Dough Finance sent an on-chain message to the attacker, asking them to return the "misappropriated funds", threatening that they would "pursue all criminal, legal, and administrative avenues available" in the event that the attacker did not do so.
Dough Finance hacked for $1.9 million
Defi platform Dough Finance was hacked for 608 ETH ($1.8 million) by a hacker using a flash loan attack funded through the Railgun privacy service.
Popular defi protocol websites replaced with wallet drainers amid mass Squarespace domain hijacking
Websites providing the frontends for some popular defi services, including Compound Finance, were compromised and replaced with wallet drainers: websites resembling the usual frontend, but which drain unsuspecting users' wallets when used.
Somewhat ironically, the "Unstoppable Domains" web3 domain service was also impacted, and their site was offline for a while before they regained control.
The hijacking appears to be thanks to an attack on Squarespace's domain registry. Crypto founder Bobby Ong has suggested that the attack is affecting domains acquired through Google Domains, which sold its business to Squarespace several months ago. "Tthe forced migration of domains to Squarespace removed 2FA causing all these domains to be vulnerable and several have been hijacked," he wrote. "Best thing to do is to not interact with crypto and rest for the next couple of days until everything is resolved."
Web2 is going just great!
OmegaPro founder arrested for allegedly running crypto Ponzi
Turkish authorities arrested Andreas Szakacs, also known as Emre Avci, for his role in the OmegaPro cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme. Victims were invited to make small investments in the "Omega Invest" application, which made quick returns. They were enticed to invest more and more, but when they attempted to withdraw funds, they discovered the money had been taken. Altogether, victims have claimed around $103 million in losses.
The OmegaPro Ponzi scheme was reportedly linked to the OneCoin crypto Ponzi, whose operators stole at least $4 billion from millions of victims since 2019. Multiple people associated with OneCoin have been arrested, including its co-founder Karl Sebastian Greenwood, but its "Cryptoqueen" co-founder Ruja Ignatova was one of Europol's most wanted fugitives and remains the subject of an Interpol red notice.
- "$4B cryptocurrency scammer caught in Istanbul", Türkiye Today [archive]
Doja Cat's Twitter account hacked to promote meme token
The Twitter account belonging to rapper Doja Cat was compromised on July 8, tweeting to her 5.6 million followers that they should "buy $DOJA or else", and various other messages to that effect. Doja Cat quickly posted on her Instagram account to say that the Twitter account had been compromised.
The attacker appeared to have only marginal success, as the token reached a market cap of around $500,000 before collapsing by 96%.
Hackers have compromised a string of celebrity Twitter accounts to promote memecoins recently, including those of Hulk Hogan and Metallica.
Bittensor wallets drained
Some users of the Bittensor wallet software suffered wallet drains as thieves emptied their cryptocurrency wallets of the project’s TAO token. Around 32,000 TAO, notionally worth around $8 million, was siphoned. Although blockchain sleuth zachxbt hypothesized that the attack may have been thanks to a private key leak, Bittensor later claimed that affected users had in fact been compromised by a malicious Bittensor package that had been uploaded to Python's PyPi package manager. It's not yet clear how the malicious package made it onto the package manager.
Bittensor is among the artificial intelligence-focused cryptocurrency projects that have become popular recently amid the AI hype. Although the project website boasts that "Bittensor is creating a new future for humanity, where new economies and new commodities are decentralized by design and where no single entity is a sole authority," the group unilaterally halted the chain in the wake of the attack.
- "Bittensor Community Update — July 3, 2024", Opentensor Foundation [archive]
Silvergate Bank pays $63 million to settle charges from multiple agencies
More than a year after the crypto-friendly Silvergate Bank collapsed, its parent company has agreed to pay $63 million in fines to the Federal Reserve and California Department of Financial Protection and the Innovation. The SEC also imposed a $50 million fine, though the terms of the settlement noted this "may be offset" by the other penalties.
