Just days after the leading U.S. crypto exchange admonished the SEC for inserting itself into an ongoing case of insider trading prosecuted under wire fraud, the company appears to find itself the subject of an investigation by Gary Gensler’s powerful agency. Citing three people familiar with the matter, Bloomberg reported that the SEC is looking…

In June, the FBI warned the public of a LinkedIn scam where users were lured into making significant investments in fraudulent cryptocurrencies. After trust was established, victims were convinced to move investments to controlled sites before they had their accounts drained. This cyber scam was only notable for how stolen cash was subsequently used: purchasing…

Cryptocurrencies have caught the imagination of investors apart from tech enthusiasts – in a very short period of time. Now, there are as many as 20,000 such currencies in circulation. Yet, most governments tend to view it with suspicion, and a few have even gone ahead and banned them. As per the Law Library of…

The amount of cryptocurrency flowing into privacy-enhancing mixer services has reached an all-time high this year as funds from wallets belonging to government-sanctioned groups and criminal activity almost doubled, researchers reported on Thursday. Mixers, also known as tumblers, obfuscate cryptocurrency transactions by creating a disconnect between the funds a user deposits and the funds the user…

Proposals in crypto help communities make consensus-based decisions. However, for decentralized music platform Audius, the passing of a malicious governance proposal resulted in the transfer of tokens worth $6.1 million, with the hacker making away with $1 million. On Sunday, a malicious proposal, Proposal #85, requesting the transfer of 18 million Audius’ in-house AUDIO tokens was…

Some cryptocurrency platforms that have watched millions of dollars vanish in digital heists have made an unusual pitch to their attackers: Keep some of it, but give back the rest. The pleas amount to last-ditch entreaties to convince hackers to return most of the stolen funds. Victims have offered as much as $10 million in these…

The digital world is in a profound state of evolution that is both overhyped and underappreciated. Many of the enabling technologies are not well-understood by marketing leaders which is leading to mixed responses to these emerging capabilities. Is it time to jump in and redeploy marketing resources? Or should I wait while others learn lessons…

Radware this week revealed it added blockchain technologies to its Bot Manager platform to thwart attacks designed to evade completely automated public Turing tests to tell computers and humans apart—better known as CAPTCHA challenges. Dr. David Aviv, CTO for Radware, said that while a CAPTCHA challenge can be an effective way to determine if an application…

In an apparent attempt to match rival Magic Eden’s feature set, OpenSea has rolled out its new launchpad feature for minting new Solana NFT projects. However, the leading NFT marketplace’s first drop on the launchpad has been far from a sizzling success from the start. Zoonies, an alien-themed Solana NFT profile picture project, debuted on OpenSea’s…

Vitalik Buterin wants you to know that Ethereum is just 40% complete—and there’s plenty more coming after the “merge.” At the Ethereum Community Conference in France Thursday, the Ethereum co-founder shared his vision for future developments well beyond the network’s move to proof of stake. In fact, the move—often referred to as “the merge,” because it…

A former employee of the cryptocurrency exchange platform Coinbase and two others were charged by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for alleged insider trading valued at more than $1.1 million, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Seattle. Prosecutors said this is the first insider-trading case involving cryptocurrency markets, the Seattle…

The U.S. bankruptcy system is getting its first experience dealing with cryptocurrency businesses. It’s impossible to identify every possible novel cryptocurrency issue in bankruptcy in advance, but several are likely to arise: the treatment of custodial funds; the treatment of collateral held by cryptocurrency lenders that go bankrupt; avoidance actions; the treatment of collateralized crypto…

With the alarming rate of scams in the crypto industry, blockchain security company PeckShield has raised the alarm about Freedom Protocol and Raccoon Network as scams. The industry-leading blockchain security company called out the two crypto protocols in a Twitter thread, revealing their fraudulent actions. Freedom Protocol refers to itself as the highest paying auto-staking…

Blockchain.com is laying off 25% of its workforce in order to cut expenses during tough market conditions, the company said on Thursday. The news was first reported by CoinDesk, which said around 150 employees will lose their jobs, taking the exchange’s headcount to the same level it was at the start of the year. A Blockchain.com spokesperson…

Recent regulatory advances, including the release of the Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) provisional agreement in the EU and the release of the Framework for International Engagement on Digital Assets in the US, signal a desire to provide regulatory clarity in this space. In the future, the adoption of cryptocurrencies and stablecoins will most likely be…

Thai cryptocurrency exchange Zipmex has paused withdrawals on its platform following a “combination of circumstances” beyond its control. Cointelegraph reports that Zipmex could be in trouble were dismissed as “rumors” by CEO and co-founder Marcus Lim following the failed acquisition of the Thai exchange by Coinbase. Coinbase made an offer to acquire the Thai cryptocurrency exchange…

