Solana is a high-performance Blockchain supporting builders around the world creating crypto apps that scale today…reports Asian Lite News
In yet another major cryptocurrency hack, the popular blockchain Solana on Wednesday reported that an unknown bad actor has drained funds from 7,767 wallets on the Solana Network.
However, Blockchain security firm SlowMist claimed more than 8,000 wallets had been drained worth around $8 million.
Solana is a high-performance Blockchain supporting builders around the world creating crypto apps that scale today.
The attack has affected “hot” wallets which are always connected to the internet, allowing people to store and send tokens easily.
“Engineers from multiple ecosystems, with the help of several security firms, are investigating drained wallets on Solana. There is no evidence hardware wallets are impacted,” said Solana.
The exploit has affected several wallets, including Slope and Phantom. This appears to have affected both mobile and extension.
“There’s no evidence hardware wallets have been impacted — and users are strongly encouraged to use hardware wallets. Do not reuse your seed phrase on a hardware wallet – create a new seed phrase,” Solana informed.
“Wallets drained should be treated as compromised, and abandoned,” it added.
The attack also compromised other wallets including Phantom, Slope, Solflare, and TrustWallet.
Phantom, a Solana-based wallet that hit $1.2 billion in valuation earlier this year, said it’s “working closely with other teams to get to the bottom of a reported vulnerability in the Solana ecosystem.”
“At this time, the team does not believe this is a Phantom-specific issue,” the wallet developer said.
This could be a “supply chain attack” that manages to steal users’ private keys.
The attack on Solana came as cryptocurrency service Nomad suffered a “chaotic” attack, with hackers draining almost $200 million in digital funds from the company within a few hours.
The new initiative called on tech firms not to “set up a centralised marketplace” for bidding, matching, or anonymous NFT trading…reports Asian Lite News
Chinese internet and tech giants on Monday signed an initiative to ban cryptocurrency and digital collectibles (NFTs), along with a promise not to establish secondary marketplaces.
According to the South China Morning Post, Tencent and Ant Group joined a self-driven industry initiative to ban cryptocurrency and fight speculation.
Platforms that sell digital collectibles “shall require real-name authentication of those who issue, sell and buy” the assets and “only support legal tender as the denomination and settlement currency”, according to the document signed by China’s biggest tech firms.
“Do not contain financial assets or unlicensed financial products, including securities, insurance, credit and precious metals, in blockchain-supported goods,” it added.
In April this year, the National Internet Finance Association of China, the China Banking Association, and the Securities Association of China issued a joint statement to prohibit the use of NFTs in the issuance of financial assets.
The new initiative called on tech firms not to “set up a centralised marketplace” for bidding, matching, or anonymous NFT trading.
The Chinese government banned Bitcoin mining in July last year.
It has plans to launch its central bank digital currency (CBDC) called the digital Chinese yuan (e-CNY).
The country banned all cryptocurrency transactions last September and barred foreign crypto exchanges from operating within the country in 2018.
Massive data breach
In what could be the biggest-ever data breach, sensitive personal information about more than a billion people has been leaked from a government agency, possibly from China, and put up for sale on Dark Web for 10 Bitcoins.
Changpeng Zhao, CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, tweeted that their threat intelligence detected 1 billion resident records for sale on the Dark Web.
“It includes name, address, national ID, mobile, police and medical records from one Asian country. Likely due to a bug in an ElasticSearch deployment by a government agency,” Zhao claimed in his tweet late on Monday.
“This has an impact on hacker detection/prevention measures, mobile numbers used for account takeovers, etc. It is important for all platforms to enhance their security measures in this area,” he further posted.
Binance has already stepped up verifications for users potentially affected, Zhao said.
Media reports claimed that this leaked data may belong to Chinese citizens as a user on an underground hacking forum claimed to be selling a 23TB database for 10 Bitcoins of billions of Chinese citizens.
The information may have been leaked from the Shanghai National Police (SHGA) database, although the Chinese government was yet to react to this.
“In 2022, the Shanghai National Police (SHGA) database was leaked. This database contains many TB of data and information on Billions of Chinese citizens,” the post by the user named ‘ChinaDan’ said that also went viral on Telegram.
“Databases contain information on 1 billion Chinese national residents and several billion case records, including: name, address, birthplace, national ID number, mobile number, all crime/case details,” the post added.
The data breach was also referenced by rights activist Fu Xianyi on Twitter, who said the leak was from the “Shanghai public security database”, reports RFA.
“Most likely it was leaked from Alibaba Cloud,” the report mentioned.
