The attacker quickly bridged the tokens to the Ethereum chain and swapped them for ETH and USDC, collectively worth around $1.7 million. The price of ALBT plunged around 50%, and the BEUR Euro-pegged stablecoin significantly lost its peg.
Bonq defi borrowing project exploited
The Polygon-based defi borrowing protocol Bonq suffered an attack in which 112 million ALBT tokens and around 100 million BEUR tokens were stolen. A flaw in the protocol enabled the attacker to modify oracle prices, allowing them to mint new ALBT and BEUR for significantly less than market price.
Bitcoin community erupts over "Ordinals": Bitcoin-based NFTs
A recent project called "Ordinals" has the Bitcoin community up in arms. The project is the latest attempt to introduce NFTs to the Bitcoin blockchain, a controversial subject among a group of people with strong ideological beliefs about what Bitcoin should be. Ordinals takes advantage of a change in the blockchain codebase called SegWit that was introduced in 2017, and stores NFT data in a portion of the transaction called the "witness". Some think this is a clever hack, while others think they're abusing the design.
Following the change, Bitcoin block sizes have reached all-time highs nearing 2.5 MB. Some are not thrilled that the size of the chain is ballooning with what they view to be junk data, given the whole thing needs to be recorded forever.
Longtime Bitcoin Core developer Luke Dashjr described Ordinals as a "spam attack" and an "attack on Bitcoin's fungibility", warning they would "break" the major Bitcoin-based projects Lightning and CoinJoin. He has argued that the miners should begin filtering the transactions as spam, which brought strong reactions from some in the community who pushed back that Bitcoin should be censorship resistant. "1) Bitcoin hasn't been censorship-resistant since mining centralisation. 2) Censorship resistance is about censorship, not fighting spam/attacks," he replied. Dashjr's fellow Core developer Adam Back also seemed unimpressed with the project, tweeting about Ordinals' "sheer waste and stupidity".
Ordinals are not the first Bitcoin-based NFTs, but they are the most recent and perhaps the most popular. On February 9, an "Ordinal Punk" — a Bitcoin-based homage to Ethereum's CryptoPunks — sold for 9.5 BTC (~$218,000).
Rally sidechain shuts down with under a day's notice, taking users' tokens with it
Rally is an Ethereum sidechain built to support "social tokens" — typically, tokens intended for fans of various celebrities or groups.
Fans of creators including Felicia Day (actress and famous nerd), Brandon Powell (LA Rams wide receiver), and Portugal. The Man (rock band) may be disappointed, however, because Rally announced with under one day of notice that they would be shutting down. "This means that after today, the site will no longer be supported and you may experience a degradation in services or it may simply become inoperable. Additionally, since NFTs on the Rally sidechain are not transferable to mainnet, these will not be accessible once the site shuts down," they wrote in an email. The project also deleted its Twitter account.
The group behind the Rally Network had raised $57 million in funding in 2021, and was backed by VCs including Andreessen Horowitz.
Bankrupt FTX tries to claw back $446 million from bankrupt Voyager
It's no big secret that there's a lot less money actually floating around in crypto than bogus "market caps" and other numbers would have you believe, but it's being put into stark relief as the various bankrupt crypto firms fight tooth and nail over any scrap of cash that may actually remain.
In FTX's ongoing efforts to dig through the proverbial couch cushions in search of any funds that could be used to fill the gaping hole in its balance sheet, the firm has sued Voyager, a crypto broker that filed for bankruptcy in July, to try to recoup $446 million in funds that were "preferentially transferred" to Voyager when it filed for bankruptcy.
The lawsuit alleges that Voyager served as a "feeder fund" that "solicited retail investors and invested their money with little or no due diligence in cryptocurrency investment funds like Alameda and Three Arrows Capital".
Tesla lost $140 million trading Bitcoin in 2022
Elon Musk's $1.5 billion Bitcoin bet at Tesla turned out to be a bad deal. He sunk the funds into Bitcoin in January 2021, when Bitcoin was trading between $30,000 and $40,000. Simultaneously, he announced that Tesla would begin accepting Bitcoin — an announcement that was quickly reversed when someone apparently pointed out to Musk that Bitcoin is an environmental nightmare.
Tesla sold most of its Bitcoin in Q2 2022, following the grand crypto tradition of buying high and selling low.
Now, according to SEC filings, Tesla suffered a net loss of $140 million in 2022 thanks to the gamble. Their reported $64 million in trading profits were eclipsed by their $204 million loss. Tesla still holds somewhere around 11,000 BTC.
