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Cardano’s Vasil Now Supported In This Exchange

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Bitfinex, a state-of-the-art digital token trading platform has announced integrating Cardano’s Vasil hard fork, as per the post. The trading platform informed that the new features will begin on 27 Sept. without specifying a timeline.

However, it assured users that trading, deposits, or withdrawals will not be affected. Cardano’s most ambitious upgrade went online on September 22 following multiple delays.

Input Output Hong Kong [IOHK], the developer behind Cardano, posted a recent update on Twitter stating that 13 cryptocurrency exchanges, representing more than 87% of Cardano’s [ADA] liquidity, had offered support for the hard fork.

The largest digital asset exchange in the world, Binance, has too declared its support for the Vasil Hard Fork.

In a separate post, IOHK said that Coinbase is the only among the top exchanges for ADA liquidity that has its integration status labeled as “in process.”

However, Coinbase later tweeted that it would support the fork, stating that ADA transactions would be suspended “during the Cardano Vasil hard fork.”

The Vasil upgrade’s launch date was originally set for June, but it was twice postponed, most recently because of a flaw in Cardano’s previous node version that caused interoperability problems.

Meanwhile, data from the cryptocurrency monitoring website LunarCrush showed that social activity around ADA has increased significantly as a result of the Vasil hard fork’s successful completion.

Cardano’s Social Activity Reached Record High

Over 52,000 daily mentions of the token were found on social media, a record for the previous three months. The indicator’s overall value as determined by the 90-day results was greater than 2.3 million.

Analysts have highlighted that this might indicate the crypto community’s peak interest in Cardano, which is unusual given the current state of the crypto industry. However, it appears from the ADA price trend that even if investors are interested, they would rather remain cautious.

At the time of publication of this post, ADA is exchanging hands at $0.46 with a 24-hour trading volume of $676 million. The 8th biggest cryptocurrency is up 4.21% in the last 24 hours and its market cap stood at 15.7 billion.


Tether: Will Roche Freedman be terminated from class-action lawsuit?

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Following a demand from Kyle Roche to be removed as counsel in the case, Tether (USDT)-issuing company Tether wants law firm Roche Freedman “terminated” as counsel from the Bitfinex and Tether class-action lawsuit.

Tether and Bitfinex’s legal team asked for Roche’s legal team to be completely removed from the case and certified that they had returned or destroyed all defendant-issued documents and had not shared them with any third party, including Ava Labs, in a court order request submitted by Elliot Greenfield of Debevoise & Plimpton LLP on Wednesday.

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The request was made soon after Roche filed a notice of motion to withdraw from the Tether class action lawsuit due to continued fallout from a recent CryptoLeaks exposé that claimed the American attorney had a covert agreement to “damage” Ava Labs rivals in exchange for AVAX tokens and Ava Labs ownership.

Greenfield expressed “great worry” that Kyle Roche “may be abusing the discovery process” and “misusing material” he obtains through litigation after Roche’s words appeared on the CryptoLeaks website:

“He states that he is Ava Lab’s ‘crypto expert’ because he ‘sue[s] half the companies in the space’ and ’know[s] where this market is going’ because he has ‘seen the insides of every single crypto company.’”

Tether’s legal representative’s high claims

Greenfield emphasized that Roche Freedman LLP has issued a number of document requests seeking information that has no obvious link to the claims and defenses in this complaint and said that the issues are very pertinent to the case.

The attorney also emphasised the need for the documents to be suppressed, saying that they contain information that, if made public, would endanger the privacy and security of the defendants and their clients as well as confidential and competitively sensitive information about the defendants’ businesses.

The removal of Kyle Roche does little if anything to resolve the serious issues about the possible misuse of discovery, according to Greenfield, despite the fact that Roche has filed motions to withdraw himself from the case and others.

He further added,

“Even if he is no longer counsel of record, he would still have access to discovery materials, would retain the ability to direct the conduct of other lawyers at his firm, and would profit from any potential recovery in this lawsuit.”

