZx Loses $55 Million in Private Key Leak

The bZx DeFi protocol has had funds drained from its Binance Smart Chain (BSC) and Polygon contracts after one of the developers had his private key stolen in a phishing attack.

Late last week, Ethereum-based bZx was hacked for an estimated US$55 million. The project tweeted that “the private key controlling the Polygon and BSC deployments was compromised, leading to loss of funds”. This comes after bZx was hacked in 2020 for US$6 million and US$8 million on two separate occasions.

On the morning of November 5, the company received a series of notifications about suspicious activity, and a flagged wallet address behind the actions. The team later found that a hacker had used the stolen private key to access BZRX contracts on BSC and Polygon, as well as the developer team wallet. The code in the contracts was then updated to enable the extraction of tokens from any wallet that had granted token approvals to the affected contracts. Lastly, the hacker used all the funds as collateral to borrow against other funds on the protocol.

“Roughly 25 percent of this figure is personal losses from the team wallet that was compromised,” bZx said on Twitter. And according to a further breakdown by SlowMist, these funds are stored in seven separate addresses believed to be controlled by the hacker. However, bZx has claimed that it has the funds in its DAO treasury to cover the exploit.

Since the project’s Ethereum deployment is under the governance of a decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO), funds on that particular chain are reportedly safe from the incident.

Developer Targeted With Phishing Attack

The targeted bZx developer had their private key stolen through a phishing email, sent to his personal computer with a malicious script hidden in a Word document. Disguised as a legitimate email attachment, when opened the document ran a script which led to the developer’s personal mnemonic wallet phrase being compromised.

As soon as the team noticed, they notified Circle and Tether, requesting to freeze the stolen USDC/USDT in the hacker’s wallet, then contacted KuCoin to identify the hacker’s KuCoin account to pursue further action.

There’s Still Work to Do in DeFi

Last year, the protocol was caught off-guard by a margin-lending exploit, one of the first instances of a flash loan exploit – flash loans allow people to borrow huge sums of cryptocurrency to make an arbitrage trade, so long as they instantly pay back the funds. As the nascent DeFi industry evolves, there will be many growing pains for developers and investors alike.

In the past year there have been many hacks and exploits in the DeFi sector, including multimillion-dollar hacks of Indexed Finance, Zabu Finance and C.R.E.A.M Finance, to name a few.

Categories
Crypto News NFTs Sports

Could NFTs Solve FC Barcelona’s $1.56 Billion Debt?

FC Barcelona, the world’s second-most valuable football club after Real Madrid, will be auctioning non-fungible tokens (NFTs) of memorable moments from the club’s 122 years in the game.

Barcelona is jumping on the NFT bandwagon with its new range of “historic club moment” NFTs, joining other major football leagues such as La Liga and the German Bundesliga. The NFTs will be made available on November 24 on Ownix, an Ethereum-based marketplace.

There is scant information about its plans but it appears that the club will allow fans to bid on clips of highlights in a style similar to that of NBA Top Shot. Barcelona NFTs will be selected by a “special joint committee”, then minted – first as unique one-off auctions, then later as a broader limited edition or collection.

As NFTs surge, we think it is important to give those collectors who are Barça fans an opportunity to own a piece of the club’s history.

Guy Elhanani, CEO, Ownix

NFTs to Connect More Closely With Fans

Sports teams worldwide have clamoured to get aboard the NFT bandwagon to spur fan engagement in addition to creating a new stream of revenue. This is all part of Barcelona’s global expansion strategy to increase its “commitment to seek out new channels and formats to connect with new generations, while providing a different form of interaction with fans around the world”.

Barça has a very large fanbase around the world and leads the way in the digital domain with over 400 million followers in social networks. Given this scenario, the club is constantly looking for new ways to connect with its fans, and we believe that creating these NFTs is a unique opportunity.

Joan Laporta, president, FC Barcelona

In addition to FC Barcelona moments, Ownix will host sales of NFTs in other sports, art, music, movies, design, and more.

Selling NFTs to Soak Up Debt?

FC Barcelona claims to be “the first premium football club” to launch a crypto offering. The truth is it might have even been a little slow off the mark, with more than two dozen European football teams now offering their own digital tokens or NFTs.

The club is in the midst of a debt crisis, reportedly around US$1.57 billion in the red this northern summer. The club’s previous leadership is accused of reckless spending on a number of players who have subsequently underperformed.

This summer the club was forced into a fire sale and, due to salary cap rules, was unable to retain Lionel Messi, one of the world’s best-known and most successful players. Messi instead signed with French club Paris Saint-Germain, causing the PSG fan token to surge over 50 percent.

