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Web3 is Going Just Great

...and is definitely not an enormous grift that's pouring lighter fluid on our already smoldering planet.

Created by Molly White. Subscribe to her newsletter for weekly recaps.

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CoinGape and Binance publicize scam recovery address after Nomad hack

After the August 1 Nomad bridge exploit, Nomad created an address where people who took money out of the bridge could return it.

However, that was not the address that CoinGape published in their article titled "Breaking: Nomad Announces ENS Address And Bounty For Returning Funds" article, which was syndicated to Binance's news feed. Instead, they indicated that people should send funds to a different address, a scammer who had been sending on-chain messages to various people who took money out of Nomad during the exploit, asking they return it.

Although CoinGape removed the article fairly quickly, it remained live on Binance's site for over an hour. Fortunately, it doesn't appear anyone besides the writers have fallen for the scam, as no cryptocurrency has been sent to the address.

Theme tags: Reporting

ZB crypto exchange exploited for more than $3.5 million

The self-described "world's most secure digital asset exchange", ZB, suffered an exploit in which attackers stole a large number of different cryptocurrencies, estimated by various researchers to be valued at around $3.6 million and $4.8 million.

ZB announced that they were suspending deposit and withdrawal services due to "sudden failure of some core applications".

Theme tags: Hack or scam

Robinhood cites crypto market crash in decision to lay off 23% of employees

Stock and crypto trading app Robinhood announced they would be laying off 23% of their staff: 780 people. The layoffs followed a prior round of layoffs in April, which saw 9% of their staff (~342 people) out of jobs.

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev wrote, "Since that time, we have seen additional deterioration of the macro environment, with inflation at 40-year highs accompanied by a broad crypto market crash. This has further reduced customer trading activity and assets under custody. Last year, we staffed many of our operations functions under the assumption that the heightened retail engagement we had been seeing with the stock and crypto markets in the COVID era would persist into 2022."

The announcement came the same day that Robinhood was fined $30 million by the state of New York for insufficient anti-money laundering and cybersecurity protections in the crypto portions of their offering.

Theme tags: Layoffs

Thousands of Solana wallets drained in attack that nets over $6 million

Nearly 8,000 Solana wallets were drained for at least $6 million worth of assets, including native SOL tokens and SPL tokens like USDC. The attack went on for nearly a day before Solana identified the likely cause: private keys that were exposed to an application monitoring service used by the crypto wallet Slope. Both Solana and Slope were vague about further details but explained that they were continuing to investigate.
Theme tags: Hack or scam
Blockchain tags: Blockchain: Solana

CoinShares investment firm reports $21.5 million loss from Terra collapse

In their Q2 earnings report, European cryptocurrency investment firm CoinShares reported that they'd only made $120,000 in net income in the most recent quarter, down from more than $32 million in Q1. They explained this was largely because of an enormous loss that resulted from the May collapse of the Terra ecosystem, costing the firm £17.7 million ($21.5 million).
Theme tags: Contagion

Michael Saylor steps down as MicroStrategy CEO as the company reports a $918 million impairment charge on Bitcoin holdings

Michael Saylor sitting in front of a large model shipMichael Saylor (attribution)
Bitcoin maximalist Michael Saylor announced he would be stepping down as CEO of MicroStrategy, which is ostensibly a software company but in recent years appears to be mostly a Bitcoin-purchasing company. Saylor is extremely pro-Bitcoin, with an emphasis on "extreme". In March 2021, when Bitcoin was at around $57,000, he urged people to "go mortgage your house and buy Bitcoin with it... if you've got a business that you love because your family works for the business and it's been in your family for 37 years, and you can't bear to sell it, mortgage it, finance it, and convert the proceeds into ... Bitcoin. If you're working for a company that's got $100m in the treasury, you ought to convince the CEO and the board of directors to convert the treasury into Bitcoin... that'd be worth billions to them."

Unfortunately, that treasury strategy — which in his case also includes taking on more debt to buy more Bitcoin — is not currently working out so well for MicroStrategy, which reported a $918 million impairment charge on their Bitcoin holdings in their most recent earnings report. Saylor stepped down as CEO the same day.

Theme tags: Bummer
Blockchain tags: Blockchain: Bitcoin

Robinhood fined $30 million over lackluster cybersecurity and anti-money laundering protections in their crypto offering

The New York Department of Financial Services levied a $30 million fine against Robinhood, an app used for stock trading that has also branched into crypto. According to the DFS, Robinhood Crypto demonstrated "significant failures" in its anti-money laundering and cybersecurity obligations.

Robinhood Crypto had certified to the DFS in 2019 that they were in compliance with those regulations, despite the fact that they were not. The DFS imposed a $30 million fine to the company, and also ordered them to hire an outside party to evaluate their regulatory compliance and efforts to remediate the problems with their platform.

Theme tags: Law

Reaper Farm exploited for around $1.7 million

Yield farming project Reaper Farm suffered an exploit that resulted in a $1.7 million loss. The attackers discovered a vulnerability that allowed them to withdraw anyone else's funds. They then bridged funds to Ethereum, then laundered them through Tornado Cash. After discovering the exploit, Reaper Farms used the same vulnerability to remove funds from the remaining vulnerable vaults to prevent the attacker from stealing more.

Shortly after the exploit, Reaper Farms announced they plained to raise capital via "the sale of vested $OATH tokens from our treasury with desirable terms", which would then be used alongside other assets in their treasury to compensate users.

Theme tags: Hack or scam
Blockchain tags: Blockchain: Fantom
Tech tags: DeFi

Operators of Dropil crypto scam sentenced to federal prison

Two men who ran an "investment management service" called Dropil were sentenced to 2½ and 3 years in prison after stealing around $1.9 million from more than 2,000 people. They convinced people to buy DROP tokens, which they said would provide access to an automated trading bot that would return up to 63% in annual returns. In reality, there was no functional trading bot. When the SEC inquired, the two men forged profitability reports and lied under oath about the project.
Theme tags: Law

SEC charges perpetrators of $300 million Forsage crypto pyramid scheme

The SEC charged eleven people who helped to create and promote the crypto pyramid and Ponzi scheme Forsage. The scam operated from January 2020 into 2021, despite multiple cease and desist actions from regulators in the US and the Philippines.

Users deposited their money into projects running on the Ethereum, Tron, and Binance blockchains, and earned rewards for recruiting others to the scheme. The project also used payments from newer investors to pay out earlier investors — a Ponzi scheme.

Theme tags: Law
Blockchain tags: Blockchain: BNB Chain, Ethereum, Tron

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