According to the regulators, Silvergate "had serious deficiencies" in its anti-money laundering programs, including in its intra-customer crypto transfer product. In particular, the SEC highlighted $9 billion in suspicious transfers among FTX entities that should have been detected by compliance programs. The SEC also alleged that Silvergate misrepresented its financial state during the post-FTX collapse bank run.
- "SEC Charges Silvergate Capital, Former CEO for Misleading Investors about Compliance Program", U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission [archive]
- "Crypto-Friendly Silvergate Bank Pays $63M to Settle Charges With SEC, Fed, California Regulator", CoinDesk [archive]
Yield App declares insolvency, citing FTX losses
Yield App, a crypto investment platform, has announced that it will be entering liquidation proceedings. Citing "significant financial challenges", the project announced that the platform would be suspended pending liquidation.
In the immediate aftermath of the FTX collapse in November 2022, Yield App CEO Tim Frost had assured customers that "Yield App has no exposure to Alameda or the FTT token, and no signifiant exposure to FTX". However, Yield is now — going on two years after the FTX collapse — claiming to be suing "several hedge funds" that had lost money on FTX.
- "Crypto platform Yield App shuts down citing FTX losses", CoinTelegraph [archive]
- Statement and FAQ by Yield App [archive]
SEC sues Consensys, maker of MetaMask wallet
As expected, the SEC has filed a lawsuit against Consensys, the maker of the popular MetaMask cryptocurrency wallet. Although Consensys had recently gloated about the SEC completing an investigation into the company's offering of ETH, and determining not to pursue action over it, a Wells notice sent to the firm in April suggested that some legal action was impending. Shortly afterwards, Consensys filed a lawsuit against the SEC, alleging regulatory overreach.
The SEC's lawsuit claims that Consensys violated securities laws by acting as an unregistered securities broker, and by offering staking services that constituted unregistered securities offerings. The SEC has previously cracked down on staking offerings by other firms, including Coinbase and Kraken.
- "SEC Charges Consensys Software for Unregistered Offers and Sales of Securities Through Its MetaMask Staking Service", U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission [archive]
Logan Paul files defamation lawsuit over Coffeezilla's coverage of his failed CryptoZoo project
A year and a half after threatening to sue YouTuber Coffeezilla for his series of videos exposing influencer Logan Paul's (alleged) role in (allegedly) scamming his large following with a failed blockchain game, Paul has followed through on the threat. Although he acknowledges in the lawsuit that the project was definitely a scam, Paul says that he too was duped by several "conmen" who he'd brought on as advisers.
In the lawsuit, Paul claims that Coffeezilla knowingly falsely accused Paul of being in on the scam in hopes of getting more attention on his videos. Paul is seeking more than $75,000 in damages.
In January 2024, Paul filed suit against the advisers he's described as "conmen". He's also pointed the finger at them while defending a potential class action complaint from defrauded investors.
FBI busts group of crypto-seeking home invaders
The Department of Justice busted a group of more than a dozen people, led by a 24-year-old man named Remy St. Felix, who perpetrated a string of break-ins and violent assaults in hopes of obtaining their victims' cryptocurrency holdings. The group seems to have been far more successful with their hacking thefts than with their in-person attempts to obtain cryptocurrency, but that didn't stop them from committing a string of eleven break-ins where they assaulted, threatened, and kidnapped victims.
In one case, a victim was able to transfer $150,000 in cryptocurrency to the attackers before their cryptocurrency exchange blocked the suspicious transfers. However, in their other attempts to physically steal crypto, they were unsuccessful, with victims either refusing to hand over their crypto or successfully escaping.
In one case, St. Felix and his associates targeted a woman from whom his group had already stolen $3 million in a SIM swapping attack. When they broke in and held the woman at gunpoint to try to steal the $500,000 in crypto she had left, the woman refused to turn over her password to her cryptocurrency account, so dismayed by her earlier loss that she told the men just to shoot her.
St. Felix was convicted on nine counts by a federal jury, and faces a sentence of seven years to life in prison. Thirteen co-conspirators also pleaded guilty.