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The owner-operator of crypto exchange BitMart has won an arbitration award over a July 2021 hack. 

A May 2 award of arbitrator notice sided with GBM Global Holding Company Limited, the parent company of BitMart, in an attempt to reclaim funds stolen in an attack of the Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (BSV) blockchain.

In July of last year, the 92 respondents named in the arbitration registered accounts with BitMart before carrying out a 51% attack of the BSV blockchain. In this type of attack, users take over the mining capabilities of a blockchain, leveraging more than half of the mining power, which allows them to mine faster than other users and affect transactions.

In this case, the respondents allegedly implanted a number of fake transactions that made it appear they held 91,000 BSV tokens. The sham transactions fooled BitMart into crediting them the BSV tokens in their linked wallets. The attackers then traded the BSV into other cryptocurrencies at a value of more than $6 million, thought BitMart did manage freeze some of the accounts. 

Arbitrator Dani Schwartz awarded damages for each withdrawal of crypto from a respondent account to be paid within 45 days of the award. The exact amount is worked out as follows: 

“Such damages are to be calculated in United States dollars (“Dollars”) at the cryptocurrency-Dollars exchange rate prevailing as of the close of business on the date of this Award,” specified the order. “The specific cryptocurrencies (identified by ticker) and withdrawal amounts against which these damages are to be calculated are as follows: BSV 3.07; BTC 10.9946; ETH 218.929; USDC 296,654.277; USDT 693,721.37; XRP 3,926,159.284; ADA 130838.17; DOGE 485; ETC 0.389; HOT 29,912,899; LTC 668.499; MATIC 297,691; XEM 313.94; XLM 969,308.31; and ZEC 0.3487.”

The award notice was filed on June 21 with a proposed judgment that respondents shall pay $5,231,549.42 based on the damages calculation laid out in the arbitration award.

If a judge signs the order, the third party exchanges that attackers used to change the funds will receive an order calling for them to turn over any frozen assets to BitMart. 

BitMart experienced a separate, larger hack in December of 2021 resulting in the loss of $150 million in crypto. 

© 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 team behind the Harmony blockchain network has announced that Horizon, its cross-chain bridge to Ethereum, suffered a theft worth nearly $100 million in ETH.

The theft occurred Thursday morning, per a tweet thread posted by the Harmony team. An address linked in the thread holds 85,837.251 ETH, worth approximately $98 million as of press time.

“We have begun working with national authorities and forensic specialists to identify the culprit and retrieve the stolen funds,” the team said in a message, further writing:

“We have also notified exchanges and stopped the Horizon bridge to prevent further transactions. The team is all hands on deck as investigations continue. We will keep everyone up-to-date as we investigate this further and obtain more information.

The Harmony devs also said that its bitcoin bridge was unaffected, saying that related assets “stored on decentralized vaults are safe at this time.”

Cross-chain bridges have come under attack in the post. Earlier this year, a bridge connecting Axie Infinity’s Ronin sidechain with the Ethereum network was exploited, resulting in the loss of more than $600 million in crypto. The Horizon bridge is another such blockchain-to-Ethereum connection. 

© 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.

Aspen Creek Digital Corporation (ACDC), a relative newcomer to the bitcoin mining industry, opened a 6-megawatt facility in Colorado, powered by solar panels.

The center is co-located behind the meter with a 10-megawatts solar farm, the company said Thursday.

ACDC is in the process of developing a few other projects across Texas, including a 30-megawatt center that is set to come online during the summer and host 10,000 ASIC miners and another 150-megawatt one.

“Recent market volatility has demonstrated the importance of our core strategy: controlling power as the principal input in bitcoin mining,” said the CEO of ACDC, Alexandra DaCosta. “This design enables ACDC to withstand volatility in the bitcoin market and insulate our operations from power market fluctuations.”

Besides self-mining at the new Colorado facility, the company is also hosting mining machines from Galaxy Digital.

“We remain committed to working with ecosystem players that have a strong operational background to help us reach our mining goals,” Galaxy’s head of mining Amanda Fabiano said in a statement.

