The OGE's purview is limited to the executive branch, meaning that although this impacts White House employees and federal agencies like the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department, it unfortunately does not apply to legislators.
U.S. Office of Government Ethics issues guidance prohibiting executive branch employees who hold crypto from working on crypto policy
The U.S. Office of Government Ethics issued a legal advisory stating that government employees who hold cryptocurrency may not work on policy or regulation that could potentially impact the value of their holdings. They also clarified that "Cryptocurrencies and stablecoins do not meet the definition of 'publicly traded securities' for purposes of these exemptions. This is true even if individual cryptocurrencies or stablecoins constitute securities for purposes of the Federal or state securities laws."
Polium gaming console is announced, in a feat of vaporware impressive even for web3
Vaporware is hardly a new phenomenon in the web3 space, but the Polium project is bringing it to new heights. They announced their product — a "multi-chain console for Web 3 Gaming" — with no extant console, no design for one, and no games for it.
The website advertises specifications for an eventual console that contradict — it will be both 4K and 8K, for example — and promises to integrate Apple's TouchID (despite the fact that Apple does not allow non-Apple products to use that technology). The product's Medium page describes their plans to take pre-orders before the console hardware is built (good sign), and estimates a release date of Q3 2024.
Polium has also gotten flak for its logo, which quite resembles the GameCube logo. Although they claimed in a tweet that "we did not copy the Nintendo's GameCube logo", they also promised to "illustrate a new logo that is original" — apparently acknowledging that theirs is not.
CoinLoan crypto lending platform reduces account withdrawal limit
Claiming that they had no exposure to the various high profile collapses in the crypto industry lately, CoinLoan announced that they nevertheless would be reducing account withdrawal limits as they anticipated liquidity issues. They announced that users could only withdraw up to $5,000 a day, a change from the previous $500,000/day limit. CoinLoan tried to reassure customers that "rest assured that your assets are safe" — a statement that has also been made by various other crypto platforms recently, shortly before they announced insolvency.
Apparently forgetting the industry they're in, CoinLoan also wrote that their "strategy bars risky activities that could endanger CoinLoaners' funds".
- "Temporary change in withdrawal limits", CoinLoan blog
- Tweet by Bitfinex'ed
Crypto lender Vauld suspends withdrawals, considers restructuring
Vauld, a major cryptocurrency lender backed by the likes of Coinbase and Peter Thiel, announced they have suspended withdrawals, trading, and deposits due to the crypto market downturn, "financial difficulties of our key business partners", and a recent bank run of customer withdrawals approaching $200 million.
Vauld, which is based in Singapore, also announced that they would be bringing on financial and legal advisors to "explore and analyse all possible options, including potential restructuring options".
- "Corporate statement" by Vauld
- "Peter Thiel-Backed Crypto Lender Vauld Suspends Withdrawals", Wall Street Journal
Twitter and YouTube accounts for the British Army simultaneously hacked and used to promote NFT and crypto scams
The 362,000-follower verified Twitter account and 178,000-follower YouTube account for the British Army were simultaneously compromised, and used to shill two different crypto scams.
On Twitter, the account details were changed to resemble the Possessed NFT project (as also happened to top Super Smash Bros. Ultimate player MkLeo in March). Tweets from the account announced a "new NFT collection" and linked to a fake minting website, complete with a fake counter showing the number of available NFTs appearing to dwindle.
Meanwhile, the YouTube account was rebranded to resemble ARK Invest, the investment management firm founded by Cathie Wood. It ran a steady stream of fake videos cribbed from an old, real livestream with Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey, but surrounded with borders promoting "double your money" Bitcoin and Ether scams. This is a common YouTube scam, and one such scam earned crypto scammers $1.3 million in 24 hours back in May.
Crema Finance hacked for $8.8 million, most returned
Solana liquidity protocol Crema Finance was exploited for around 69,500 SOL (~$2.3 million) and around $6.5 million worth of stablecoins for a total loss of around $8.8 million. The hacker then swapped the stablecoins for Ethereum via Uniswap.
