Deltec is a well-known bank in the cryptocurrency world, mostly for its ties to Tether and to FTX. In July 2023, US authorities seized tens of millions from Deltec accounts in connection to a cryptocurrency money laundering investigation. It's not clear if that was the same investigation.
Crypto scam money launderers charged for laundering more than $73 million through Deltec
Two people were charged in California for laundering money obtained from cryptocurrency and fiat "pig butchering" scams. After receiving the money from the investment scammers, the launderers then allegedly helped to obfuscate at least $73 million in transactions by moving the money through Deltec Bank in The Bahamas and converting it into the Tether stablecoin.
Someone accidentally burns $1.36 million Tether
Someone accidentally threw away $1.36 million when they accidentally sent Tethers to the Tether contract address — making them permanently inaccessible in a process known as "burning". This is a rather common phenomenon in crypto, where it's easy to accidentally copy/paste the wrong address.
Most experienced crypto users have adopted the habit of sending small test transactions before transferring large amounts of tokens, to first check that they're using the correct address. Oddly, this person did so in this case, but then went right ahead and transferred the remaining tokens to the erroneous address.
The person may have lucked out that they were using a centralized stablecoin like Tether, whose operators hold a substantial amount of control over freezing, destroying, and creating new Tethers — and could feasibly replace the burned tokens.
Abracadabra exploited for almost $6.5 million, Magic Internet Money stablecoin depegs
Well that sure is a headline I just had to write.
The Magic Internet Money ($MIM) stablecoin has lost its dollar peg again, dipping all the way below $0.77 in a flash crash before returning to around $0.95.
The depeg appears to be related to an exploit of the Abracadabra lending protocol, which allows people to borrow $MIM. An attacker exploited an apparent flaw in the platform's smart contracts to drain around $6.5 million.
This is the second time the token has depegged, after a June 2022 incident shortly after the Terra collapse.
TrueUSD loses peg (again) as traders sell due to fears over its stability
TrueUSD, a stablecoin connected to Justin Sun, deviated from its intended $1 peg to around $0.983 as traders sold off more than $100 million of the token seeking safer options. The fears seemed to be sparked by the rapidfire and massive hacks of the Justin Sun-connected HTX (hacked for $115 million) and Poloniex (hacked for $120 million) in November.
Adding to those is the fact that TrueUSD recently paused its real-time reserves attestations, due to systems reporting liabilities that exceeded assets, though TrueUSD (obviously) claimed this was just an error.
Tether mints itself a $1 billion Christmas present
I wish I could give myself a billion dollars for Christmas, too.
On December 25, Tether minted 1 billion of its USDT dollar-pegged stablecoin. CEO Paolo Ardoino announced on Twitter that the mint was an "authorized but not issued transaction, meaning that this amount will be used as inventory for next period issuance requests and chain swaps". This seems to be a recent trend for Tether, as similar language was used for a $1 billion mint in September.
The activity has raised more questions around where the real money backing Tether is coming from, and if it even exists at all. Some have argued that these recent Tether mints are being used to artificially inflate the price of Bitcoin, which has been on an upward trend since mid-October.
Tether, which boasts a market cap of more than $90 billion, has never been audited, and has lied about its backing in the past.
The AEUR stablecoin isn't
Binance says traders must have missed the memo on the AEUR stablecoin, which was intended to be pegged to the Euro. Shortly after it was listed on Binance, high demand caused the token — which had a limited supply of 5 million — to begin trading for as high as €3 per token. "[U]sers ... might not have realized its standing as a stablecoin" wrote Binance in an announcement, published the day after the exchange suspended trading in the token due to "abnormal volatility".
Binance announced a compensation plan for users who purchased the token during an eligibility period and who were unable to resell, in an apparent attempt to placate the angry traders who accused Binance of "scamming" them by halting trading.
AEUR was issued by Anchored Coins, a Swiss stablecoin issuer.
DOJ cracks down on $225 million crypto romance scam
At least according to the rather shady Tether stablecoin provider, the U.S. Department of Justice has been working on an investigation into a massive "pig butchering" romance scam and human trafficking operation based out of Southeast Asia.
According to Tether, they "voluntarily fr[oze] approximately 225 million in USDT tokens" in connection to the investigation.
Some romance scammers hoping to lure victims into sending them cryptocurrencies are themselves victims of human trafficking operations, where they are held victim and forced to send such messages.
Raft exploited for $3.3 million, then hacker screws up
An attacker exploited the Raft defi project after finding a vulnerability that allowed them to mint 6.7 million of Raft's R stablecoin without any backing.
The attacker then went to convert the R into ETH, which they would then be able to launder and cash out. However, an error in the attacker's code caused 1,570 ETH ($3.25 million) to be sent to the burn address, rendering it permanently inaccessible to everyone including the hacker. Only 7 ETH remained. However, because they had to spend ETH to fund the attack, the hack ultimately resulted in a loss of 4 ETH (~$8,000) for the perpetrator. Oops.
As a result of the hack, the R stablecoin lost its dollar peg, plummeting down to around $0.70. Raft acknowledged the attack and announced that they had paused minting.
TrueUSD tries to claim no affiliation with tokens created by its deployer address, raising further questions
A new, Euro-pegged stablecoin called $TEURO emerged on October 13, with an initial supply of around €70 million. However, TrueUSD subsequently tweeted that "we have zero affiliation with it". The post warned people to "step back and refrain from risky investments".
However, the post raised only more questions, as the $TEURO token had been deployed by the address that deployed the primary TrueUSD token. This means that either TrueUSD is lying when they claim they're unaffiliated with $TEURO, or some of their private keys were compromised, allowing an unrelated party to deploy a contract appearing to belong to them.
USDR stablecoin de-pegs
The real-estate-backed US dollar stablecoin "Real USD" (aka USDR) lost its peg, dropping from $1 to around $0.53. The website for the stablecoin was — even after the depeg — promising customers 16.39% yields.
The de-peg occurred amid a "liquidity crunch" as holders rushed to redeem their USDR for the DAI stablecoin, draining the project of its DAI reserves. The team behind the project, TangibleDAO, issued a statement stating that "the real estate and digital assets backing USDR still exist and will be used to support redemptions." However, despite their insistence that the problem is just a liquidity issue rather than a solvency one, a dashboard on their own website showed that the stablecoin isn't fully backed and has a deficit of around $3.4 million.
In a related incident, a trader trying to swap their $131,350 in USDR for the USDC stablecoin lost every penny of it when their transaction was arbitraged by a MEV bot.