A sublime sunset enveloped Biarritz Casino on Aug. 27, bringing France’s largest Bitcoin (BTC) conference to a close. Located in southwest France and organized by French Bitcoin exchange Stackin Sat, Surfin Bitcoin assembled a host of Bitcoin OG’s, newbies and no coiners, those yet to buy or earn crypto, in a setting that would rival any Hollywood film set. Bitcoiners networked in the hope of learning more about the Lightning Network, landing jobs at one of the many French Bitcoin companies present — from Galoy Money to Découvre Bitcoin — or simply rubbing shoulders with fellow Bitcoin believers. In a touch of bear market irony, as the Bitcoin chips are currently way down, the event venue took place at the illustrious Biarritz Casino. From Bitcoin core maintainers to European royalty...
In an ironic twist, Rug Pull Finder (RPF), a nonfungible token (NFT) watchdog focused on identifying Web3-based fraud has fallen victim to a smart contract exploit of its own. According to the NFT investigator’s post on Twitter on Sept. 2, two people exploited a technical flaw in the project during the free mint stage — pilfering 450 NFTs out of a possible 1,221 which were intended to be limited to one per wallet. As discussed on our Twitter space’s earlier today – We messed up. We messed up big. Our contract had a flaw that allowed 2 people to scoop up over 450 NFTs. Here is what we are doing to fix it — Rug Pull Finder (@rugpullfinder) September 2, 2022 According to RPF, their smart contract had a flaw that allowed the code to be exploited, allowing the bandits to allocate mo...
Popular comedic writer and actor Bill Murray had his Ethereum wallet hacked for around 110 Wrapped ETH (wETH) worth $172,000 late last week. The auction for the The Bill Murray 1,000 NFT drop was just coming to a close on Thursday Sept. 1, having generated a total of 119.2 wETH worth of sales as part of a charity fundraiser for Chive Charities. However hackers were reportedly watching Murray’s wallet all day, and pounced to swipe nearly all of the funds as the sale came to a close. While it is not 100% certain how the hackers gained access to Murray’s wallet, it is believed to be via a wallet-draining exploit. They are also said to have then transferred the stolen funds to a wallet address linked to the Binance exchange and Unionchain.ai. Murray’s wallet security team managed to stop the h...
Cointelegraph senior reporter Rachel Wolfson spent a day exploring NFT NYC 2022 to learn about emerging nonfungible token projects,or NFTs, and how the sector may advance. A recent market report published by Verified Market Research (VMR) predicts that the NFT market could reach a value of $230 billion by 2030. NFT NYC 2022 certainly demonstrated the potential of the NFT sector, highlighting some of the most promising use cases and industry experts. For instance, Camila Russo, founder of The Defiant and author of The Infinite Machine, told Cointelegraph that NFT products should advance to bring value to holders, whether that comes in the form of community building or funding for new projects. Cointelegraph also visited offsite houses hosted by Ripple and Doodles. David Schwartz, chie...
NFTs can now serve as court documents… but they might also be unregistered securities, illegal loot boxes, or come with impossible tax demands. Nonfungible tokens (NFTs) are thought of by most people as just funny pictures that degens on the internet spend far too much money on for poorly understood reasons. But Jason Corbett, managing partner of global blockchain law firm Silk Legal, says new and innovative use cases are beginning to emerge. “We’ve seen recently the courts allowing the serving of court documents by way of an NFT,” Corbett says, referring to a recent decision by a United Kingdom court to allow notice of the case to be served by airdropping court documents as NFTs to wallets allegedly stolen from the claimant. A bunch of legal absurdities occurs when you apply existin...
The decline in the United States equities markets last week extended the market-wide losing streak to three consecutive weeks. The Nasdaq Composite fell for six days in a row for the first time since 2019. The markets negative reaction to a seemingly positive August jobs report suggests that traders are nervous about the Federal Reserve’s future steps and its effects on the economy. Weakness in the U.S. equities markets pulled Bitcoin (BTC) back below $20,000 on Sept. 2 and bears sustained the price below the level during the weekend. This pulled Bitcoin’s market dominance to just under 39% on Sept. 4, its lowest level since June 2018, according to data from CoinMarketCap. Crypto market data daily view. Source: Coin360 Although the sentiment remains negative and it is difficult to call a b...
The crypto winter has pumped new life into the adage “Not your keys, not your coins,” particularly after the collapse of some high-profile enterprises like the Celsius Network, whose funds were frozen in June. Just last week, Ledger CEO Pascal Gauthier hammered home the point further, warning: “Don’t trust your coins and your private keys to anyone because you don’t know what they’re going to do with it.” The basic idea behind the adage, familiar to many crypto veterans, is that if you don’t personally hold your private keys (i.e., passwords) in an offline “cold wallet,” then you don’t really control your digital assets. But, Gauthier was also framing the issue in a larger context as the world moves from Web2 to Web3: “A lot of people are still in Web2 […] because they want to stay i...
A YouTube channel owned by the government of South Korea was reportedly hacked and renamed SpaceX Invest, following which the channel uploaded fabricated videos of Elon Musk discussing cryptocurrencies. On Sept 3, the South Korean government’s YouTube channel was momentarily hacked and renamed for sharing live broadcasts of crypto-related videos. However, the account was soon restored within four hours following a proactive intervention, confirmed a local report from Yonhap News Agency (YNA). The above screenshot was provided to YNA by a locale that shows the compromised channel being renamed to SpaceX Invest and streaming videos depicting SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. The compromised ID and password of the YouTube channel were identified as the root cause of the hack. Google, too, reportedl...
An attacker gained access to PwC Venezuela’s Twitter account and has been actively posting cryptocurrency phishing links for the last 8 hours at the time of the writing. Considering that all the tweets posted by the hacker remain active, it is evident that PwC officials are yet to realize the compromise. Investors clicking on the links remain at risk of being defrauded by the hacker. If not mitigated promptly, the threat may be catastrophic, considering that PwC Veleneula’s Twitter currently boasts over 37,000 followers. Cointelegraph has reached out to PwC Venezuela to inform them about the hack. PwC Venezuela has not yet responded to Cointelegraph’s request for comment. Related: Elon Musk-crypto video played on S. Korean govt’s hacked YouTube channel BlueBenx, a Brazilian crypto le...
Apart from data analysis done alone or in cooperation with private companies, authorities may request information from centralized exchanges. Due to regulation, centralized exchanges may also be obligated to share such information. However, not all cryptocurrency exchanges collaborate with authorities. A centralized exchange is a cryptocurrency exchange that is run by a single entity, such as Coinbase. To become a licensed operator in a certain country or territory, centralized exchanges need to comply with regulations. For instance, to decrease cryptocurrency anonymity and the illicit use of cryptocurrencies, most centralized exchanges have incorporated Know Your Customer (KYC) checks. KYC is meant to verify customers’ identities alongside helping authorities to analyze activity...