In the midst of grappling with the aftermath of the recent $100 million Poloniex hack, the cryptocurrency community faces yet another cybersecurity menace that threatens to jeopardize billions of dollars in crypto assets.
A group of blockchain security experts uncovered this threat, which could have far-reaching implications for the crypto ecosystem.
On November 14, cybersecurity firm Unciphered divulged details about a vulnerability they’ve named “Randstorm.”
This vulnerability, they assert, has the potential to impact numerous crypto wallets created through web browsers from 2011 to 2015.
The discovery came about when the company was attempting to recover a Bitcoin wallet, revealing a potential issue with wallets generated by BitcoinJS and its associated projects.
According to Unciphered’s assessment, this issue has the potential to affect millions of wallets, collectively holding approximately $2.1 billion in cryptocurrencies.
Furthermore, Unciphered has raised concerns about the broader scope of this vulnerability, suggesting that it may extend to multiple blockchains and projects.
Beyond Bitcoin (BTC), the company has specifically pointed out that cryptocurrencies such as Dogecoin, Litecoin, and Zcash may also harbor this vulnerability.
The urgency of the situation is underscored by Unciphered’s assertion that many individuals have already received alerts regarding this problem.
READ MORE: Blockchain Association Challenges IRS Over Cryptocurrency Tax Regulations
For those who utilized web browsers to generate crypto wallets between 2011 and 2015, Unciphered strongly recommends transferring their assets to wallets generated using more recent and trusted software. Their advice is clear:
“If you are an individual who has generated a self-custody wallet using a web browser before 2016, you should consider moving your funds to a more recently created wallet generated by trusted software.”
Although Unciphered confirmed that not all affected wallets are equally vulnerable, they stressed that the vulnerability is exploitable.
However, they have refrained from disclosing specific details about the exploit to prevent any potential misuse by malicious actors within the crypto space.
In conclusion, the crypto community faces a new and potentially significant cybersecurity threat in the form of the Randstorm vulnerability.
This discovery serves as a reminder of the importance of regularly updating and securing crypto wallets, especially for those who generated wallets during the 2011-2015 timeframe, as their assets may be at risk.
As the crypto landscape continues to evolve, vigilance and proactive security measures are paramount to safeguarding valuable assets in this digital realm.
Singapore, Singapore, November 15th, 2023, Chainwire
BinaryX, a GameFi and Initial Game Offering (IGO) platform, today announced the launch of Pancake Mayor, a new city-building simulator on the newly launched PancakeSwap Gaming Marketplace.
Pancake Mayor: City Building Simulator
Pancake Mayor is a free-to-play casual city-building game where players can obtain in-game currency, Mayor Cash, to upgrade and build their own cities, inspired by famous cities around the world. Players can accumulate Mayor Cash by playing a spin-the-wheel mini-game, raiding other players’ cities, and participating in special events.
“We designed Pancake Mayor for the everyday gamer – it offers a fun, lighthearted and rewarding experience for our users,” said Rudy S., Head of Growth at BinaryX. “Pancake Mayor is the first of many hyper casual games that we will develop in the play-to-earn space, and it will provide our gamers with a new way to utilize, engage, and earn with BinaryX. We are excited to launch on PancakeSwap’s Gaming Marketplace to bring Pancake Mayor to new users.”
Hyper casual games are becoming increasingly popular, and Pancake Mayor is positioned to appeal to a wide range of gamers. The game is easy to play and offers a variety of ways to earn rewards, making it a great choice for both casual and experienced gamers alike.
“PancakeSwap’s Gaming Marketplace marks an exciting new chapter in our continued commitment to innovation and enhancing the user experience. We invite our community, gamers, and game developers to join us in creating a gaming ecosystem that is vibrant, innovative, and, above all, incredibly fun,” said Chef Mochi, Head of PancakeSwap.
Open Test Launch
Pancake Mayor will be launched with an Open Test lasting for 7 days from 15 November, 2023, 9pm GMT+8 to 21 November, 2023, 9pm GMT+8. During this period, players can enjoy all game content for free, including tournament events, Crazy Vault gameplay, point activities, and more. After the test concludes, the game will be wiped and reset. For more game content and activities, follow BinaryX on social media.