Crema Finance sent a message to the hacker via Ethereum transaction, writing that "you have 72h from now to consider becoming a white hat and keeping $800k as the bounty... Otherwise the police and legal force will officially get involved and there will be endless tracing waiting for you." On July 6, Crema announced that they had reached an agreement with the hacker, who returned most of the funds and kept 45,455 SOL ($1.68 million) as a "bounty".
Although the terms of the "bounty" agreement suggested that Crema Finance would not involve law enforcement, sometimes these things are out of platforms' hands (or they renege on the agreement). On July 11, 2023, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York announced charges against Shakeeb Ahmed, a security engineer alleged to have perpetrated the theft.
Crema Finance is not to be confused with C.R.E.A.M. Finance, a crypto lending service that was hacked three separate times in 2021 for a total of nearly $200 million.
- Tweet thread by Crema Finance
- Tweet by Crema Finance
- Tweet by Crema Finance
- "Former Security Engineer For International Technology Company Arrested For Defrauding Decentralized Cryptocurrency Exchange", U.S. Attorney's Office, Southern District of New York
Meta hammers another nail into the coffin of Libra, announcing the shutdown of their Novi project
Diem, formerly known as Libra, was a stablecoin-based payments system proposed by Meta, formerly known as Facebook. Novi, formerly Calibra (are you keeping up?), was a crypto wallet and crypto-based money transfer pilot project run by the company. The app was advertised as a solution for sending remittances, and claimed it would help provide "equal access to financial services".
Libra-now-Diem ground to a halt after concerns from regulatory bodies and the general public, with Facebook-now-Meta abandoning the project in January 2022. Now they've announced they'll be shutting down Calibra-now-Novi, too, and have advised users to withdraw their balance "as soon as possible". Users won't be able to add money to their accounts beginning on July 21.
- "Meta to Shutter Novi Crypto Payments Wallet in September, Ending Libra Saga", CoinDesk
- "Welcome to Novi", Meta Newsroom
Quixotic NFT marketplace hacked for more than $100,000
Quixotic, an NFT marketplace on the Optimism network, was attacked after a hacker was able to exploit a recently updated smart contract. The attacker made off with at least $100,000.
Quixotic is the largest NFT marketplace on Optimism, a layer 2 Ethereum network. Despite being the largest marketplace on the network, it still does fairly little in volume compared to NFT marketplaces on other networks, boasting only around $420,000 in trading volume in the last 30 days.
Quixotic paused marketplace activity after discovering the hack, and promised to reimburse all users who had tokens stolen from them.
Ankr gateways for Polygon and Fantom compromised, seed phrases possibly stolen
The Ankr public RPC gateways (basically an API for dApps and other services to communicate with the blockchain) for Polygon and Fantom were impacted when attackers compromised the projects' DNS management. Those who accessed Polygon or Fantom using Ankr's RPC gateways saw pop-up windows stating that "funds are at risk", and prompting them to enter their seed phrases at a website linked from the popup to "restore their wallet".
Polygon's chief information security officer Mudit Gupta told CoinDesk that day that "no funds [were] lost as far as we know but we are still investigating", and that dApps using the Ankr RPC endpoint were non-functional. Ankr later announced that the RPC systems had been fully restored, and that the breach had come from a "third-party vendor" that enabled attackers to change Ankr's domain hosts.
Voyager Digital suspends withdrawals and other activity
Voyager Digital announced that they had suspended trading, deposits, withdrawals, and loyalty rewards. This came after it was revealed that Voyager had issued a notice of default to the bankrupt Three Arrows Capital on a loan of more than $670 million worth of USDC and Bitcoin. On June 22, Voyager had reduced their withdrawal limit, suggesting they were having trouble meeting customer demand for withdrawals. The week before that, Voyager had secured a large loan from FTX to try to help them stay afloat.
Voyager announced that they were making the decision "given current market conditions", and that it "gives us additional time to continue exploring strategic alternatives with various interested parties". They also released some financial and balance sheet updates that painted a pretty grim picture.
- "Voyager Digital Provides Market Update", press release from Voyager