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An anonymous DeFi user fell victim to a phishing attack and lost $3.4 million in gmx, the native token of decentralized trading protocol GMX. The tokens were then sold on the open market.

An administrator of GMX’s Telegram group confirmed the phishing incident, making it clear that the incident had nothing to do with any security issues on the GMX platform itself. When asked how they knew for certain that a hack had occurred, a moderator in the group said the team was in direct contact with the victim of the attack.

On-chain data show that the attacker started taking out funds from the victim’s wallet at 7 pm UTC on Jan. 3. The attacker sent out gmx worth about $3.4 million to another address and swapped them for ether, security analysts PeckShield estimated. These stolen funds were bridged onto the Ethereum mainnet at an address believed to be owned by the hacker. 

Such phishing attacks becoming increasingly common in the crypto space. They are also a major concern because signing only one malicious signature may result in the loss of all assets stored in a wallet. Earlier today, a hacker stole about $175,000 in NFTs in a phishing attack targeting Nikhil Gopalani, the chief operating officer at RTFKT, while another crypto user lost four CryptoPunk NFTs worth more than $330,000.

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

The UK’s National Crime Agency is recruiting a group of law enforcement officers to investigate crypto crimes, after a year where crypto hacks globally totalled $3 billion.

As part of the national cyber crime unit “crypto cell,” investigators “will be dedicated to a proactive cryptocurrency remit with the right tools and capabilities to target UK based subjects,” according to a job advert posted on the government’s website, first reported by Financial News. 

The Financial Conduct Authority found that crypto was the leading sector for financial scam alerts in the UK between March 2021 and April 2022. The regulator opened 432 cases looking into crypto-related scams during that period.

When Rishi Sunak was elevated to Prime Minister in late-October by members of the Conservative party, there was speculation that could mean that the UK was on course for more crypto-friendly legislation under his leadership term.

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Indonesia plans to establish a national crypto exchange amid broader financial sector reform.

Crypto assets are supervised by Indonesia’s Commodity Futures Trading Regulatory Agency, Bappebti. Over the next two years, the Financial Services Authority will take over the supervision of crypto, Didid Noordiatmoko, Bappebti’s acting head, said on Wednesday.

The national crypto exchange should be set up by the time the agencies switch regulatory power over crypto, Noordiatmoko added, as reported by Bloomberg.

Indonesia is making broader strokes to take a stance on crypto. In November, the central bank published a report on central bank digital currencies and started its plan to launch one in 2021.

Cryptocurrencies are currently banned as a payment method in the country, but it is legal to trade them.

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Israel’s financial regulator proposed draft amendments to sweep digital assets into existing financial laws and expand the definition of securities. 

The proposals look to protect investors from risks, which the regulator notes have been abundant in the past year. The document referred to the downfall of the crypto exchange FTX while pointing out that collapsed crypto lender Celsius — which triggered a crypto market slide last summer — is Israeli-owned.

The draft amendments also seek to maintain the flexibility to change laws to suit the fast-paced technological development in the crypto industry.

The Israel Securities Authority proposed to bring digital assets under the roof of laws governing securities, joint investments and investment consultation, marketing, and portfolio management. In each case, digital assets are defined as a “digital representation of value used for the purpose of financial investment, and can be transferred and stored electronically by using distributed ledger technology or another technology.”*

Public commentary on the proposed amendments is open until Feb. 12. The ISA suggests six months from publication before the laws are enacted to allow entities and the regulator to prepare for supervision. 

Israel sees crypto opportunities

The regulator sees an opportunity in crypto for investors and the Israeli economy, allowing more diverse sources of capital and encouraging innovation and growth. 

“The advanced technology in these assets can lead to economic efficiency in many areas, reduce costs, save the need for intermediaries and optimize the way information is transferred between entities,” the document reads. According to the ISA, more than 200,000 Israelis are investing in crypto, and around 150 crypto firms are operating in the country. 

Israeli officials have shown further interest in crypto in recent months, with the national stock exchange planning to launch a platform to trade digital assets.

*Quotes have been translated from Hebrew.

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

The COO of RTFKT, a crypto brand owned by Nike, fell victim to a phishing scam and lost almost all of his NFTs.

“I was hacked by a clever Phisher (same phone # as apple ID) & sold all my clone x / some other nfts,” Nikhil Gopalani said in a tweet addressed to the Clone X community.

OpenSea activity suggests the apparent phisher used two wallets to drain Gopalani’s wallet of NFTs — including double-digit amounts of CloneX, RTFKT, Loot Pods and Crypto Kicks NFTs — worth upwards of $175,000 at floor prices. The affected wallet currently shows a total asset value of $0.11 on Etherscan after a slew of withdrawals.