Watch the trailer of Pancake Mayor
About BinaryX
BinaryX is a leading GameFi and IGO platform committed to delivering cutting-edge gaming experiences backed by blockchain technology.
Offering Initial Game Offering (IGO) services, BinaryX gives game developers the opportunity to launch their GameFi projects on their platform, and for users to get early access to innovative new games.
As one of the top projects on the BNB Chain, BinaryX has a vast community of more than 100k coin holders. With the token BNX, BinaryX is also one of the top few metaverse projects by trading volume on the BNB chain, with a strong market cap.
For more information, please visit www.binaryx.pro
For media inquiries, please contact: [email protected]
About PancakeSwap
PancakeSwap is a leading multichain decentralized exchange that operates on an automated market maker (AMM) model and is available across 9 chains: BNB Chain, Ethereum, Aptos, Polygon zkEVM, zkSync Era, Arbitrum One, Linea, Base, and opBNB. Launched in 2020, PancakeSwap is one of the most popular DEXs in the cryptocurrency industry due to its low transaction fees, high-speed trading, and user-friendly platform. PancakeSwap has over $614 billion in total trading volume and over $1.39 billion in total liquidity locked, making it the leading multichain DEX in the industry.
For more information, visit https://pancakeswap.finance/.
For media inquiries, please contact
PancakeSwap Team
Email: [email protected]
Contact
Despite undergoing multiple security audits, Raft, a decentralized U.S. dollar stablecoin protocol, recently fell victim to a security breach resulting in a substantial loss of $6.7 million.
The incident, detailed in a post-mortem report released on November 13th, involved a hacker who had borrowed 6,000 Coinbase-wrapped staked Ether (cbETH) from the decentralized finance platform Aave.
This borrowed cbETH was then transferred to Raft, where the attacker exploited a smart contract glitch to mint an astonishing 6.7 million R tokens, which constitute Raft’s stablecoin.
The ill-gotten funds were promptly funneled off the platform through liquidity pools on decentralized exchanges Balancer and Uniswap, ultimately yielding the hacker $3.6 million in gains.
The attack had a detrimental impact on the R stablecoin’s peg to the U.S. dollar.
The post-mortem report identified the primary cause of the incident as a precision calculation issue when minting share tokens, enabling the attacker to amass extra share tokens.
The attacker capitalized on the amplified index value, significantly boosting the value of their shares.
This security lapse went unnoticed despite the smart contracts having undergone audits by blockchain security firms Trail of Bits and Hats Finance, highlighting the unfortunate inability of these audits to detect the vulnerabilities that led to the breach.
READ MORE: Spanish Regulator Takes Action Against Fraudulent Crypto Promoters
In response to the incident, Raft has taken a series of measures.
They have filed a police report and are collaborating with centralized exchanges to trace the flow of the stolen funds.
Currently, all of Raft’s smart contracts remain suspended. However, users who had minted R tokens still have the option to settle their positions and recover their collateral.
This event serves as another sobering reminder of the ongoing challenges and risks associated with decentralized stablecoins.
It underscores the critical importance of implementing robust security measures and maintaining vigilance within the DeFi space.
This incident is not an isolated case within the decentralized stablecoin realm.
In December 2022, the decentralized stablecoin HAY also experienced a depegging from the U.S. dollar due to a hacker exploiting a smart contract glitch, enabling them to mint 16 million HAY tokens without proper collateral.
HAY has since managed to reestablish its peg, partly due to the protocol’s requirement of a collateralization ratio of 152% at the time of the exploit, which served as a risk management safeguard.
The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit kicked off on November 11th in San Francisco, promising an eventful week of discussions and meetings.
While the anticipated meeting between United States President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping on November 15th captures the spotlight, the finance ministers’ gathering also holds significant importance within the organization.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, addressing the finance ministers’ meeting on November 13th, outlined their agenda, emphasizing a focus on long-term priorities with a strong emphasis on sustainability.
Two key sessions are planned, one dedicated to supply-side economics and another to digital assets.
Yellen specifically highlighted unbacked crypto assets, stablecoins, and central bank digital currencies as topics of discussion.