© 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 team behind Convex Finance, a protocol built on top of the Curve DEX liquidity pool, said Thursday that its website DNS was hijacked.

The disclosure came hours after warnings first emerged on social media. The intent of the hijacking was to try and lure targets into approving malicious smart contracts. The Convex team said “[f]unds on verified contracts are unaffected.”

“Issue is remediated at this time, but investigation is ongoing. Full post-mortem to follow,” the team said.

Convex also posted a list of addresses that approved the contracts and encouraged them to contact the Convex team.

© 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.

Cryptoys, an NFT-native gaming platform, announced Thursday that it has closed a $23 million Series A, along with its parent company OnChain Studios, led by Andreessen Horowitz.

Mattel, Dapper Labs, Draper & Associates, Acrew Capital, CoinFund, Animoca Brands, and Sound Ventures also participated in the round.

The company plans to use the funds to build an NFT-based gaming universe that will enable users to interact with collectible toys and play-and-earn games. It also plans to release an original animated series. The firm has partnered with toy manufacturer Mattel to develop digital toys that bring its portfolio of toy brands to the Flow blockchain.

When the platform launches later this summer, the company plans to introduce three signature characters from its original series.

© 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.

Within Congress, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is picking up political momentum to regulate crypto markets directly. 

On June 23, a subcommittee of the House Agriculture Committee held a hearing on “the Future of Digital Assets Regulation.” That future, by all appearances, looks a lot like it belongs with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. 

“Should the CFTC have direct statutory authority to regulate cash markets,” asked new subcommittee chairman Sean Maloney (D-NY). Maloney’s inquiry reflects a long-running lingering question in Washington: which regulator should take point on crypto?

“The CFTC is certainly up to the job,” answered Dr. Chris Brummer. “It obviously has to be financed and staffed properly.”

Brummer is a Georgetown Law Professor, host of the Fintech Beat podcast, and a longstanding commentator on crypto law in DC. He continued: “Irrespective of which regulator is in charge, that regulator will have to have a builder’s mentality.”

Since Rostin Behnam took over as chair of the CFTC, he’s been pushing for the legal green light from Congress to regulate crypto spot markets. 

Currently, the CFTC only has enforcement authority, which means they do not have running data on crypto exchanges. The new authority would entail a massive expansion for the CFTC — but it’s a change the crypto industry seems to be on board with, especially since Gary Gensler took over at the Securities and Exchange Commission and began dubbing all centralized crypto exchanges to be securities exchanges. 

Both the Senate and House Agriculture Committees have seemed receptive. Vocal exceptions today were Austin Scott (R-GA) and Bobby Rush (D-IL). But leadership seems united overall. 

“I think it’s an excellent agency and they’re very well-positioned from what they’re currently doing and what they could do in the future,” Maloney told The Block of the CFTC following the hearing. 

Glenn Thompson (R-PN), the ranking member of the full House Ag Committee, appeared at the hearing to plug his Digital Commodity Exchange Act, which would establish a voluntary national regime for CFTC registration. David Scott (D-NY), the full committee chair and a noted crypto critic, did not attend. Scott is thought to be suffering from poor health.

“I’ve heard criticism about the CFTC that it’s a permissive, light-touch regulator,” said ranking member Michelle Fischbach (R-MN). “Do you agree with that and if not, could you tell us some of your personal experiences as to why that criticism is unfounded?”

Given that Fischbach was directing her question to Vince McGonagle, a director at the CFTC, the response was, predictably, in the negative. 

But while this committee appears set to hand the CFTC more authority, few are willing to say overtly what many in the crypto space seem to assume this means: less authority for the SEC and, by extension, its oversight in Congress, the House Financial Services and Senate Banking Committees. 

“Overall it’s a big Washington-level conversation that transcends the CFTC, or the SEC, and frankly the Treasury Department, because it’s a transnational conversation,” Charles Hoskinson, a co-founder of Cardano and one of the witnesses, told The Block. 

The Block broke the news of today’s hearing last week.

© 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.

Most bitcoin mining stocks were up Thursday, with a few exceptions.

Bitcoin price had again dipped below $20,000 on Wednesday but managed to stay above that line on Thursday. As of press time, it was priced at around $20,800, according to TradingView.