Some are of the opinion that the FC Barcelona NFT project is simply a means to plug some financial holes.

Categories
Australia Crypto Trackers Data Market Analysis

Chainalysis Opens Canberra Office after Partnership with CBA Bank

New York-based Chainalysis, best-known as the on-chain data analysis platform, has recently announced its partnership with the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), opening its new office in Canberra due to increased mainstream adoption and demand for their product.

The new Chainalysis office aims to strengthen its presence in the Pacific region, supporting the local cryptocurrency market, public sector agencies, and financial institutions. The leading blockchain analytics firm also plans to offer crypto trading services to 6.5 million app users. 

The crypto exchange and custody service, designed by CBA, will offer a new feature to its clients using its Commbank app. The bank plans to provide customers with access to up to 10 crypto assets including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, and Litecoin.

Last year, Chainalysis struck up partnerships with leading Australia-based payments provider Assembly Payments and cryptocurrency exchanges CoinSpot and CoinJar to improve compliance standards. During that time the company has more than doubled the number of cryptocurrency customers. 

Global Crypto Adoption Index

With the official opening of the Canberra presence, I’m excited to see how we can work even closer together with the Chainalysis team to allow Australia to fully embrace cryptocurrency and reap the benefits.

Caroline Bowler, CEO, BTC Markets

Partnerships to Strengthen Compliance

With Australia ranking 38th in terms of global cryptocurrency adoption, Chainalysis’s new Canberra office will enable continued, compliant validation of cryptocurrency. Australia also currently ranks 12th in DeFi adoption.

From working with Chainalysis, we have the confidence that our business is compliant with local regulations, enabling us to continue to build and maintain client trust,

Caroline Bowler, CEO, BTC Markets

Ulisse Dell’Orto, the company’s managing director for the Asia-Pacific region, added: “Chainalysis’s data platform will strengthen the trust necessary to further legitimise cryptocurrency as an everyday asset for retail and institutional investors alike.”

The transparency provided by Chainalysis means that as an industry we can begin to truly build a trusted and compliant foundation for cryptocurrency, giving the reassurance and confidence to our customers that they need.

Alex McCorkindale, head of compliance, Easy Crypto

Crypto Usage Increases in CSAO Region

According to its 2021 Geography of Cryptocurrency Report, Chainalysis found Central & Southern Asia and Oceania (CSAO) to be the fourth-largest cryptocurrency market, accounting for 14 percent of all cryptocurrency value transacted between July 2020 and June 2021. CSAO’s transaction activity grew by 706 percent compared to last year in terms of raw value.

Global Crypto Adoption Index

“The Pacific region is quickly becoming a centre for cryptocurrency innovation,” said Todd Lenfield, country manager for ANZ at Chainalysis. “Our increased investment in the region will ensure businesses and governments can explore digital asset ecosystems in a safe, compliant manner.”

With the growth of crypto increasing all over the world, each country finds its uses for digital assets. In Africa, crypto adoption has surged 1200 percent due to its P2P use cases.

In June, Chainalysis announced its Series E funding round, raising US$100 million and bringing its valuation to over US$4 billion. Chainalysis will use the funding to build out its vision as the blockchain data platform.

Categories
Bitcoin Bitcoin Cash Crypto News Crypto Wallets

Craig Wright in Court Battle Again Over Satoshi Nakamoto Claims

Australian computer scientist Craig Wright once again finds himself at the centre of a legal battle, this time regarding the rights to Satoshi’s 1.1 million BTC wallet, currently valued at US$69 billion.

On November 1, the crypto “Trial of the Century” kicked off in Miami, US, with plaintiff Ira Kleiman facing off against Wright, the self-proclaimed Satoshi Nakamoto, the presumed peudonymous developer of Bitcoin. Many hope that the trial will shed some light on Wright’s claims. However, that’s less the primary focus of the trial than whether the late David Kleiman (Ira’s brother) and Wright were business partners, entitling Ira to half the contents of the wallet.

Given bitcoin’s current price, the wallet’s holdings – assuming the holder started with no net worth – would make its possessor the 15th richest person in the world, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index.

The Fight for ‘Satoshi’s Bitcoins’

Wright, the Australian crypto pioneer who has made various claims that he is Satoshi Nakamoto, is fighting a lawsuit that could end with him having to share the contents of Satoshi’s wallet. Wright has even gone to the lengths of filing lawsuits against those who have alleged that he isn’t Satoshi.

Kleiman alleges that his late brother David, who was a computer forensics expert, collaborated with Wright on the creation and early development of Bitcoin. The Kleiman estate is asking for US$11.4 billion, alongside the return of intellectual property or its fair market value. Wright claims he is the sole inventor and thus the only individual entitled to the billions held in the wallet.