Yellen expressed the importance of engaging with the private sector to gain a deeper understanding of the tools that policymakers can utilize to ensure the responsible development and utilization of digital assets.
She invited perspectives on the role of digital assets and blockchain technologies in financial systems and inquired about regulatory oversight strategies.
READ MORE: Bitcoin Mining Soars to Annual All-Time High, Surpasses $44 Million in Daily Rewards
In the lead-up to the summit, Yellen had a meeting with top Chinese economic official He Lifeng on November 9th and 10th. It’s worth noting that China has effectively banned cryptocurrency trading since 2021 but has emerged as a global leader in central bank digital currency development.
The perspectives shared during the November 13th meeting may diverge from Yellen’s own stance, as the Biden administration is generally perceived as cautious or less favorable toward cryptocurrencies.
Meanwhile, many view Asia as taking the lead in blockchain development, with notable advancements in the metaverse, cryptocurrency trading, and adoption across various Asian economies.
APEC comprises 21 Pacific-region “economies” spanning Asia, North America, and South America.
Its unique membership structure accommodates economies rather than countries, enabling participation from entities like Hong Kong and Taiwan without generating controversy.
Notably, Ripple played a significant role as a diamond-level sponsor of the summit, underscoring the growing influence of blockchain and digital assets in the global economic landscape.
In summary, the APEC summit’s finance ministers’ meeting underscores the growing importance of digital assets and sustainability in the regional economy.
While the U.S. and China differ in their approaches to cryptocurrency, the summit provides a platform for dialogue and collaboration among diverse economies seeking to navigate the evolving financial landscape.
The price of a memecoin named after Elon Musk’s AI project “Grok” took a nosedive, plummeting by over 70% after blockchain investigator ZachXBT alleged that the token’s social media presence was recycled from a previous scam token project.
In a tweet on November 13, ZachXBT shared screenshots revealing that various social media accounts and websites associated with the Grok (GROK) token were repurposed from abandoned projects, including a memecoin called ANDY, which had seen a significant decline from its all-time high.
In the aftermath of ZachXBT’s tweet, the memecoin community witnessed GROK’s price plummet by a staggering 74%, dropping from its all-time high of $0.027 to a low of $0.007 in just five hours.
Subsequently, the price partially recovered to $0.011, as per data from DexTools.
In a subsequent post, ZachXBT highlighted an Etherscan transaction that showed the GROK team sending approximately $1.7 million worth of the token to a burn address, a move aimed at reducing the token’s supply and restoring confidence in it.
READ MORE: Bitcoin Mining Soars to Annual All-Time High, Surpasses $44 Million in Daily Rewards
The official GROK token account, in a November 14 post, claimed that the development team had burned all the tokens from the deployer address, totaling around 180 million GROK, valued at approximately $2 million at the current market prices.
At its peak price of $0.027 on November 13, GROK had a market capitalization of nearly $200 million, establishing itself as one of the largest new memecoins in the current cycle.
GROK was launched on November 5, coinciding with Elon Musk’s announcement of Grok AI, purportedly a competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
In the following week, the memecoin’s value experienced an astonishing 33,650% surge, driven by memecoin traders looking to capitalize on the hype.
In summary, the price of the Grok memecoin experienced a dramatic drop following allegations of recycled social media accounts and a subsequent token burn attempt by the development team.
This rollercoaster ride in value occurred amid the fervor surrounding Elon Musk’s Grok AI project, which had initially fueled the memecoin’s meteoric rise.
In less than two months, institutional investment in Bitcoin has witnessed a staggering influx of over $1 billion, signaling a resurgence in interest in cryptocurrencies.
CoinShares, a prominent crypto asset management firm, highlighted this remarkable trend in its latest weekly report on November 13, underscoring the growing capital flow into Bitcoin and altcoins.
The surge in Bitcoin, Ether, and select altcoin prices can be attributed to the mounting excitement surrounding the potential approval of the United States’ first spot exchange-traded fund (ETF).
Since November 2022, the total market capitalization of the cryptocurrency market has skyrocketed by $600 billion, according to data from TradingView.
