Daily Crypto News | December 28th, 2022
Welcome to Barmy’s Daily Crypto News – December 28th, 2022
1. North Korean hacker – BlueNoroff has renewed its targeting of venture capital firms, crypto startups and banks
According to Kaspersky, BlueNoroff is investigating new ways to spread its malware after experiencing a pause for the majority of the year.
More than 70 fictitious websites created by BlueNoroff imitate banks and venture capital businesses. The majority of the fakes pretended to be well-known Japanese businesses, although some also claimed to be American and Vietnamese businesses. According to the study, the gang has been experimenting with new file types and other virus delivery techniques.
Once installed, its malware avoids Windows Mark-of-the-Web security alerts regarding content downloads and then proceeds to “intercept large cryptocurrency transfers, changing the recipient’s address and pushing the transfer amount to the limit, essentially draining the account in a single transaction.”
2. Argo blockchain has suspended trading of its American depositary shares (ADS) on Nasdaq
Due to an announcement that would be made on December 28 as well as the fact that the London Stock Exchange will be closed on December 27, the company said it had to halt trading. Argo stated that it anticipates shares to resume trading on the Nasdaq on December 28. The announcement follows the company’s financial struggles and insolvency speculations brought on by rising energy prices and declining Bitcoin.
On December 9, Argo unintentionally gave a reporter access to a document that falsely claimed the company had filed for bankruptcy. In consequence, Nasdaq and the London Stock Exchange stopped trading its shares. As it had not really declared for bankruptcy, the team responded by asking that trading in its shares be allowed to restart.
The business acknowledged that it was “at risk of not having enough funds to support continuous business operations within the next month” at the time. It did say, though, that it was still making efforts to avoid Chapter 11 bankruptcy. On December 27, there was a new halt of trade that was not started by the stock exchange. Instead, Argo voluntarily asked for the suspension of share trading.
3. Defrost Finance is planning to return the funds to their rightful owners
Decentralized leverage-trading platform Defrost Finance intends to refund the money to its rightful owners after recovering the cash that were misappropriated in a recent flash loan scam. Defrost underlined that it will soon be returning the assets to their original proprietors and will be following a particular procedure in a Medium post.
All Ether will be converted into stablecoins like Dai at the on-chain market rate as part of the process. Then, the Ethereum blockchain will transfer all stablecoins into Avalanche. The team will also examine on-chain data in addition to these to determine “who possessed what” prior to the attack. The Defrost team stated that they will release the data to the public after the scan process was finished.
After everything is finished, the team will launch a smart contract that will enable users to reclaim their assets that have already been converted into stablecoins back to their original wallet addresses.
4. US authorities are looking into the whereabouts of $372M in lost digital assets from FTX and FTX US
On December 27, the now-defunct cryptocurrency exchanges FTX and FTX US reported that nearly $372 million in lost digital assets were missing, prompting the US Department of Justice to open an investigation into their whereabouts. FTX alerted consumers to unusual wallet activity on Nov. 12 in the midst of its bankruptcy and internal breakdown about at least 228,523 Ether transferred out of the exchange from an unidentified offender.
According to a report published on Nov. 20 by blockchain forensics company Elliptic, the unidentified culprit exchanged the $477 million worth of stolen ether for RenBTC before bridging it to bitcoin using the RenBridge service. Elliptic has accused Ren of “laundering hundreds of millions of dollars in cryptocurrency” since Ren was acquired by the FTX-affiliated hedge fund Alameda Research in 2021.
ZachXBT, a crypto analyst, claimed that a portion of the stolen money was sent to the Singapore-based exchange OKX via a Bitcoin mixer in the issue’s final known update on November 29. The managing director of OKX, Lennix Lai, reacted, saying, “OKX is aware of the matter and the team is looking into the wallet flow.”
5. The Argentine Soccer Association, AFA, is now entering the metaverse
In order to give its customers the opportunity to enter the metaverse and enjoy the advantages of a deeper relationship with teams and well-known players, the organization has partnered with Upland, a real-life mapping metaverse project.
The cooperation between Upland and the AFA will reportedly comprise digital representations of all the league’s teams, including players, tickets, games, historical moments, and platform-exclusive experiences. In theory, this will also help the league draw in younger, Web3-focused supporters as well as digital soccer collectors.
The four-year arrangement, the first of its kind by the AFA, intends to increase revenue for the Argentine Soccer League by allowing the sale of numerous licensed digital assets. This metaverse experience won’t be entirely one-way, though, because the site will permit fans to sell these digital artifacts to other people, creating a secondary market.
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