Greenfield continued, saying the “removal would not prejudice Plaintiffs” because they would still be represented by “two other large and experienced firms,” including Schneider Wallace Cottrell Konecky LLP and Selendy Gay Elsberg PLLC.

Tether and Bitfinex were accused of manipulating the cryptocurrency market by releasing unbacked USDT “in an effort to communicate to the market that there was enormous, organic demand for crypto commodities,” according to the class-action lawsuit filed in 2019.

Roche has also recently dropped out of the litigation against Binance, Solana, Tron, BitMEX, Nexo, and Dfinity.

Tether Teams Up With Bitfinex To Unveil ‘Keet’, A P2P Video App

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Leading stablecoin issuer Tether and crypto exchange Bifinex in collaboration with Hypercore, a peer-to-peer data network has announced the launch of a fully encrypted video-calling application dubbed Keet [https://keet.io]. 

Per the announcement blog, the free video calling app employs peer-to-peer connections to facilitate real-time audio/video calls, text chat, and file sharing.

The new feature is powered by an innovative technology called Distributed Holepunching that allows users to find and connect to each other using only cryptographic key pairs upon authorization. 

This, according to the blog, empowers users with the ability to be in control of their own data and communication channels, without the prying eyes of any third party.

Compared to traditional video chat apps that typically use cloud-based software or outside servers as intermediaries to connect two or more people, Keet users would directly initiate a call to another individual’s computer, without the need of a central server or firms operating the network.

Speaking on the launch, Paolo Ardoino CTO of Tether and Bitfinex & CSO of Holepunch stated,

Web1 was the original form of the internet. It was designed to distribute information and knowledge on a global scale but it didn’t come without issues. Web2 improved upon many of the user experience roadblocks of Web1 but not without one major flaw- it requires users to give up control of their data, which has led to the rise of monopolies and growing privacy concerns.

Tether CTO- ” Freedom Is Lifeblood Of The Future”

Hence, the firms decided to work on the development of Holepunch and Keet without depending on any server. “It believes that freedom of choice, communication, and finances are the lifeblood of the future, and anything that will enhance those freedoms is worth amplifying,” Ardoino added.

Besides that, the project is being funded by both Tether and Bitfinex, and CTO Paolo Ardoino has been appointed as Chief Strategy Officer. 

As stated in the post, the Holepunch protocol will be closed-source until it completes alpha testing. It will then move to open source code in the fourth quarter of 2022.

Further, Keet’s built-in payments API will run, operate, and be powered by the Lightning Network with Tether tokens being the default micropayments system

Netflix is making a documentary on Bitfinex hack involving 120,000 bitcoin

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In the most significant criminal crypto crime case in history, Netflix plans to release a documentary series about a married couple’s alleged attempt to launder billions of dollars in stolen bitcoin.

On Tuesday, February 8, Ilya “Dutch” Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan were detained in their New York City residence on allegations of conspiring to launder about 120,000 Bitcoin linked to a 2016 breach of a crypto exchange bitfinex. The pair was accused of attempting to liquidate their digital assets by creating false identities and online accounts and purchasing real gold, NFTs, and other assets. The value of the stolen Bitcoin at the time of the hack was $71 million. The current value of the loot is worth nearly $5 billion. At the same time, investigators raced to track the money’s movement on the blockchain.

Chris Smith (FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened, Tiger King) will direct and executive produce alongside Nick Bilton (Fake Famous, The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley, American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road).

Netflix’s history with crypto

The latest announcement is the firm’s newest move into the crypto-crime world. Last year, Netflix announced the release of “Trust No One: The Hunt for the Crypto King,” a film about the QuadrigaCX exchange, whose founder Gerald Cotten died unexpectedly while possessing the keys to customers’ accounts, resulting in the loss of millions of dollars in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

On Tuesday, Lichtenstein and Morgan were detained in New York and charged with fraud and money laundering for allegedly attempting to launder 120,000 bitcoins from bitfinex. On the day of their arrest, the two appeared in federal court and face a new bail hearing on Monday.