Australian crypto pioneer Craig Wright. Source: CoinGeek

The suit alleges that David Kleiman and Wright formed a partnership and established an entity called W&K Info Defense Research, LLC, which they used to mine bitcoin and organise their joint intellectual property, including the Bitcoin source code. It is also alleged that Kleiman was involved in multiple business relationships with Wright. The Kleiman estate has accused Wright of perpetrating “a scheme against Dave’s estate to seize Dave’s bitcoins and his rights to the intellectual property associated with the Bitcoin technology”.

The case file from 2018 states that “it is undeniable … that Craig and Dave were involved in Bitcoin from its inception and that they both accumulated a vast wealth of bitcoins from 2009 through 2013”.

A panel of 10 jurors will have three weeks to hear the evidence and decide the fate of what Wright’s team is calling “Satoshi’s bitcoins”.

Can They Even Access the Wallet?

The still-unsolved mystery of Satoshi Nakamoto’s identity, and Wright’s seeming inability to retrieve the coins in his wallet, means that recovering the coins may not be possible in any case. 

According to Aaron Brown, a crypto investor who also writes for Bloomberg Opinion, Wright is definitely “an important early innovator in cryptocurrency, and is also rich from cryptocurrency”, adding: “beyond that, his claims to be the main or only author of the original Bitcoin white paper have little support”.

To this day, Wright hasn’t been able to prove that he is in fact Satoshi or that he even has access to the wallet. After announcing in May 2016 that he would move Satoshi’s bitcoin – proving he had access to Satoshi’s private keys and was, therefore, Satoshi – Wright failed to do so, writing, “I do not have the courage. I cannot”, in a now-deleted blog post. If Wright really is Bitcoin’s inventor, he should presumably have the ability to control the keys.

While Bitcoin SV proponents and Wright’s fans believe the trial will finally prove Wright’s Satoshi claims, others believe it may disprove his theories. If Kleiman wins the case, but Wright is proven not to be Satoshi (or has lost access to the wallet), will Kleiman still be able to access the bitcoin at the heart of the dispute? Most likely not.

Categories
Ethereum Industries Loopring Markets NFTs Tokens

Loopring Token Soars Over 100% on Rumour of GameStop NFT Marketplace Collaboration

GameStop, the American video game, consumer electronics and gaming merchandise retailer, is rumoured to be working with Loopring (LRC), an Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solution, to build an NFT marketplace, causing its native token to make sizeable gains.

As speculation about GameStop’s NFT marketplace increases, Loopring’s LRC token has climbed over 100 percent in the past seven days, following various signs pointing to an unnamed partnership to help develop blockchain technology with the gaming giant.

According to a post on GameStop Due Diligence (GMEdd), a website focused on the corporation, a leak in the Loopring GitHub public repository appears to indicate a possible collaboration with GameStop Corporation (GME) for a non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace. The code posted on GitHib reveals that GameStop NFT is built on EIP-1155, which allows the creation of fungible, non-fungible, and semi-fungible tokens in one single token standard.

Additionally, the amended code in the branch “NFT-DEV” under the GitHub commit titled ‘NFT feature’ makes reference to ‘gameStopMeta’ and an IPFS URL, a well-known distributed system for storing and accessing files, websites, applications and data.

Loopring’s ‘NFT feature’ code reveals several references to GameStop.

Nobody knows for certain what GameStop’s NFT division has been working on. Loopring is keeping secrets as well, with CEO Daniel Wang disclosing that the Ethereum-based technology company is “working with a premium partner who demands they keep quiet”.

Loopring Solving the Gas Problem

According to Loopring’s official website, it boasts the industry’s most secure scaling method, which is independent of external validators, consensus, or crypto-economic assumptions.

High Ethereum gas prices make it difficult for ERC-20 projects to run any microtransaction payments, defeating the idea of using the Ethereum network for GameStop’s primary use cases – forcing it to consider Layer 2 solutions or other blockchains.

Additionally, Loopring announced it will be enabling NFT support, “allowing anyone to mint and trade NFTs instantly and gas-free”, adding that the functionality is being used as the foundation of a new NFT marketplace launching soon.

Loopring Price Skyrockets

Following breadcrumbs picked up by GMEdd, and the progress of the project, the price of Loopring has shot up. Since the beginning of October, Loopring LRC/USD has risen from US$0.36 to $0.58, and is now trading at $1.58, smashing its previous all-time high in a matter of days.

LRC/USDT price: Tradingview