“Obviously pretty upset and hurt by this and I haven’t really been able to move all day,” Gopalani said, adding: “Hope people who bought my clones love them (being positive).”

RTFKT’s CTO responded to the loss by stating that the brand “won’t be able to go in deeper details until further notice,” citing legal reasons.

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Solana’s largest NFT marketplace, Magic Eden, displayed incorrect images for some non-fungible tokens yesterday. Some of the misplaced stills included “unsavory” adult content — the result of a compromised third-party image cacher, it claims.

“Hey guys our image provider, a 3rd party service we use to cache images, was compromised,” Magic Eden tweeted. “Your NFTs are safe and Magic Eden has not been hacked. Unfortunately you might’ve seen some um, unsavory images. Make sure you do a hard refresh on your browser to fix it.”

Magic Eden’s explanation followed tweets from various users about the incorrect images, which also included stills from TV show Big Bang Theory.

Aside from this latest news, Magic Eden has been busy. It recently extended support for the Polygon network in an effort to add multi-chain functionality and future possibilities for blockchain gaming. It also recently announced a rewards system that allows users to receive rewards, discounts and other perks based on their activity on the platform. Additionally, the marketplace hired its first Chief Gaming Officer. 

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Core Scientific will cut off power to 37,000 mining rigs for which Celsius still owes payment, the two now-bankrupt companies agreed. Bloomberg first reported the news. 

The agreement marks the end of a dispute that has been ongoing since last October, when Core said it would seek a resolution on the matter in court.

Celsius owes Core $7.8 million related to power costs for the miners through November 2022, according to court documents.

Core itself filed for bankruptcy protection in December, due in part to Celsius’ bankruptcy filing and subsequent nonpayment as well as insufficient cash flow to manage its debts.

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Wyre and EmpireDAO are the two latest companies to fall victim to crypto winter.

Founded nearly a decade ago, payment provider Wyre let a number of employees go, with two laid-off workers confirming that the company plans to shut down, according to Axios. One former employee, citing an email from CEO Ioannis Giannaros, indicated that the company will liquidate and terminate services as soon as this month. Another former employee told Axios no severance packages have been offered.

The company still is operating, according to Giannaros; however, its plans including scaling back, he told Axios.

In another sign of the market’s downturn, it’s also the end of an EmpireDAO’s tenancy at 190 Bowery in New York, which illustrates the boom-and-bust nature of the digital currency ecosystem.

The move to vacate the premises comes less than a year after founder Mike Fraietta opened its doors to a community that has since amassed 1,500 members with 300 daily visitors, according to Coindesk.

Although Fraietta’s last-ditch efforts to save the space via crowdfunding last December targeted raising 205 ETH (almost $250,000), the campaign’s site indicates that donations only reached 6.71 ETH ($8,150) from some 27 contributors. The donations will be returned now that the campaign has failed to reach its goal.

EmpireDAO’s future may come in the form of temporary installations at crypto conferences, but for now Fraietta said the focus is on a “clean exodus.”

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Cryposat has launched the second of its isolated computational environments in low Earth orbit. 

The CubeSat named Crypto2, a small satellite no larger than a mug, was among the contents of a payload onboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 flight launched today, said Cryptosat.

Crypto2 boasts 30 times more computational power than the company’s first satellite, Crypto1, which launched in May 2022.

Cryptosat aims to improve cryptographic security for sensitive operations by isolating computational environments in orbit where they cannot be so easily targeted.

The company raised $3 million in seed funding last November led by its own founders, Yan Michalevsky and Yonatan Winetraub, with support from additional investors such as FileCoin, Inflection, GoAhead Ventures, DoraHacks, and Phala Network founders.

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

The founder of Goobers NFT, who goes by the name DNP3, blamed a gambling addiction for why he gambled and lost user funds.  

“Over the last year I got incredibly addicted to gambling,” he wrote. “Every dollar I could find I would put into Stake in hopes of winning big. Even when the big wins did happen it wasn’t enough. Eventually I lost everything. In addition to my own life savings, I also irresponsibly used investor funds to try and ‘get my money back’ from the casino, which was wrong for so many reasons.”

He added on Twitter that it “started with a sponsored stream and unleashed an addiction I never knew I had.”

DNP3 is the founder of the NFT project Goobers, which launched in September 2021 and amassed a 968 ETH total trading volume. At its peak, the project’s floor price was 55.25 ETH on Feb. 20, 2022 before falling to 0.02 ETH on Jan 3. 

DNP3 did not respond to The Block’s request to clarify the amount of money used for gambling. However, The Block Research estimated that millions of dollars worth of funds were gambled. 

DNP3 is also the founder of Gridcraft Network, a play-to-earn web3 game, and the charity-focused cryptocurrency CluCoin. In addition, he streams on the live streaming platform Twitch to more than 251,000 followers. 

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.