The hacked Twitter account posted various retweets for NFT giveaways, and its pinned tweet linked users to a fake NFT minting website…reports Asian Lite News
Hackers infiltrated the British Army’s Twitter and YouTube accounts to promote cryptocurrency scams and on YouTube, they replaced the British Army’s videos with old livestreams featuring Tesla CEO Elon Musk and former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.
The UK Ministry of Defence confirmed in a tweet late on Sunday that they were aware of a breach of the Army’s Twitter and YouTube accounts and an investigation was underway.
“The Army takes information security extremely seriously and is resolving the issue. Until their investigation is complete it would be inappropriate to comment further,” the Ministry further posted.
Both the social media accounts were later restored.
“The breach of the Army’s Twitter and YouTube accounts that occurred earlier today has been resolved and an investigation is underway,” the Ministry said on Monday.
The hacked Twitter account posted various retweets for NFT giveaways, and its pinned tweet linked users to a fake NFT minting website.
The hackers also entered the British Army’s YouTube channel, deleting all its videos, as well as changing its name and profile picture to resemble the legit investment firm Ark Invest.
Hackers replaced the British Army’s videos with a series of old livestreams featuring Dorsey and Musk.
A Twitter spokesperson later said that the British Army’s account has since been locked and secured and the account holders have now regained access and the account is back up and running”.
CloudSEK was approached by a victim who allegedly lost Rs 50 lakh ($64,000) to such a cryptocurrency scam, in addition to other costs such as deposit amount, tax, etc….reports Asian Lite News
Fake cryptocurrency exchanges have duped Indian investors of more than $128 million (nearly Rs 1,000 crore) as the global crypto market tanks, a new report claimed on Tuesday.
Cyber-security company CloudSEK said it has uncovered an ongoing operation involving several phishing domains and Android-based fake crypto applications.
“This large-scale campaign entices unwary individuals into a huge gambling scam. Many of these bogus websites impersonate “CoinEgg”, a legitimate UK-based cryptocurrency trading platform,” according to the report.
CloudSEK was approached by a victim who allegedly lost Rs 50 lakh ($64,000) to such a cryptocurrency scam, in addition to other costs such as deposit amount, tax, etc.
“We estimate that threat actors have defrauded victims of up to $128 million (about Rs 1,000 crore) via such crypto scams,” said Rahul Sasi, Founder and CEO of CloudSEK.
As investors shift their focus on the cryptocurrency markets, scammers and cheats turn their attention to them as well,’ Sasi added.
Threat actors first create fake domains that impersonate legitimate crypto trading platforms.
The sites are designed to replicate the official website’s dashboard and user experience.
The attackers then create a female profile on social media to approach the potential victim and establish a friendship.
The profile influences the victim to invest in cryptocurrency and start trading.
“The profile also shares $100-dollar credit, as a gift to a particular crypto exchange, which in this case is a duplicate of a legitimate crypto exchange,” the report mentioned.
The victim initially makes a significant profit, which bolsters their trust in the platform and the threat actor.
After the victim seemingly makes a profit, the scammer convinces them to invest a higher amount, promising better returns.
Once the victim adds their own money to the fake exchange, the threat actor freezes their account, ensuring the victim can’t withdraw their investment, and disappears with the victim’s money.
When victims take to various platforms to complain about losing access to their accounts, the same, or new, threat actors reach out to them in the guise of investigators.
“To retrieve the frozen assets, they request victims to provide confidential information such as ID cards and bank details, via email. These details are then used to perpetrate other nefarious activities,” the report warned.
In the long-term, it is imperative for the collaboration between crypto exchanges, Internet service providers (ISPs), and cyber crime cells to raise awareness and take action against threat groups,” said Sasi.
The latest crypto crash is happening as investors are afraid of global macroeconomic conditions and the US Federal Reserve is trying to curb rising inflation…reports Asian Lite News
Leading cryptocurrency Bitcoin dropped below $18,000 per digital coin on Sunday — a massive over 70 per cent drop from its record high of $68,000 in November last year — as mayhem in the crypto market continued.
Overall, the prices of top cryptocurrencies declined as much as 35 per cent last week in the wake of economic recession fears.
The global market cap of cryptocurrencies sank below $850 billion, which recently hovered over $1 trillion.
The second-largest Ethereum cryptocurrency fell below $1,000 on Sunday, down nearly 80 per cent since its all-time-high in November last year.
The latest crypto crash is happening as investors are afraid of global macroeconomic conditions and the US Federal Reserve is trying to curb rising inflation.
According to analysts, Bitcoin may hit a grim $14,000 this year.
The likely bottom range at $14,000 would represent a drop of around 80 per cent for Bitcoin from the $68,000 all-time high.