The Securities and Exchange Commission should be going after crypto exchanges that offered XRP, the chairman of the House investor protection subcommittee said Tuesday. In an oversight hearing closely watched by supporters of Ripple and the XRP cryptocurrency, California Rep. Brad Sherman questioned SEC Enforcement Director Gurbir Grewal on why the agency isn’t investigating exchanges that…

Ukraine’s main law enforcement agency has busted an illegal facility mining cryptocurrencies in the Kharkiv region. The operators of the crypto farm have been minting coins using large amounts of stolen electricity, threatening energy supply to critical infrastructure, the agency said. Officers from the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) have discovered and closed down an underground…

A cryptomining gang known as 8220 Gang has been exploiting Linux and cloud app vulnerabilities to grow their botnet to more than 30,000 infected hosts. The group is a low-skilled, financially-motivated actor that infects AWS, Azure, GCP, Alitun, and QCloud hosts after targeting publicly available systems running vulnerable versions of Docker, Redis, Confluence, and Apache. After gaining…

The cryptocurrency market has been in a bear market since the beginning of the year, and most projects have lost massive value. However, despite the bear market, hackers have not shied away from the sector, and millions of dollars have been stolen from the cryptocurrency market this year. The latest hack in the sector was on…

We’ve been watching GPU prices fall since the start of the year, but the past few weeks suggest things could get a lot worse — for the graphics card manufacturers and GPU vendors, that is — in the near future. GPU prices dropped 15% in May, and we’ve seen similar 10–15% drops each month for the…

Cybercrime is estimated to cost the world more than $10 trillion annually by 2025. If measured as the GDP of a country, that would represent the third biggest economy in the world after the U.S. and China. That shows that not only should governmental institutions and banks invest in cybersecurity but private corporations as well. In…

One of the challenges for the crypto industry is how many blockchains there are and how complex it is to move across them. This has led to the growth of bridges for people to send tokens across chains. But these bridging tools have come under attack by hackers, leading to major losses. Because crypto has become…

The FBI and Justice Department recently disrupted the activities of a hacking group that was sponsored by the North Korean government and that targeted U.S. hospitals with ransomware. The FBI and Justice Department recently disrupted the activities of a hacking group that was sponsored by the North Korean government and that targeted U.S. hospitals with ransomware,…

The FBI recently issued a warning to consumers about fraudulent crypto applications that have scammed 244 victims out of about $42.7 million since Oct. 2021. “The FBI has observed cyber criminals contacting US investors, fraudulently claiming to offer legitimate cryptocurrency investment services, and convincing investors to download fraudulent mobile apps, which the cyber criminals have used…

After a brutal few months for the price of Ethereum’s native token, Ether (ETH) has gone on a run. ETH is up over 41% in the last seven days, and is currently trading at around $1,555, according to CoinGecko. The token has climbed as high as $1,610 in the last 24-hours. This upward movement is the result…

Decentralised finance is blockchain applications that cut out intermediaries from financial products and services like loans, savings and swaps. It has its rewards but also carries plenty of risks. DeFi fundamentally uses blockchain technology to unlock value that traditional finance cannot. Rather than trusting a middleman like a bank or a fintech firm with their…

Arguably no piece of software has been more central to the most recent crypto craze than MetaMask. With tens of millions of users, the digital wallet system has become the main access point to Ethereum, the blockchain that has given rise to stablecoins like Tether, play-to-earn games like Axie Infinity, metaverses like Decentraland, and NFT…

A falling stock market is not bad for everyone. Sure, many investors lose out as their portfolios decline in value, but those who are just starting to invest or have underweighted equities can benefit from lower valuations, which tend to deliver higher returns over the long term. Naturally, equity markets do not fall without reason. As…

Celsius filing for bankruptcy this week surprised virtually no one. Once a platform freezes customer assets, it’s typically all over. But even though it was expected, it remains a really big deal for the industry. In October 2021, CEO Alex Mashinsky said the crypto lender had $25 billion in assets under management. Even as recently…

Microsoft has raised an alert over a ransomware gang that is apparently based in North Korea and has successfully compromised small business since September 2021. Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) is tracking the group as an emerging threat under the tag DEV-0530 and says the ‘H0lyGh0st’ payload has affected small businesses in multiple countries over…

Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler called out cryptocurrency lending companies for offering unrealistic yields today in an interview with Yahoo Finance. “If it’s too good to be true, then maybe it is,” Gensler said, referencing yields on crypto deposits ranging anywhere from 4% to 20% that were offered by numerous companies and marketed towards…