Get your daily, bite-sized digest of cryptoasset and blockchain-related news – investigating the stories flying under the radar of today’s crypto news.
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Security news
- Blockchain security company BlockSec revealed that, on September 16, they detected that attackers successfully harvested “lots” of ETHW by replaying the message (i.e., the calldata) of the proof-of-stake (PoS) chain on EthereumPoW (aka the proof-of-work (PoW) chain). The attacker “first transferred 200 WETH through the Omni bridge of the Gnosis chain, and then replayed the same message on the PoW chain and got extra 200 ETHW. By doing so, the balance of the chain contract deployed on the PoW chain could be drained,” the report said. The root cause of the exploitation is that the Omni bridge on the PoW chain uses the old chainId and doesn’t correctly verify the actual chainId of the cross-chain message – and similar issues may exist in other protocols, the firm warned.
- A hacker drained $3.3 million from multiple Ethereum (ETH) addresses generated with a tool called Profanity, according to on-chain data from Etherscan and security analyst ZachXBT. These are “vanity addresses” – a type of custom wallet that contains identifiable names or numbers within them. Decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator 1inch warned in a report last week that vanity addresses generated with Profanity were not secure.
- Chains.com, a developer of a stack of interconnected cryptocurrency and NFT products for retail users and SMBs, incorporated a suite of digital-asset custody, transfer, and settlement technology from digital asset security and asset transfer platform Fireblocks to raise the level of security protocols and protect customers’ digital assets via its wallet infrastructure as well as its own treasury and funds. Fireblocks will also support Chains.com’s native token, CHA, making it available globally to institutional users through the Fireblocks Network, the announcement said.
Payments news
- Crypto exchange Binance announced that it partnered with Ukrainian supermarket chain VARUS and that it will facilitate crypto payments for customers buying groceries. Transactions will take place through Binance Pay Wallet, while the service will be available in nine cities (Kyiv, Dnipro, Kamianske, Kryvyi Rih, Zaporizhzhia, Brovary, Nikopol, Vyshhorod, and Pavlograd).
Investment news
- Sam Bankman-Fried, the CEO of major crypto exchange FTX, said in an interview with CNBC’s Squawk Box that the exchange has at least $1 billion to deploy on acquisitions and bailouts. “You get to definitional issues here of how much should we really feel comfortable deploying. Saying that there’s another ballpark billion that is, sort of, completely unencumbered, certainly will get you within a factor of two of the right answer,” Bankman-Fired said.
- Crypto miner Bitdeer Technologies has bought a maximum security physical safety vault in Singapore, Le Freeport, for $28.4 million, Bloomberg reported, citing people with knowledge of the matter. Bitdeer, which is backed by crypto billionaire Jihan Wu, bought the repository for fine art, precious gems, and gold and silver bars in July, the report said.
- Pan-African cryptocurrency exchange Yellow Card Financial announced the close of its $40M Series B funding. The round was led by Polychain Capital, with participation from Valar Ventures, Third Prime Ventures, Sozo Ventures, Castle Island Ventures, Fabric Ventures, DG Daiwa Ventures, The Raba Partnership, Jon Weiner, Alex Wilson, Pat Duffy, and more. The funding will enable the company to drive business growth, continue its expansion across the continent, develop new product innovations, and advance strategic partnerships across Africa, they said.
Regulation news
- The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the chief financial regulator in the United Kingdom, issued a warning to Bahama-based crypto exchange FTX, claiming it operates without authorization. “This firm is not authorised by us and is targeting people in the UK. You will not have access to the Financial Ombudsman Service or be protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS), so you are unlikely to get your money back if things go wrong,” the regulator said.
- Australian Liberal Senator Andrew Bragg has released a new draft bill (called the Digital Assets (Market Regulation) Bill 2022) aimed at regulating digital asset exchanges, stablecoins, and China’s central bank digital currency (CBDC), the e-Yuan. “The Labor Government believes cryptocurrency is a “scam” and is starting its work from scratch,” wrote Bragg. “The consequence of Labor’s inaction is clear. Australia is falling behind on consumer protection and investment promotion.”
Blockchain news
- Cardano (ADA) founder Charles Hoskinson said that the Vasil hard fork implementation is now in its final stage after the hard fork combinator request was accepted. “The Vasil era has begun,” he said, adding that “there’s no going back now.” The upgrade is scheduled for September 22, but Hoskinson stated that some of the upgrade effects would become more visible by September 27 due to certain technical reasons.
- Compliance provider Blockpass said it partnered with Uplift, an initial DEX offering (IDO) launchpad platform that facilitates and accelerates the launch of innovative blockchain projects. Besides providing know-your-customer (KYC) options for Uplift’s platform, Blockpass and Uplift will be conducting AMAs and giveaways, as well as rewarding both LIFT tokens and facilitating IDO access to Blockpass users, they said.
Mining news
- EVGA, one of the largest manufacturers of graphics card add-in boards, said that it will not carry the next generation graphics cards, though it will continue to support the existing current generation products, per the announcement. This follows the Ethereum Merge that occurred last week.
- Canadian Bitcoin (BTC) miner Bitfarms started production in Argentina, increasing its computing power, or hashrate, to 4.1 exahash/second (EH/s), said the press release. The initial start-up adds 10 MW of capacity, increasing total corporate capacity to 176 MW. Throughout the remainder of Q3 2022 and during Q4 2022, the company plans to light up additional 10 MW increments with a goal of the entire 50 MW being energized by December 31, 2022.
- Bitcoin miner TeraWulf announced today the successful energization of its initial batch of over 3,000 S19 XP mining machines from the previously announced agreement with Bitcoin mining hardware manufacturer Bitmain for its Lake Mariner facility in New York, USA. Together with the Bitmain S19 XPs recently installed, TeraWulf now has owned hashing capacity in excess of 0.67 EH/s (5,471 miners) online plus approximately 0.65 EH/s (6,500 miners) of hosted hashing capacity for a total of over 1.3 EH/s operational at Lake Mariner.
NFT news
- KuCoin Labs, the investment and incubation arm of the KuCoin ecosystem, has announced its co-incubation with Republic Capital in BidShop.io, a startup that creates additional liquidity streams for non-fungible token (NFT) holders. In the future, KuCoin Labs will further explore potential and diversified collaborations with BidShop.io, they said.