“In the next 670 days, BTC will capitulate in the next 6 months and hit cycle bottom ($14-21k), then chop around $28-40k in most of 2023 and be at $40k again by next halving,” tweeted Venturefounder, a contributor at on-chain analytics platform CryptoQuant.
According to Coindesk, Bitcoin has historically experienced periods of asymptotic price run-ups followed by steep crashes, “typically played out over several months to two years”.
Cryptocurrency watchers refer to these periods as “cycles”.
In 2017, Bitcoin reached a then-high of $19,783 in December before falling back down to the four-digits range just one month later.
During the 2013-2014 cycle, Bitcoin reached an all-time high of $1,127 at the time, a level that the cryptocurrency successfully defended during its 2018 drawdown
As mayhem continues across the crypto market, be it cryptocurrencies or Blockchain-based Decentralised finance (DeFi), there has also been a massive 88 per cent drop in Google searches for “buying NFTs”, a new report said on Tuesday.
The term “buy NFT” has dropped down to a score of 12 on a scale of 100 at the beginning of June, representing an 88 per cent drop from its peak score of 100 that was recorded in January, reports niche news publisher Bankless Times.
Similarly, the term “sell NFT” saw a 86 per cent decline in its search interest score from 52 which was recorded at the start of 2022, to a score of 7 in June, the report noted.
“People are losing their trust in cryptos in general. The recent Terra crisis showed how people could lose money in just a few days. That said, given the volatility of NFTs, people are being extra cautious,” said Aliasgar Merchant, a developer relations engineer at Ignite (formerly Tendermint).
“Just following the trend like investing in an NFT because everyone is doing so will cause more harm than good in the long run,” Merchant added.
The search interest for buying NFTs (non-fungible tokens) dropped consistently since the start of this year, signalling a period of consolidation for the best-performing digital asset class over the past 12 months.
According to a report by DappRadar, the NFT market generated $3.7 billion in terms of trading volumes in May, 20 per cent down from that registered in the previous month.
According to experts, an increasing number of fake profiles, Discord scams, phishing frauds, pump and dump routines, and rug pulls are coming to the fore in the NFT markets.
However, certain NFT categories like arts and entertainment have bucked the trend and witnessed a resumption in NFT search interest since mid-May.
In what could dampen the mood of crypto lovers, sales of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have fallen a massive 92 per cent since September last year, according to data from popular website NonFungible.
The sale of NFTs fell to a daily average of about 19,000 last month, a 92 per cent decline from a peak of about 225,000 in September, reports Wall Street Journal, citing the data.
According to the report, the number of active wallets in the NFT market fell 88 per cent to about 14,000 in the first week of May from a high of 119,000 in November.
Many NFT owners now find their investments significantly less than when they bought those pieces of art.
The NFT market currently represents segments like collectibles, sports, entertainment, and arts.
Celsius operates in much the same way as a bank, but rather than in fiat money it does so in cryptocurrency. It collects deposits and then loans them out…reports Asian Lite News
As leading cryptocurrencies nosedive, investors of DeFi (decentralised finance) platforms also need to exercise “caution and scrutiny” amid growing concerns about the liquidity of this certain type of cryptocurrency service, experts warned on Monday.
The warning came as Celsius Network, a DeFi platform and one of the largest crypto lenders, announced that it was “pausing all withdrawals, swap, and transfers between accounts” for its 1.7 million clients.
“The wider crypto ecosystem has been rocked again – not by ‘real’ cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, but by DeFi,” said Nigel Green, CEO of deVere Group, one of the world’s largest independent financial advisories.
“The unprecedented move by Celsius is effectively blocking clients from accessing their assets which will do little to quell fears from critics that some DeFi platforms could be Ponzi schemes,” he noted.
Celsius Network said in an email to customers late on Sunday that due to extreme market conditions, “we are announcing that Celsius is pausing all withdrawals, Swap, and transfers between accounts. We are taking this action today to put Celsius in a better position to honor, over time, its withdrawal obligations.”
Celsius operates in much the same way as a bank, but rather than in fiat money it does so in cryptocurrency. It collects deposits and then loans them out.
“There are legitimate and serious concerns about networks’ high yields, links to failed dollar-pegged stablecoin Terra, and reserves,” said Green, urging people to exercise caution and scrutiny on crypto lending firms which offer clients lucrative double-digit yields on assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum.
The DeFi lending giant Celsius halting withdrawals has weighed on the broader crypto sector with Bitcoin, the world’s largest digital token plunging to the lowest in 18 months in Asia trading on Monday.
