Crypto news
Circle freezes blacklisted Tornado Cash smart contract addresses
Crypto data aggregator Dune Analytics said that, on Monday, Circle, the issuer of the USD Coin (USDC) stablecoin, froze over 75,000 USDC worth of funds linked to the 44 Tornado Cash addresses sanctioned by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control’s Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN) list. Tornado Cash is a decentralized application, or DApp, used to obfuscate the trail of previous cryptocurrency transactions on the Ethereum blockchain. All U.S. persons and entities are prohibited from interacting with the virtual currency mixer’s USDC and Ethereum smart contract addresses on the SDN list. Penalties for willful noncompliance can range from fines of $50,000 to $10,000,000 and 10 to 30 years imprisonment. An estimated $437 million worth of assets, cons...
Dave Portnoy’s SafeMoon position is down 94%, claims he’s being sued by project
Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy has watched his investment in SafeMoon (SAFEMOON) crash by over 94%, proving to crypto enthusiasts that he is, in fact, capable of hodling during the bear market. The stock trader and media personality took to Twitter on Monday to lament his $40,000 investment in the memecoin, which has fallen to just $2,370.94 after he didn’t withdraw a single token. “Still holding by the way,” Portnoy said. “Diamond hands.” I put 40k into @safemoon I haven’t withdrawn any. It’s not worth 2.3k. And I’m being sued. https://t.co/qRAyBegQMm — Dave Portnoy (@stoolpresidente) August 8, 2022 Portnoy claimed that he’s also being sued by SafeMoon, possibly for “trashing” the project on his show, but didn’t elaborate much further. In a separate tweet, Portnoy shared a scr...
Australia-based crypto miner doubles hash rate after energizing Canadian rigs
Australian Bitcoin miner Iris Energy said it had increased its hash rate to more than 2.3 exahashes per second following the completion of phase two of its operations in Mackenzie, Canada. In a Monday announcement, Iris Energy said it had brought 41 megawatts of operating capacity in the British Columbia municipality online roughly two months ahead of schedule, adding 1.5 EH/s to its existing hash rate. In addition, the Bitcoin (BTC) miner expects to bring another 50 MW online in Prince George by the end of the third quarter of 2022, increasing its operating capacity to 3.7 EH/s. Iris Energy co-founder and co-CEO Daniel Roberts said the firm had energized the facility on schedule “despite the current market backdrop and ongoing international supply chain challenges.” The firm planned to de...
Trend Micro calls out vulnerabilities in metaverse security development
In a new report published by American-Japanese cybersecurity company Trend Micro, the firm said that the Metaverse possesses increasing vulnerabilities that could materialize within the next three to five years. As told by Trend Micro, the top threats to the sector, mainly from a regulatory standpoint, include NFT security concerns, the development of a “darkverse” similar to the dark web, financial fraud, privacy concerns, physical threats, augmented reality (AR) threats, social engineering and traditional information technology attacks. With regard to NFTs, Trend Micro specifically wrote: “NFT ownership is verified using blockchains so they are susceptible to blockchain hijacking attacks. NFTs that rely on smaller blockchains could be vulnerable to a Sybil attack. This is where the attac...
Binance sides with Indian regulators in WazirX fallout to cease support for off-chain transfers
As reported by local news outlet The Economic Times on Monday, Binance is scheduled to remove off-chain fund transfers with Indian cryptocurrency exchange WazirX on Thursday, although users will still be able to deposit and withdraw balances via the standard withdrawal and deposit process between the two exchanges. Three days prior, The Directorate of Enforcement of India alleged that WazirX “actively assisted around 16 accused fintech companies in laundering the proceeds of crime using the crypto route” and subsequently froze $8.1 million in bank balances related to the exchange. Simultaneously, there is an ongoing controversy regarding whether Binance owns the exchange. Last Friday, Changpeng Zhao (CZ), CEO of Binance, said that Binance does not own any equity in WazirX...
Fed reverse repo reaches $2.3T, but what does it mean for crypto investors?
The U.S. Federal Reserve (FED) recently initiated an attempt to reduce its $8.9 trillion balance sheet by halting billions of dollars worth of treasuries and bond purchases. The measures were implemented in June 2022 and coincided with the total crypto market capitalization falling below $1.2 trillion, the lowest level seen since January 2021. A similar movement happened to the Russell 2000, which reached 1,650 points on June 16, levels unseen since November 2020. Since this drop, the index has gained 16.5%, while the total crypto market capitalization has not been able to reclaim the $1.2 trillion level. This apparent disconnection between crypto and stock markets has caused investors to question whether the Federal Reserve’s growing balance sheet could lead to a longer than expecte...