However, the past two months have witnessed a substantial uptick in funds allocated to crypto investment products, with CoinShares revealing, “Digital asset investment products saw inflows totaling US$293 million last week, bringing this 7-week run of inflows past the US$1 billion mark, leaving year-to-date inflows at US$1.14 billion, making it the third-highest yearly inflows on record.”
One of the most noteworthy statistics indicating the resurgence of crypto in 2023 is the Assets Under Management (AUM) of crypto exchange-traded products (ETPs).
Since the beginning of the year, this figure has nearly doubled, with a remarkable 10% increase occurring in just the past week.
CoinShares noted, “At US$44.3 billion, total AuM is now the highest since the major crypto fund failures in May 2022.”
READ MORE: Ripple CEO Advocates Multichain Future and Regulatory Clarity at Ripple Swell 2023
Moreover, the report highlighted that investors seeking long positions in Bitcoin accounted for the majority of the trading volume.
“Bitcoin saw inflows totaling US$240 million last week, pushing year-to-date inflows to US$1.08 billion, while short-bitcoin saw US$7 million outflows, indicative of continued positive sentiment,” the report stated.
This renewed interest has also spurred on-chain analytics firm Glassnode to reevaluate Bitcoin supply dynamics.
As the fourth halving event approaches, Bitcoin holdings for storage now exceed the amount mined by a factor of 2.4.
This development signifies a significant milestone for Bitcoin, attracting intrigue from investors due to its impressive historical returns.
Furthermore, Philip Swift, the creator of the statistics platform Look Into Bitcoin, pointed out the increasing number of wallet entities, both large and small, as a sign of growing adoption.
It’s important to note that this article does not offer investment advice or recommendations.
All investment and trading decisions involve risk, and readers are advised to conduct their own research and due diligence before making any investment decisions.
Lisbon, Portugal, November 14th, 2023, Chainwire
cheqd, the startup that enables users and organizations to gain control and portability of their data, has announced the availability of its Creds Creator Studio at the 2023 Web Summit in Lisbon. Kicking off with an initial six launch partners, Creds Creator Studio enables companies to create Verifiable Credentials that build community trust and security, and supercharge their marketing activities. They can do so in an easy and affordable way using Creds’ no-code platform before monetizing those Credentials via cheqd’s payments infrastructure.
In the digital age, impersonation and fraud have reached unprecedented levels of harm. Worse still, the proliferation of generative AI technology has given bad actors powerful tools to deceive and manipulate on a mass scale, further eroding trust in digital interactions. Compounding this is a lack of financial incentive to issue Trusted Data or Credentials, leaving a critical gap in the ecosystem. Creds emerges as a solution — it offers a comprehensive vertical suite that not only facilitates the creation of trust but also provides opportunities to monetize it.
Building and issuing Credentials through Creds’ user-friendly interface is incredibly straightforward and easy. Organizations simply need to tailor the credential’s information and it will be available almost instantly. From logging in to completion typically takes less than two minutes.
Creds is integrated with cheqd’s Credential Payments feature, which enables organizations and users to exchange and transact creds. It paves the way for organizations to create new business models within their communities and give users a way to monetize their reputation.
Verifiable Credentials: Building Communities, Reputations & Trust
Reputation in Web3 platforms is often confined and cannot be transferred to nor recognized by other platforms. Creds, however, breaks this siloed approach, offering the first opportunity for reputation data to be seamlessly ported, combined and shared across various communities and platforms, fostering more interconnected, versatile and trusted ecosystems.
Organizations can issue Verifiable Credentials with Creds to create a unique reputation and trust system as well as loyalty programs for their communities that’s completely secure, portable and private. For individuals, Creds can act as verifiers of status or serve as their public profile, providing a way for users (individuals and organizations) to verify they are who they say they are and prove ownership of handles, wallets, roles, skills, and reputations within and beyond their communities.
Creds Creator Studio launches with an initial six partners in order to showcase the multitude of Web3 use cases that are uniquely enabled by Creds:
- Outlier Ventures, the leading Web3 accelerator with a portfolio of Web3 companies from across the globe including cheqd, will make Creds available to its alumni and founders, enabling them and their projects to be quickly verified as part of its ecosystem. In this way, Creds will help Outlier Ventures to create more trust in its portfolio companies and enable them to build stronger relationships with their partners and suppliers.