Decentralised finance or DeFi offers financial instruments without relying on intermediaries such as brokerages, exchanges, or banks by using smart contracts on a Blockchain.
ADG, Cybercrime, Subhash Chandra, emphasised on the need for cybercrime awareness programmes and capacity-building for police departments to prepare to counter the menace…reports Asian Lite News
The Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IIT-K), will provide an indigenously designed tool to help the Uttar Pradesh police in detection and cracking of cases of fraud through cryptocurrency transactions.
Professor Sandeep Shukla from IIT-Kanpur, said that the tool developed by IIT, known as HOP, can analyse cryptocurrency transactions.
“The tool is cheaper than any foreign equipment. By September, our tool will be ready to serve the UP police and help in investigations in cases of cryptocurrency fraud,” said Shukla.
ADG, Cybercrime, Subhash Chandra, emphasised on the need for cybercrime awareness programmes and capacity-building for police departments to prepare to counter the menace.
“We have taken action against 37,000 accounts, banks and cards, and also recovered Rs 9.5 crore in a year,” said Chandra.
SP, Cybercrime, Triveni Singh said that the specific programme is an initiative of MHA and Uttar Pradesh Police and the first such event to spread cyber safety awareness and capacity-building for police departments.
He said that basic skills and methodologies are required for investigation of VOIP-based calls that have become prevalent in extortion cases.
As we have seen globally, Cryptos can attract significant institutional and foreign investments if regulations can enable innovations and provide the necessary guardrails. India can benefit similarly… Govind Soni speaks
Crypto is an emerging yet attractive asset class. It is a $1.25 trillion market globally. The India adoption story is no different with nearly 20 million unique users, over $6.6 billion in investments and more than a billion dollars in venture capital funding.
India is already the second-largest in terms of crypto adoption globally.
Crypto in India has come a long way but this is just the beginning — Crypto is a billion people industry in the making.
Govind Soni, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer, CoinSwitch, India’s largest crypto investing app, said that their priority is to make it transparent, trustworthy and secure, and enable Indians to participate in this technology shift in a meaningful way.
Excerpts from the interview:
Why is Crypto important, and how can India benefit from it?
Crypto is the gateway to a decentralised internet. The computing power of the billions of devices around the world can be utilised and incentivised using Crypto to build a new internet, called Web3.
India has the opportunity to take the lead in this transformation. We have the talent, users and the startup ecosystem. And we are witnessing an upskilling and migration of India’s large pool of engineers and developers to the cutting-edge and advanced field of blockchain and crypto.
All this puts India in a sweet spot. With an enabling regulatory environment, India can get a headstart and steer the direction of Web3 while it is built.
Crypto has come a long way. Every day we hear news that even Wall Street giants are adopting Crypto. Why is that?
Institutional adoption is a sign that Crypto has well and truly grown beyond white papers to be a smart investment class. The origin of Crypto may have been based on an idea of a digital currency, but now it has evolved to become an attractive, emerging asset class.
There are several interesting use-cases being built on this technology. That is the intrinsic value of Crypto: The confidence and uptake of the underlying blockchain technology. Institutional investors understand this and have done their due diligence.
While retail investors continue to be the early adopters and torchbearers of Cryptos, growing institutional adoption underlines the fact that this is an asset class that is here to stay.
Even traditional markets are adopting and gaining exposure to Cryptos. All of this bodes well for the growth of the asset class.
What about India? There is regulatory uncertainty on Crypto here. Do you see this changing and Crypto becoming a mainstream asset class here?
Certainly. Cryptos are an emerging asset class that speak to India’s digital-savvy population.
With regulatory clarity, institutional investors too will find the confidence to invest in and benefit from Cryptos.
As we have seen globally, Cryptos can attract significant institutional and foreign investments if regulations can enable innovations and provide the necessary guardrails. India can benefit similarly.
Innovations such as decentralised finance, or DeFi, can be an effective and fast enabler of capital for small and medium-scale businesses in India. Crypto is also paving the way for interesting applications such as decentralized social media that Indians can greatly benefit from.
How is CoinSwitch protecting investors on its platform?
At CoinSwitch, investor protection is of utmost importance to us. While we have been using various digital platforms to inform, educate and engage with new crypto enthusiasts, we are continuously updating our app to help users make informed investing decisions.
And, numbers tell the story. The average time a user spends on our app reading, buying, selling, or trading has gone up to 27 minutes from 13 minutes in January 2021.
In line with our ongoing product feature upgrades to tighten platform security, we have launched Riskometer — our attempt to help users think twice before investing in a coin. The Riskometer provides a risk warning on coins that are highly volatile, or when the risk assessment suggests that users need to proceed with caution while investing.