The husband-and-wife team is currently awaiting trial, but they have been denied bail because the prosecutor believes they will abscond. According to Bloomberg, Lichtenstein kept a “personas” folder and a “Passport ideas” file on his computer containing links to counterfeit passports. According to the prosecutor, a plastic bag marked “burner phones” was discovered beneath their bed.

There is no point in question that this documentary series will break the bars.

Cryptocurrency theft: US couple arrested over laundering $4.5B in Bitcoin

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In what is being called the biggest-ever cryptocurrency theft, the U.S. Justice Department on 8th February 2022 said that it has seized a whopping $4.5 billion in bitcoin from a couple who has allegedly washed the illegal proceeds linked to the 2016 hack of the cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex resulting in the arrest of the duo on money laundering charges.

Prosecutors said New Yorkers Ilya “Dutch” Lichtenstein, 34, and his wife, Heather Morgan, 31, splurge the stolen money on items ranging from gold and non-fungible tokens to even a $500 Walmart gift card, prosecutors said.

Calling it as the Justice Department’s “biggest financial seizure”, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said, it shows cryptocurrency is “not a safe haven for criminals.”

Lichtenstein and Morgan face charges of conspiring to commit money laundering as well as to defraud the United States. The case was filed in a federal court in Washington, D.C.

How did the US D.O.J unearth the biggest cryptocurrency heist?

As per sources, the pair is accused of conspiring to launder 119,754 bitcoin stolen after a hacker gained illegal access into Bitfinex and initiated more than 2,000 unauthorized transactions. Justice Department officials said the value of the transactions at the time of the incident stood at $71 million in bitcoin, but with the rise in the currency’s value, the value now is at a staggering $4.5 billion.

That being said, a crucial clue that led to the case might have come from the 2017 bust of an underground digital market that used to launder a portion of the funds. U.S. officials said some of the money was transferred to AlphaBay, a version of eBay hosted on the dark web.

When the site was taken down, it likely led authorities to access AlphaBay’s internal transaction logs and linked them to a cryptocurrency account in Lichtenstein’s name, according to digital assets tracking firm Elliptic.

Bitfinex released a statement stating it was working with the Department of Justice to “establish our rights to a return of the stolen bitcoin.”

As for the two accused, they would both be kept on house arrest, with electronic monitoring, and will be barred from engaging in cryptocurrency transactions pending trial.

94,643.29 Stolen BTC from 2016 Bitfinex hack moved

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According to the reports by Whale alert, large amounts of BTC, which were stolen during the 2016 Bitfinex hack, started moving to an unknown wallet. The hackers carried out the first transaction on (Tue, 01 Feb 2022 04:14:24 UTC). Initially, they moved 1 BTC to the anonymous wallet. As of now, 26 transactions have been carried out on the anonymous wallet. The wallet holds 94643.29 BTC at the time of writing.

Whale alerts is a transparent platform for tracking and analyzing millions of transactions every day. They reported the incident on Twitter, providing the details of the move.

History of the 2016 Bitfinex BTC hack

In August 2016, almost 120,000 bitcoins – now worth roughly $4.6 billion – were stolen from the famous crypto exchange Bitfinex. The hackers may have felt that the challenging portion of their crime was over. However, barely 21 percent of the stolen bitcoins have been transferred after five years, and just 4 percent have been laundered or swapped.

The 119,756 bitcoins stolen from Bitfinex were first transmitted to a single wallet, and 79 percent of them remain there to this day. After a rush of transactions in early 2017, there were very few outflows from the wallet until 2020, when there was a significant rise in activity. In April 2021, 12,241 BTC of the stolen assets were relocated, having a value at the time of $774 million. This rise was presumably spurred by the surging Bitcoin price, which rose more than 700 percent during the prior year.