- Injective, the Layer-1 blockchain shaping the future of decentralized finance, plans to utilize Creds to enable its community to aggregate their reputations across the numerous quest platforms it’s actively engaged with. Creds will help Injective identify its most active ambassadors and superfans by providing them with greater incentives and rewards, growing its community more rapidly and strengthening the reputation of its biggest fans.
- Secret Network is integrating Creds into its ambassador program, allowing for the monitoring and rewarding of community members as they progress through their learning journeys. To become a “Secret Agent” or ambassador for Secret Network, users are incentivised to complete a series of activities and assignments to familiarize themselves with the platform’s products and services. The introduction of Creds is intended to expedite this program by providing Secret Agents with a “gamified” tool to monitor their progress, grow reputation, and unlock even greater rewards.
- Regen Network is building a platform to originate and invest in high-integrity carbon and biodiversity credits from ecological regeneration projects. It’s planning to leverage Creds so developers can certify that the ecological credits they offer are verifiably nature-positive and sequester carbon. Creds will help to ensure greater trust in Regen Network’s marketplace, reassuring organizations that they’re able to meet their climate commitments by acquiring carbon credits which are guaranteed to restore biodiversity and reverse the effects of climate change.
- RescuePals, the NFT-based 2D RPG game that aims to incentivize and tokenize animal welfare, will start issuing Creds to players to certify their gaming achievements and verify their participation in community events. With RescuePals, in-game characters and items are digital twin copies of real-world animal rescues, represented by unique NFTs. Each NFT will be verified by Creds in order to certify they represent a tangible donation towards animal welfare. Furthermore, RescuePals plans on using certain Creds to create governance permissions where users can shape future real-world impact campaigns and game expansions.
- Kleomedes DAO is looking at ways to facilitate gamification within its community and gate governance using Creds. As the first decentralized, proof-of-stake and community-governed validator in the Cosmos ecosystem, it aims to support multiple blockchains that create value and build innovative products for the community. Creds will provide the backbone of an innovative reward system funded by validator profits that seeks to incentivize the Cosmos community to act as delegators and participate in its ongoing governance, promotion and development.
By providing organizations with a simple way to quickly create Credentials, cheqd is fostering the creation of the Trusted Data Markets needed to facilitate widespread adoption of SSI. With Trusted Data Markets, cheqd provides a strong incentive for users to issue verifiable Credentials while motivating organizations to return the control of data to individuals.
Research by cheqd shows that the global value of the SSI market may reach as much as $0.55 trillion by 2026. By offering its industry-first Credential Payments that allow owners of verifiable data to retain full privacy, cheqd sets itself apart from other identity networks. The next step for Creds is to enter more traditional markets such as gaming, loyalty, and entertainment, where the demand for Verifiable Credentials already exists.
Creds emphasizes the importance of trust as a key asset for organizations, advocating for its development and sustainability. The focus of Creds is on enhancing community relations and promoting a culture of trust and integrity.
About cheqd
cheqd (cheqd.io) is a privacy-preserving payment and credential network that allows users and organisations to gain control and portability of their data. cheqd builds upon Decentralised Identity (DID), Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI), and Digital or Verifiable Credentials (VCs) with payment infrastructure to create Trusted Data markets as an entirely new industry category.
With its technology, cheqd is creating a new paradigm around Trusted Data economies such as re-usable KYC in Web3, preference data markets, and others where the user is at the centre. It empowers consumers and businesses with full ownership, portability, and control over their data and identities. In addition, this data can be transacted within a payment network that prioritises individual privacy and market-first principles. The scale of distribution is unmatched as cheqd engages with organisations across Lending, Supply Chain, eCommerce, Education, Manufacturing, Gaming, and other sectors.
cheqd also features a decentralised reputation platform (creds.xyz) to incentivise and engage Web3 communities through quest or learning credentials, as well as protect users from fraud and scamming across Discord, Telegram and beyond.
