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  • 11/23/23: Hacker Hits Snooze on $48M Negotiation 🥱🧙🏻‍♂️⛏️

11/23/23: Hacker Hits Snooze on $48M Negotiation 🥱🧙🏻‍♂️⛏️

Author

Valko
November 23, 2023

Top News

  • 🥱 KyberSwap hacked for $48M, hacker to negotiate after he sleeps

  • 🧙🏻‍♂️ Taproot Wizards hires ex-Amazon NFT lead as their CTO

  • ⛏️ Mining pool F2Pool starts censoring BTC transactions

KyberSwap DEX Hacked for $48 Million, Attacker Teases Negotiations

The decentralized exchange had over $80 million in total value locked before the incident.

⌐◪-◪ → I hate to glorify criminals, but the Kyberswap hacker is sort of a chad. After stealing $48M, he cryptographically signed a message stating “Dear Kyberswap…Negotiations will start in a few hours when I am fully rested. Thank you.” Like what?! The hacker sounds so casual/confident, and I don’t think it’s a front either, I reckon he’s done this countless times before. This is cypherpunk AF.

Bitcoin ordinals startup Taproot Wizards hires CTO after seed raise

Co-founded by Udi Wertheimer and Eric Wall, Taproot Wizards is a generative art collection inscribed with bitcoin ordinals.

⌐◪-◪ → Looks like the Taproot Wizards team was quick to deploy the $7.5M they raised last week. Hiring an ex-Amazon tech lead is definitely a power move; one that makes me more bullish Taproot Wizards and the ordinals space as whole. And don’t forget, ordinals are not limited to Bitcoin either, just last week Polygon fees surged as users started inscribing their own version of ordinals, and yesterday we saw the same happen on Avalanche. Ordinals are spreading!

Bitcoin's Anti-Censorship Ethos Surfaces After Mining Pool F2Pool Acknowledges 'Filter'

After a blockchain sleuth reported that the Bitcoin mining pool may have censored a transaction from an address blacklisted by U.S. authorities, critics responded, and so did the project's co-founder.

⌐◪-◪ → For those who don’t know - this is a very contentious topic. F2Pool, the 3rd largest BTC miner, just confirmed they’re censoring—or as their co-founder described it, “filtering”—transactions. Bitcoin maxis view this as hositle to the network, as F2Pool is allowing the government to control who can/cannot use bitcoint, and other top miners could join in. This is quite literally the best example of why privacy is critical to blockchain’s success. You cannot censor who can/cannot participate if you cannot identify them - privacy is a fundamental human right.

Peripheral Vision

⛓️ Crypto & DeFi

  • Kraken CEO says crypto is “more fair” after the Binance settlement

  • Bitcoin halving is 5 months away and hash rate just hit an all-time high

  • Inactive Bitcoin supply hits a record high of 70% of all Bitcoin

  • Someone accidentally pays $3.1M for a single BTC transaction

  • Solana monthly DEX volume breaks $5B, setting new all-time-highs

  • Serenity Shield launches "StrongBox” for crypto inheritance transfers

  • Blast, Blur’s popular new L2, reaches $300M TVL in just over 2 days

  • Lido node operator to rotate keys after vulnerability disclosure

🏦 Wallstreet & VC

  • GBTC discount drops below 10% for the 1st time in 2 years

  • BlackRock holds meeting with SEC over spot Bitcoin ETF

🏛️ Legal & Regulatory

🌎 Rest of the World

  • South Korea to pilot CBDC with 100,000 citizens in 2024

  • Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank to roll out retail crypto trading

  • Singapore plans more rules to mitigate retail crypto speculation

  • Bhutan secretly spent millions to build BTC mining operations

🖼️ NFTs & Metaverse

  • Avalanche ordinals just sent Avalanche fees to 6-month high

  • Cool Cats release cartoon episode, featured in Macy's Parade today

  • PixelVault to launch “BattlePlan!” - an auto-brawler game

  • Solana daily NFT volume breaks $4M, a 3-month high

  • Solana meme coin BONK gets listed on Binance, pumps 25%