Elliptic said the hackers laundered the money through darknet markets like Hydra and privacy-focused Wasabi wallet. These marketplaces provide cash-out services with drugs, hacking equipment, and bogus IDs. These allow Bitcoin to be exchanged into gift cards, prepaid debit cards, or actual cash. Software wallets like Wasabi assist in avoiding blockchain tracing, employing a kind of transaction known as a “coinjoin”. It is estimated that over 13 percent of the profits of crime in bitcoin are laundered using private wallets.

The inability of the hackers to move the fund tells a story about the crypto industry’s maturation and how law enforcement capabilities, regulation, and blockchain analytics have combined to make crypto crimes extremely difficult. But to date, they were unable to trace back to the hackers who committed this monstrous loot.

Bitfinex to remove 6 trading pairs; ask Ontario users to close accounts

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Leading cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex announced the withdrawal of half a dozen crypto trading pairs by the end of January 2022, citing low liquidity levels. According to the trading platform’s official statement, the measure is aimed to consolidate and improve liquidity, enabling users a more streamlined and optimized trading experience. Following are the trading pairs that are planned to be removed.

pNetwork [PNT/BTC], [PNT/ETH]; Basic Attention [BAT/BTC], [BAT/ETH]; Streamr [DATA/BTC]; Metaverse [ETP/ETH]

The crypto exchange noted that the underlying tokens have not been delisted and are still available for trading on Bitfinex. It reminded its customers to cancel any open orders with the above trading pairs before 31st January 2022 [Monday] since all remaining open orders will be canceled by the system itself. Further, the post informed that from 17 January 2022 at 10:00 AM UTC onwards, users can only reduce their margin positions in PNT/BTC, PNT/ETH, and ETP/ETH.

Having said that, Bitfinex announced that it is discontinuing services in the Canadian province, Ontario.

Bitfinex issues notice to Ontario users

Bitfinex on the same day announced that it is making ‘changes’ to the Services provided to its Ontario customers. The trading platform informed that users who met the following conditions will have their accounts closed by March 1, 2022. It also advised them to withdraw their funds on or before March 1. Bitfinex did not specify the reason behind the move, at the time of writing this news.

It needs to be mentioned that the region’s financial agency, Ontario Securities Commission [OSC], has been responsible for coming down hard on a number of crypto exchanges operating in the area, like OKEx, Bybit, etc. On top of that, Canadian cryptocurrency exchanges hint at a biased treatment as they allege that Crypto.com, a Singapore-based trading platform is freely expanding its services across the nation without any approval from the local authorities.

Michael Arbus, CEO at Bitbuy stated,

It is hard for Canadian crypto companies to compete with these unregulated multinational platforms, like Crypto.com, and their massive marketing budgets on our home soil. This allows these international platforms to market a lot of coins and products that our Canadian regulators would never approve if they were licensed.

Bitfinex launches new trading platform- Bitfinex Securities

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Prominent cryptocurrency exchange, Bitfinex is all set to foray into the world of traditional finance by offering tokenized equities and bond trading on its new trading platform – Bitfinex Securities. The platform is a regulated investment exchange in the AIFC Fintech Lab that aims at ramp up accessibility to a large set of financial products for eligible members who wish to diversify their portfolio.

It tweeted,

“We’re pleased to announce, Bitfinex Securities Ltd, a regulated investment exchange designed to increase accessibility to a variety of innovative financial products.”

The official announcement also detailed that the Bitfinex Securities platform is designed to expedite the capital raising process for issuers seeking to have their tokenized securities publicly traded with the help of a seamlessly accessible “admission to trading” process. With the latest move, Bitfinex also intends to broaden access to a variety of innovative financial tools that also includes blockchain-based equities and bonds, in addition to investment funds.

Bitfinex Securities in brief:

According to the blog post, the platform will be available 24/7, which is how the cryptocurrency space works. In addition to that, the newly launched initiative will implement cutting-edge tech to reduce costs, enhance efficiency and optimize the success rate of capital raises. Overcoming these inconsistencies will enable investors to gain access to a cost-efficient, high-performing, and global security trading market.