We understand that ensuring compliance with relevant regulations is key to ensuring a safe, secure, and trustworthy user experience. Users on our platform can utilise their account balances (of Indian Rupees and crypto assets) to only transact on our platform or withdraw Indian Rupees. They can only deposit Indian Rupees from their verified bank account. Similarly, after selling crypto assets, users can withdraw Indian Rupees only to their verified bank account.
What does cloud technology enable you to do better?
Amazon Web Services (AWS) allows to scale up on infrastructure and services without having any dependencies, or minimum usage commitments. AWS continues to make incremental improvements to its solutions and services, allowing us to easily deliver value to our customers. If we had to build these capabilities on our own it would have taken us significantly longer. With the shared responsibility model, security of the cloud is addressed by AWS and this helps us considerably reduce our efforts towards security and compliance. AWS account team and Enterprise Support provides proactive guidance and support as we scale our platforms. AWS is the easy answer for any internet-based ecosystem that wants to scale faster.
CoinSwitch is trusted by over 18 million registered users, making it the largest crypto investing app in India. Ours is a built-to-scale platform developed on top of AWS. Among a host of things, AWS has improved our time to market, handle spikes in traffic, and manage risks more efficiently. All of these put together help us provide a simplified and secure user experience on the app.
He stated that introduction of CBDC has the potential to provide significant benefits such as reduced dependency on cash, higher seigniorage due to lower transaction costs, etc…reports Asian Lite News
There is no plan by the government to introduce cryptocurrency, the Parliament was told on Tuesday.
There is no plan to introduce a cryptocurrency and currently, it is unregulated in India, Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary told Rajya Sabha in a written reply.
“Reserve Bank of India (RBI) does not issue a cryptocurrency. Traditional paper currency is legal tender and is issued by RBI in terms of provisions of the RBI Act, 1994. A digital version of traditional paper currency is called Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC),” the minister said.
In reply to another question, the minister informed the upper house that the RBI is currently working towards a phased implementation strategy for the introduction of CBDC and examining use cases that could be implemented with little or no disruption.
He stated that the introduction of CBDC has the potential to provide significant benefits such as reduced dependency on cash, higher seigniorage due to lower transaction costs, etc
The minister further informed the house that the printing of notes have declined over a period of time. “During 2019-20 notes worth Rs 4,378 crore were printed, while in 2020-21, notes worth Rs 4,012 crore were printed. In 2016-17, notes worth Rs 7,965 crore were printed,” he said.
The move comes as the government officials have raised concerns about Russia’s use of cryptocurrency to evade the impact of crushing sanctions in response to its invasion of Ukraine…reports Asian Lite News
President Joe Biden is expected to an executive order this week in a bid to regulate how digital currency is traded.
According to reports, the executive order will direct the Justice Department, Treasury and other agencies to study the legal and economic ramifications of creating a US central bank digital currency, media reported.
The move comes as the government officials have raised concerns about Russia’s use of cryptocurrency to evade the impact of crushing sanctions in response to its invasion of Ukraine.
Two people familiar with the process told Associated Press that the executive order on cryptocurrency was expected to be issued this week and it had been in the works long before the war.
The sanctions have sent the ruble to historic lows and have closed the country’s stock market, it was reported.
As Russia intensified its battle to take control of Ukraine, Bitcoin last week soared to $44,000, pushing the total cryptocurrency market cap to cross $2 trillion.
With the recent gains, Bitcoin now has a higher market cap than the rapidly-declining Russian currency ruble.
Bitcoin has a market cap of approximately $835 billion while the ruble has a market cap of around $626 billion.
The crypto market was last at $2 trillion in August 2021.
In the last week since the Russia-Ukraine war started, Bitcoin has jumped nearly 14 per cent and ethereum 12 per cent, according to CoinGecko data.
Terra’s LUNA token had a stratospheric rise, climbing nearly 70 per cent during the last week, and is now trading at approximately $94.
Solana’s SOL and other layer 1 tokens like Avalanche’s AVAX and Polkadot’s DOT also responded well, reports CoinDesk.
Similar to volatility, Bitcoin’s trading volume across major exchanges reached the highest level since the December 5 price crash, according to CoinDesk data.
Earlier, the global crypto market lost nearly 10 per cent of its value as Russia invaded Ukraine on Thursday. Over $200 billion worth of its global market value was wiped out.
The most-hit cryptocurrencies were Ethereum, Cardano, Avalanche, and Polkadot, along with Dogecoin and Shiba Inu.
Some traders, however, expected the price bounce to be short-lived amid geopolitical uncertainty.