Contact
Avishay Litani
[email protected]
München, Germany, November 14th, 2023, Chainwire
- Alterscope (formerly Solity Network), a leading technology company, has unveiled its web3 Risk Infrastructure for protocol teams and investment firms
- Due to the crypto space’s highly interconnected nature, decentralized financial ecosystems are highly prone to systemic risks. This will change in the future with the launch of Alterscope.
- Altersope is on a mission to make the crypto industry smarter and more transparent
Alterscope (formerly known as Solity Network) unveiled at the Risk Summit in Istanbul on the 14th of November 2023 its risk infrastructure that supports protocol teams and investment firms to master the contingencies of web3.
Benedikt Eikmanns, Co-founder & CEO of Alterscope, mentioned: “Technical fundamentals in decentralized ecosystems are uncharted territory for risk assessment – until now. Alterscope equips its users with the right tools.”
It’s impossible to assess every potential risk in web3 and lacks standards for assessing protocol-specific risks. Alterscope provides transparency on critical interdependencies between protocols, digital assets, and underlying blockchains. Thereby, Alterscope gives insights into decentralized protocols and enables real-time risk processing for protocol teams and investment firms. In addition, Alterscope enables users to perform in-depth due diligence on protocols, create customizable risk scores, and monitor critical protocol events in real-time. The vision of Alterscope is to enable collective intelligence to prevent systemic risk in tomorrow’s financial systems.
In a statement by Marijo Radman, the CTO and Co-Founder of Alterscope, mentioned: “Alterscope creates transparency around decentralized protocols, enabling diversification at the technical-fundamental level and amplifying internal risk control processes.”
Altersope is on a mission to make the crypto industry smarter and more transparent. In specific, Alterscope provides insights into decentralized protocols, enables assessments of their interdependencies, and lays the foundation for novel risk-primitives.
Marijo Radman also mentioned: “Due to the composable tech stack of the decentralized ecosystems and interconnectedness of its base components like chains, protocols, and middlewares, disruptions in the technical fundamentals have induced disastrous events over the last 18 months. This may change with the launch of Alterscope and its advanced real-time analytics capabilities.”
Protocol teams are enabled to automatize their risk management, assess technical fundamental risks when deciding on protocol integrations, and obtain real-time monitoring of integrated protocols. Furthermore, Alterscope provides transparency for protocol stakeholders and unlocks new types of ecosystem dashboards that enable end users to do their own research on decentralized protocols. Thereby, Alterscope helps decentralized networks to attract and retain liquidity as well as to grow their communities.
Investment firms benefit from the capability to conduct thorough Know Your Protocol (KYP) due diligence across various protocols and liquidity pools, facilitating both pre- and post-capital allocation. Additionally, Alterscope provides an unparalleled risk toolkit offering: advanced risk research analysis, and robust support for asset allocation and portfolio construction. In addition, Alerscope empowers risk optimization, continuous risk monitoring, and seamless portfolio rebalancing.
Benefits for protocol teams and investment firms:
- Automatize web3 risk management
- Get actionable insights on protocol-related risks
- Make protocol integration decisions faster and more reliable
- Create transparency for protocol stakeholders
- Enable risk-adjusted vault and portfolio rebalancing
- Access clean and trustworthy crypto data
- Improve trading algorithms
- Build novel risk primitives in DeFi
Alterscope aims to establish itself as the leader in real-time risk intelligence for the digital assets space, setting high standards to ensure accurate risk assessment, all consolidated in one place and delivered in real-time, giving decentralized and centralized entities alike the confidence to steer and interact with decentralized economies.
About Alterscope (formerly Solity Network)
Alterscope (formerly Solity Network) provides the infrastructure for web3 to enable the real-time processing of fundamental risks across chains, protocols, and liquidity pools. By aggregating multi-chain risk parameters, Alterscope creates transparency, sets the stage for machine learning, and enables novel risk primitives in web3.
Contact
CMO
Marta Rozsa
Alterscope
[email protected]
An employee of FTX’s charity division, Ross Rheingans-Yoo, is currently embroiled in a legal battle to receive the remaining $275,000 of his 2022 salary bonus.
Rheingans-Yoo’s lawyers argue that only $375,000 out of his $650,000 bonus has been paid by FTX, claiming that the remaining funds were owed when the crypto exchange filed for bankruptcy in November 2022.