Bitcoin likely to transition to a risk-off asset in H2 2022, says Bloomberg analyst
Bitcoin is likely to transition from a risk-on to a risk-off asset in the second half of 2022, as the macroeconomic environment is rapidly shifting towards a recession, said Mike McGlone, senior commodity strategist at Bloomberg, in a recent interview with Cointelegraph. McGlone predicted: “ I see it transitioning to be more of a risk-off asset like bonds and gold, then less of a risk-on asset like the stock market.” According to the analyst, the crypto market has flushed out most of the speculative excesses that marked 2021 and it is now ripe for a fresh rally. McGlone also pointed out that the Fed’s aggressive hiking of interest rates will lead the global economy to a deflationary recession, which will ultimately favor Bitcoin: “I fully expect we’re going to have a prett...
Vitalik Buterin proposes stealth addresses for anonymous NFT ownership
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has suggested there may be a “low-tech approach” to incorporating privacy features ito nonfungible token, or NFT, transactions. In a Monday post on the Ethereum research channel, Buterin implied Merkle trees and Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Arguments of Knowledge, or ZK-SNARKs, were a more complicated method for stealth addresses for ERC-721 tokens, while proposing his own solution. The Ethereum co-founder suggested instead that smart contract wallets could include a method that would allow the sender to essentially mask their address to third parties. “You would be able to eg. send an NFT to vitalik.eth without anyone except me (the new owner) being able to see who the new owner is,” said Buterin. Idea: stealth addresses for ERC721s. A low-te...
VisionsDao Exits Stealth Mode and Presents a Modular Stack for GameFi That Enables Sustainable Economies
Toronto, Canada, 8th August, 2022, Chainwire An up-and-coming GameFi infrastructure startup, VisionsDAO has been building for more than a year what could become a foundational primitive for game developers looking to implement sound crypto economic designs and plug-and-play modules that will power a new wave of sustainable on-chain Web3 games to come to market and thrive. VisionsDAO aims to enable engaging gameplay and circular game economies through high-quality crypto-economic modules that accelerate time-to-market while reducing development costs and risks for Web3 game builders and legacy game studios who want to make the leap into blockchain-powered games. VisionsDAO wants to challenge the current “Play-to-Earn” gaming format. “When earning became the main design focus for players, gu...
Bitcoin core contributor urges maximalists to take a different route
There was once a time when Bitcoin (BTC) was the only crypto project that was not a scam, and advocating for only BTC made perfect sense. However, according to a Bitcoin Core contributor, this has not been true for a while, as he urged the community to drop the us-versus-them culture. In a Twitter thread, Matt Corallo, who contributed to the Bitcoin Core, pointed out to the community that at the moment, instead of BTC proponents advocating why Bitcoin is unique and remarkable, they are spending time attacking other projects. According to Corallo, this situation is leading to what he described as a narrative war, where crypto projects bash each other. Corallo further explained that Bitcoiners coming after Ethereum (ETH) for the upcoming Merge, saying that proof-of-stake (PoS) will not...
Cross chains, beware! deBridge flags attempted phishing attack, suspects Lazarus Group
Cross-chain protocols and Web3 firms continue to be targeted by hacking groups as deBridge Finance unpacks a failed attack that bears the hallmarks of North Korea’s Lazarus Group hackers. deBridge Finance employees received what looked like another ordinary email from co-founder Alex Smirnov on a Friday afternoon. An attachment labeled ‘New Salary Adjustments’ was bound to pique interest, with various cryptocurrency firms instituting staff layoffs and pay cuts during the ongoing cryptocurrency winter. A handful of employees flagged the email and its attachment as suspicious, but one staff member took the bait and downloaded the PDF file. This would prove fortuitous, as the deBridge team worked on unpacking the attack vector sent from a spoof email address designed to mirror Smirnov’s. The ...
Chainlink ditches Ethereum PoW forks for PoS after The Merge
Chainlink is aligning itself with the decision of the Ethereum Foundation and its community. Therefore forked versions of the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain, which includes PoW forks, will no longer be supported by the Chainlink (LINK) protocol post-Merge. In an official announcement, the Chainlink protocol revealed its services will remain on the Ethereum blockchain post the long-awaited Merge. The Ethereum blockchain anticipates the Merge in September 2022, which will merge its mainnet with the Beacon Chain. This will transition all of Ethereum operations from Proof-of-Work (PoW) to Proof-of-Stake (PoS). The Merge has been pushed back from mid-2021 to September 2022 before. If it goes according to the timeline of developers, Phase 1 will initiate the transition of the ecosystem’s transa...