Several other prominent cryptocurrency exchanges such as FTX and Bittrex Global have launched similar offerings. But the latest securities platform is unique from stock token trading, which is offered by the two aforementioned exchanges. One of the glaring differences, for instance, is that duo list tokens of stocks that are already public. On the other hand, Bitfinex Securities, which is based in Astana, Kazakhstan, revealed that it would list equities, bonds, or funds of private companies that are seeking to go public via a tokenized issue.

Stablecoin issuer Tether releases breakdown of its reserves

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The stablecoin issuer Tether released a report consisting of a breakdown of its reserves as of 31st of March 2021. This is the first of its kind since Tether’s launch in July 2014.

The pie chart below shows that the company held approximately 76% of its reserves in cash and cash equivalents and other short-term deposits and commercial paper.

Tether
Stablecoin issuer Tether releases breakdown of its reserves 3

With a share of 65.39%, commercial paper formed the major chunk of the stablecoin giant’s cash and cash equivalents cohort. Fiduciary deposits, on the other hand, accounted for 24.20% of the same category, while cash, reverse repo notes, treasury bills comprised 3.87%, 3.60%, and2.94% respectively.

The remainder of the platform’s reserves were split up across three groups. For instance, secured loans [none to affiliated entities] formed 12.55% of the total reserves while corporate bonds, funds, and precious metals collectively represented 10%. Moreover, other investments, including digital tokens, constituted 1.64%.

Reason Behind Tether’s First-ever Reserve Composition Release

The latest report essentially underscores the company’s efforts to remain in compliance with a settlement with the New York Attorney General [NYAG] whose probe ended in March. Tether and its sister company/cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex had to pay an $18.5 million fine in addition to agreeing on the release of quarterly breakdowns of its reserves. In line with this, Tether stated,

“Today’s publication reflects our continued dedication to making this information public as part of our ongoing commitment to transparency and setting the standard in our industry. We embrace that commitment to our community.”

Earlier this month, its stablecoin [USDT] on-chain’s volume had climbed to a new milestone of a whopping $1 trillion for the first time ever. Despite several controversies and the emergence of several stablecoins over the past few years, Tether continued to dominate the realm. At the time of writing controls well over 60% of the market share of the total stablecoin transaction volume.

Bitcoin [BTC] From 2016 Bitfinex Hack On The Move

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The crypto industry is no stranger to hacks or scams. While some go on to lose a large number of Bitcoins, a few others have lost personal data. Bitfinex, a prominent cryptocurrency exchange, went on to experience the largest hack to date. Back in 2016, the exchange was subjected to a massive attack, which resulted in the loss of nearly 119,756 BTC.

More recently, the hacker behind these stolen funds decided to move some of the loot. While the hacker has moved some of the BTC in the past, this time it seemed to have caused a drop in the price of the king coin.

Bitcoin Worth More Than $740 Million Moved

Prominent analytics platform, Whale Alerts went on Twitter to alert the community of the massive transaction that took place. In an array of tweets, the portal revealed that over 11,799 BTC was moved in over 30 transactions. Most of the transactions were for about 1 or 1.5 BTC, the largest transaction entailed over 1,000 BTC. The tweet below sheds light to the largest transaction that was worth about $78 million.

Furthermore, the community speculated that this could have caused the recent drop in the price of BTC. Just yesterday, Bitcoin surged up to a high of $64K. However, in no time the asset collapsed to $62K with a 2.79% dip in the last 24-hours.

However, some investors like Alistair Milne tweeted,

“No, the Bitfinex hacker can’t sell the #Bitcoin (not in any volume). But he/she/they can move it to try to manipulate the market while they short it elsewhere …”

Additionally, Santiment, a prominent on-chain analytics platform pointed out that the whales would look for opportunities to “make big moves.” Turns out Bitcoin wasn’t the only asset experiencing $100+ transactions, ETH, reportedly followed suit. The tweet further read,

While this did cause quite a stir in the crypto-verse, the hacker or hackers behind the attack are still on the run. The exchange did not garner any luck, despite offering an award of $400 million.