- "Tesla records $140M Bitcoin net loss in 2022", CoinTelegraph
New York regulator investigates Gemini over FDIC claims
The embattled Gemini crypto exchange, which is has $900 million of customer funds locked up in the Genesis bankruptcy and has been charged by the SEC for offering unregistered securities, now has another problem to add to its list. The New York State Department of Financial Services, which is responsible for regulating the exchange portion of Gemini's business, is reportedly looking into whether Gemini misled customers that their funds were protected by FDIC insurance — that is, the insurance typically known for protecting funds placed into accounts with actual banks.
When concerned customers contacted Gemini customer support to ask if their funds were safe at Gemini, in the wake of the collapses throughout the crypto industry, they were reassured by customer support that the fiat currency held by Gemini to back their GUSD stablecoin was held in accounts that were eligible for FDIC insurance. Some customers took this to mean that their holdings with Gemini were safe and protected from the possibility of trouble at Gemini: something they've now discovered was not the case, as customers of Gemini's Earn program cannot withdraw their funds.
Cryptocurrency companies misleading or outright lying to customers about FDIC insurance has been something of a trend this year. In July, the Federal Reserve and FDIC sent a cease-and-desist letter to the bankrupt Voyager cryptocurrency broker, demanding they stop claiming that their USD-denominated funds at the company were protected by FDIC insurance (they weren't). Several weeks later, the FDIC sent a similar letter to FTX US, also demanding they stop making misleading statements about deposit insurance.
Hacked Azuki Twitter account enables theft of pricey NFTs and crypto priced at more than $1.74 million
Hackers were able to compromise the Twitter account belonging to the popular Azuki NFT project, which they then used to promote a fake NFT drop to its 334,000 followers. Users who tried to mint the NFTs instead had their wallets emptied of pricey NFTs and cryptocurrencies.
Stolen NFTs included 74 Otherdeeds (floor price ~$2,700 each), 3 Porsche NFTs (floor ~$3,100), 57 Beanz (floor ~$2,600), 12 Doodles (floor ~$10,600), 2 Mutant Apes (floor ~$24,300), and 49 Pudgy Penguins (floor ~$9,200) to the attacker. Altogether, those stolen NFTs could fetch almost ~$1 million if sold at floor price.
One single wallet transferred 750,000 of the USDC stablecoin to the attacker, resulting in a particularly brutal loss for one individual.
- One of the attacker wallets on Etherscan
- Another attacker wallet on Etherscan
Coinbase fined $3.6 million by Dutch central bank
The Dutch central bank levied a €3.3 million ($3.6 million) fine against Coinbase, who began operating in the Netherlands without properly registering. The fine is reportedly unusually large, because of Coinbase's prominence and because it had accumulated a significant number of Dutch customers without the proper registration. Coinbase had been noncompliant from November 2020 to August 2022.
Bithumb executives charged with embezzlement
South Korean prosecutors filed charges against several executives of the Korean cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb. Those charged included its owner, Kang Jong-Hyun, and his sister Kang Ji-Yeon, who rurns Bithumb affiliates Inbiogen and Bucket Studio. The charges included embezzlement, breach of trust, and fraudulent illegal transactions. The charges follow reports that Bithumb and affiliated companies were being investigated for possible tax evasion, though those investigations are a separate matter unrelated to these charges.
In December, the largest Bithumb shareholder, Park Mo, was found dead outside his home in an apparent suicide after he was named as a suspect by prosecutors in an investigation into embezzlement and stock manipulation.
Korean prosecutors had previously charged the former chairman of Bithumb over an alleged $100 million in fraud, though he was acquitted for lack of proof.
Kevin Rose loses pricey NFTs to wallet hack
Kevin Rose, perhaps best known as the founder of Digg, but also a prominent crypto investor and entrepreneur, lost a substantial number of pricey NFTs when he apparently signed a malicious transaction. The hacker stole 25 Squiggles NFTs, which are trading at a floor price of 13.3 ETH, putting the estimated price based on the floor price at around 332.5 ETH (~$519,000). Rose acquired the Squiggles for between 6.3 and 16 ETH each (~$10,000 to $25,000).
The thief also stole an Autoglyph NFT, which rarely change hands, but which have most recently sold for around 200 ETH ($312,000). Rose had been offering his Autoglyph for sale for 345 ETH ($539,000), but had yet to find a buyer.
Fortunately for Rose, the hacker was apparently unable to steal a CryptoPunk NFT he owned that resembles a zombie. The rare zombie variant of the already pricey NFT have fetched millions — albeit in periods of stronger interest in NFTs.