This latest development comes as a response to FTX’s objection, which was filed on October 30th.
In his response, Rheingans-Yoo shared a portion of a Google Doc created by FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried, outlining his employment terms at the FTX Foundation, including a $100,000 base salary.
He stated that Bankman-Fried had informed him about this in a memo.
Rheingans-Yoo emphasized that he was not part of Bankman-Fried’s “inner circle” and had no knowledge of FTX’s alleged misappropriation of customer funds.
According to his lawyers, he was merely a loyal employee caught in a situation not of his making.
Rheingans-Yoo asserts that he is entitled to an additional $650,000 designated for charitable donations, a prepetition salary payment of approximately $5,700, and a post-petition salary of at least $62,800.
READ MORE: Spanish Regulator Takes Action Against Fraudulent Crypto Promoters
FTX’s advisers contend that Rheingans-Yoo has already received his full bonus because he had chosen to have a portion of it repaid via options in the company’s corporate affiliates before the bankruptcy filing. However, Rheingans-Yoo disputes this claim.
The ultimate decision regarding Rheingans-Yoo’s bonus will rest with a Delaware bankruptcy judge overseeing FTX’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings.
Notably, FTX had previously sued Rheingans-Yoo’s Latona Biosciences Group, Sam Bankman-Fried, and several other defendants in July.
The lawsuit sought the return of $71.6 million in investments and donations allegedly directed to various life science companies. FTX alleges that Rheingans-Yoo and Bankman-Fried personally benefited from these transactions, while FTX and Alameda Research did not.
The crypto exchange claims that these transfers were made with the intent to hinder, delay, or defraud present or future creditors, a fact known by the FTX Foundation, Latona, and Bankman-Fried.
Rheingans-Yoo maintains that his work at Latona involved analyzing potential recipients, engaging with their founders and executives, and conducting due diligence, all with the aim of producing positive societal outcomes.
The outcome of this legal dispute will undoubtedly have significant implications for both parties involved.
Taiwanese cryptocurrency exchange Bitgin finds itself under intense scrutiny as it faces allegations of money laundering, prompting an investigation by the country’s law enforcement agencies.
The unfolding saga centers around the arrest of Yuting Zhang, the firm’s Chief Operating Officer, who has been detained by Taiwanese authorities due to his purported involvement in the “Eighty-Eight Guild Hall” money laundering incident.
Earlier, Zhemin Guo and Chengwen Tu, both local businessmen, were accused by the police of orchestrating a colossal money laundering operation worth billions of dollars.
Their scheme allegedly involved the utilization of foreign exchange offices and cryptocurrency exchange accounts to launder illicit proceeds obtained through wire fraud activities conducted overseas.
Furthermore, Tu stands accused of deceiving the country’s tax authorities by falsely claiming 300 million New Taiwan dollars (equivalent to $9.28 million) in fraudulent export tax refunds through the illicit overseas sale of video game credits.
A notable aspect of this incident is Taiwan’s lack of an official licensing framework for cryptocurrency exchanges.
In a bid for self-regulation and to engage with political officials, Bitgin and its industry peers established the Virtual Asset Service Provider Preparatory Office back in September.
READ MORE: China’s New Phishing Scam Targets Crypto Users Through Fake Skype App
Commenting on the situation, Yuling Tsai, the General Counsel of the Taiwan VASP Association, remarked, “This time, a member of the preparatory group was involved in the investigation case.
The preparatory group immediately held a meeting and issued a public response.
The members involved in the case also took the initiative to suspend participation in the work of the preparatory group.”
Bitgin has sought to reassure its users, stating that its operations remain unaffected, and user rights are safeguarded.
According to the exchange, Chief Operating Officer Zhang’s involvement in the Eighty-Eight Guild Hall money laundering incident transpired from late 2021 to March 2022.
The exchange claims that Zhang ceased all communications with the implicated parties after discovering allegations of money laundering.
The exchange has also pledged full cooperation with the investigative authorities, offering all necessary assistance to ensure a smooth and expeditious investigation.
Bitgin expresses a hope that the facts surrounding the case can be clarified promptly, indicating its commitment to resolving the matter transparently.