Meanwhile, the Bitcoin network mining difficulty was down by 2.35%.

Bitfarms was up by 9.58%, followed by Hive (8.55%) and Stronghold (8.33%).

BIT Mining’s stock fell by as much as 39.85%. The Hong Kong-headquartered miner announced Thursday that it would raise about $16 million by selling shares and warrants via a registered direct offering.

The company has entered into a deal with institutional investors which is expected to close June 27, per an announcement Thursday.

Here’s how crypto mining companies performed on Thursday, June 23:

© 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.

Ratings agency Moody’s said Thursday that it downgraded US crypto exchange Coinbase’s senior unsecured notes. 

Specifically, Moody’s said it “downgraded Coinbase Global, Inc.’s (Coinbase) Corporate Family Rating (CFR) to Ba3 from Ba2 and downgraded its guaranteed senior unsecured notes to Ba2 from Ba1.”

“The ratings were placed under review for further downgrade,” the agency added.

The Baa3 rating refers to a “moderate” degree of credit risk and represents the lowest level of institutional-grade creditworthiness.  

In its explanatory note, Moody’s highlighted: 

“…Coinbase’s substantially weaker revenue and cash flow generation due to the steep declines in crypto asset prices that have occurred in recent months and reduced customer trading activity. Moody’s expects the company’s profitability to remain challenged in the current environment despite its 14 June announcement of a reduction in its global workforce of around 1,100 employees.”

On the question of how it will assess Coinbase’s ratings moving forward, Moody’s said it would weigh factors like expenses, regulatory developments and the overall state of the crypto market as it relates to the exchange’s volume and revenues. 

Coinbase’s stock price closed at $58.88 on Thursday, up 13.43%.

© 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.

Coinbase customers over the next month will be able to send and receive crypto on Polygon, a major Layer 2 network for Ethereum.

According to Thursday’s announcement, eligible customers will be able to send and receive ether (ETH), polygon (MATIC), and USD Coin (USDC) on Polygon. Polygon becomes the first Layer 2 network supported by the US exchange giant for transferring those crypto assets. 

USDC transfers will also be available on Solana per the announcement. Coinbase rolled out support for Solana as reported by The Block on Wednesday.

The move marks the start of the company’s multi-chain approach to crypto transactions for customers. Coinbase says it is reducing the “time, effort, and high fees” associated with transacting via the Ethereum network.

Coinbase also stated in the announcement that its multi-chain approach will simplify the process of sending crypto across different networks. Moving one token from its native blockchain to another network usually requires bridging. This process involves using a bridge protocol to make the transfer and costs fees and can take hours or days to complete.

By going multi-chain, Coinbase says both retail and institutional clients do not have to go through the process. They can, instead, have all their assets unified in one balance even if the tokens are spread across different blockchains. The exchange also plans to offer support for other assets and networks in the future.

© 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.

Coinbase customers over the next month will be able to send and receive crypto on Polygon.

According to Thursday’s announcement, eligible customers will be able to send and receive ether (ETH), polygon (MATIC), and USD Coin (USDC) on Polygon. Polygon becomes the first scaling network of its kind supported by the US exchange giant for transferring those crypto assets. 

USDC transfers will also be available on Solana per the announcement. Coinbase rolled out support for Solana as reported by The Block on Wednesday.

The move marks the start of the company’s multi-chain approach to crypto transactions for customers. Coinbase says it is reducing the “time, effort, and high fees” associated with transacting via the Ethereum network.

Coinbase also stated in the announcement that its multi-chain approach will simplify the process of sending crypto across different networks. Moving one token from its native blockchain to another network usually requires bridging. This process involves using a bridge protocol to make the transfer and costs fees and can take hours or days to complete.

By going multi-chain, Coinbase says both retail and institutional clients do not have to go through the process. They can, instead, have all their assets unified in one balance even if the tokens are spread across different blockchains. The exchange also plans to offer support for other assets and networks in the future.

Editor’s Note: This report and its headline have been updated for clarity regarding the nature of Polychain.

© 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.