Chinese police arrest all organizers of PlusToken cryptocurrency pyramid
PlusToken wallet was launched in 2018 and was positioned as a decentralized international cryptocurrency project.
Users were promised monthly payments from 6% to 19% of the invested amount and other bonuses for attracting referrals. However, the project worked for about 14 months, and since June 27, 2019, users have lost the ability to withdraw money.
Previously, the creators of the PlusToken cryptocurrency wallet were suspected of stealing their clients' crypto assets worth about $ 3 billion. Even at that time, this was the largest collapse of the cryptocurrency pyramid in China.
According to local media and law enforcement agencies, more than 2 million people have already suffered from the activities of this pyramid. According to preliminary estimates, the defrauded investors invested over 40 billion yuan ($ 5.7 billion) in various cryptocurrencies in the fraudulent project. It also turned out that the number of referral levels "grew" to 3000.
Primitive Ventures partner Dovey Wan confirmed on Twitter about the arrest of PlusToken organizers. She explained that they had been wanted for 12 months. Such a long search can be explained by the fact that the key participants in the pyramid have dispersed to different countries, and this complicated the search activities.
Considering that all PlusToken organizers have already been arrested, the pyramid has finally ceased its activities. Wang added that the attackers have recently laundered at least $ 1 billion since last month the movement of coins was discovered on the EOS and ETH wallets owned by the scammers. Therefore, it is necessary to track the further movement of all suspicious coins.
In March, researchers at OXT Research reported that most of the bitcoins collected by the PlusToken pyramid were withdrawn through cryptocurrency platforms that identify customers.
Hardware wallet maker Ledger reports user data leak
As a result of the intruders' intervention, the contact information of customers, as well as the details of their orders, were disclosed. Payment information and cryptocurrency assets were not affected, Ledger said. Affected customers received appropriate notifications.
The company's problem became known after it was contacted by a specialist who took part in the bug search program on July 14. Ledger immediately fixed the vulnerability, but found out that it had been exploited several weeks before. On June 25, an unknown person connected to the database using an API key, which has now been deactivated.
The leak affected about a million customers, primarily their email addresses. Also, in certain cases, cybercriminals got hold of information about real usernames, postal addresses, phone numbers and ordered products. This database did not contain any payment data, tools for accessing wallets and Ledger Live, the company said.
Ledger recommends that customers beware of phishing attacks and under no circumstances should passphrases to recover wallets. The company is “extremely sorry” about what happened.
“We take privacy very seriously. We discovered the vulnerability thanks to our own bug-catching program and fixed it immediately. Despite all the measures we have taken, we sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this situation could cause you, ”the message says.
Tether releases USDT for another $ 540 million amid bitcoin growth
According to the analytical service Whale Alert, on July 29, USDT worth $ 300 million was issued on the Tron blockchain. In addition, on July 22 and 23, the service recorded two more operations to issue USDT stablecoins on the Ethereum blockchain. Each of them was equivalent to $ 120 million. Paolo Ardoino, CTO of Bitfinex, explained on Twitter that these transactions were made to replenish USDT reserves. Such actions are necessary in order to prepare in advance for future investor requests.
“We are talking about authorized but not issued tokens. They will be postponed as spare resources to implement token issuance requests during the next period, ”commented Paolo Ardoino on Twitter.
Bakkt breaks records for Bitcoin futures trading for second day in a row
On July 28, the exchange reported a turnover of 11,506 contracts, which exceeded the previous maximum by 85%. The next trading session was also a record one.
“Let's talk about momentum! Today we have surpassed yesterday's record with 11,706 contracts. This is more than $ 125 million in bitcoin, ”the company writes.
The growth in trading volumes on Bakkt is under the influence of the rise in the price of bitcoin to annual highs of about $ 11,400 billion
However, the main activity in Bitcoin derivatives trading continues to take place outside the aforementioned two institutional exchanges. According to the Skew analytical platform, Huobi became the leader in terms of trading volume in bitcoin futures in 24 hours with $ 6.51 billion, followed by OKEx and Binance with $ 5.88 billion and $ 5.66 billion, respectively.
Also, as a result of the increased activity of traders, open interest in bitcoin futures on all monitored exchanges rose to $ 5 billion for the first time since the March collapse. The aggregate trading volume of bitcoin futures on Monday exceeded $ 40 billion.This is the second largest value in the history of the cryptocurrency market, second only to the record on March 12 of this year, when the turnover was $ 50 billion.
Israel Stock Exchange Launches Blockchain-Based Securities Lending Platform
According to a statement from TASE, the Central Blockchain Securities Lending Platform will provide a single national market where Israeli businesses can borrow and lend in securities to cover short-term asset sales with each other directly.
As noted in the TASE press release, usually the provision of securities is carried out using interbank mechanisms within and outside the limits of banking groups. As a result, the market cannot fully satisfy the potential needs of participants in economic relations.
The new blockchain platform will become a universal solution for all securities lending operations, opening up quick access to large volumes of assets and work with short-term positions.
According to the statement, in March 2020, TASE members were given access to a test version of the platform to test the operation of credit transactions and adapt their systems to prepare for the platform's implementation.
Using distributed ledger technology (DLT) as the basis for a new trading platform will enable market participants to take advantage of the core benefits and functions of the blockchain. In particular, we are talking about P2P transactions, smart contracts and increased security, which is possible due to the immutability of the blockchain.
120 million dollars is for sure a huge amount and where did they came up with it