West talks about Bitcoin on the popular comedian Joe Rogan podcast. The singer showed interest in Bitcoin before, and his wife Kim Kardashian used it.

Kanye West, one of the most successful musicians in the world and a candidate for the presidency of the United States, believes that the Bitcoin community could hold the key to humanity’s freedom. He said this the last Saturday on the podcast of the popular American comedian, Joe Rogan.

West, who was invited to the show because of his unexpected presidential candidacy, claimed that he has been talking about Bitcoin with various people and that he wanted to discuss it with Rogan. In his view, bitcoiners have “a perspective of what the true liberation of America and humanity will be,” and that they are already making significant contributions to society.

The singer affirms that Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, decided to decentralize the operation of his social network, thanks to the fact that months before it was made public, he was in communication with “the Bitcoin boys.” West did not provide proof of this anecdote but considers it to be an example of how bitcoiners are creating “the next frontier of our existence” with their knowledge.

Although the musician did not elaborate on his comments, it is not the first time that he has made public his enthusiasm for Bitcoin. Two years ago, Kanye West stated that he considered the possibility of using Bitcoin after seeing the $ 20 bill project that will have the image of the black abolitionist and activist Harriet Tubman.

According to West, the constant reminders about slavery in the United States only perpetuate racism and do not allow for true equality in the population. Because of this, he considers that Bitcoin can be a good money option. Kanye’s wife, Kim Kardashian, also shown on her social networks that she is familiar with Bitcoin, using cryptocurrency hardware wallets to guard money from charities.

Although it is still unknown if the singer decided to migrate his finances to Bitcoin, members of the cryptocurrency community see his candidacy for the presidency as a positive sign, since it could trigger the adoption of the crypto asset. West announced on July 4, the Independence Day of the United States, that he would begin a campaign to be president of the nation for the period beginning in 2024.

While a part of the American population questions Kanye West’s capacity as president, the musician affirms that “there is a possibility” that he will win and that if the elections were carried out at this time he would undoubtedly be the candidate elected.

Charles Hoskinson, Founder of Cardano, gave West’s intentions a vote of confidence, proposing the creation of a singer token whose units issues will happen for every vote he receives at the polls. It will be seen in the future generation of many Kanye tokens, but what we can know today is that Bitcoin convinced the self-proclaimed “leader of the free world”.

By: Jenson Nuñez.

The domain name of the deceptive emails is often incorrect. Ledger users express their annoyance at the data leak on Twitter.

Ledger, a manufacturer of cold bitcoin wallets, warned on October 27 about the sending of emails to its users, with a misleading message that invites you to click on a link to make an alleged update.

The company directs its followers on Twitter to an alert text on its official site, where it exposes the different methods that hackers use to try to rob users of bitcoin wallets through phishing (false links).

Ledger’s support team responds to messages posted on the social network by people who claim to receive misleading text messages and emails for several days. Never give the 24 words of your recovery seed. Ledger will never ask for them “, warns the company in a tweet.

Comments circulated on this topic include web developer Andreas Tasch, who shared the suspicious email he received, which appeared to come from Ledger. The fake message informs us that the service has been affected by a malware attack.

“At this moment, it is technically impossible to assess the severity and scope of the data breach. Due to these circumstances, we must assume that your crypto assets are at risk of being stolen,”says the hoax email before directing readers to a button to download a new version of the software.

Some media attract the attention of users by inviting them to look at the domain name of the sender of the mail. Note that in this case, the domain is legder.com, and not ledger.com, as it should be.

They explain that hovering over the link (without clicking) reveals an unreliable URL: http: // URL 1320302444350459904. legder.com. Clicking on this link will likely result in the download of malware that can record keystrokes, steal credentials and funds, or do hidden cryptocurrency mining (cryptojacking).

Ledger Users Claim for the Security of Their Data

Despite the alert of the company, Tasch asks why it did not receive any information about the breach before. With this, she shares the annoyance of other users who tweeted similar messages.

‘My data got compromised and this is Ledger’s fault. I’m sure this is due to the infringement he experienced a few months ago,”says one of the followers, identified as Burchard of Worms, who threatens to change purse. “Many customers who store their funds with Ledger will fall for these phishing emails and lose their money,” says the user.

By: Jenson Nuñez.

Jameson Lopp warns that the situation could cause systemic risks. It is relevant to educate yourself on the dangers of using bitcoin custody services.

In an article Jameson Lopp wrote, he explained how he arrived at this estimate. First, it considered bitcoins (BTC) from corporate treasuries, which account for about 4%, taking into account only public companies. It explains that these entities, for legal or political reasons, use centralized exchanges and keep the BTC in custody services.

Lopp then sought to identify the BTC deposited with exchanges and other escrow platforms. It took for this the values provided by the analysis companies Coinmetrics, Glassnode, and Chainalysis.

The first of these companies tracked nine large exchanges and showed that in total they hold a total of 1.2 million BTC. Glassnode, on the other hand, ensures that this figure is 2.5 million BTC.

Chainalysis, which does not share specific metrics publicly, indicates that 60% of the BTC in circulation (they do not include here those they know have been lost) is in the hands of some licensed escrow service. That equates to 8.5 million bitcoins.

Lopp explains that, after consulting the reason for the difference with those responsible for Chainalysis, they claimed that 8.5 million is an upper limit estimate that includes all types of licensed cryptocurrency custody services.

Particularly in the case of exchanges, as they responded, the number could vary between 2.2 and 5.1 million BTC. The remaining number is on other custody platforms.

Finally, Lopp also explains that he also considers “tokenized” bitcoins in Ethereum (ETH) and other networks within this group. As he explains, at the time of his analysis, they are equivalent to around 120,000 BTC.

As he points out in his article, it is not possible to know accurately the amount of BTC that other types of custody platforms that operate smaller volumes have since their addresses usually remain unidentified.

With this data in his possession, Lopp concludes that a percentage between 20% and 60% of all bitcoins in circulation is in custody services. He clarifies that the exact number “is difficult to pin down.”

There are so many bitcoins in custody services is something to worry about.

For Lopp, the situation is worrying even when the percentage of users who accumulate bitcoins in their own wallets increases. Beyond the inconveniences that not having their private keys can cause to users, Lopp points out that there may be a systemic risk in this. “When power becomes too concentrated, the likelihood of coordination to benefit those in power increases”.

It also explains that custodians could coordinate a fork (it can be hard-fork or soft-fork) and change the rules for the bitcoins they accept. Added to this, he explains the possibility of a political attack. “Over time, pressure from regulators and nation states will result in custodians censoring transactions and confiscating funds”.

By: Jenson Nuñez.

The attacker needed 7 minutes to execute an arbitration attack.

According to some reports, the hacker is a known figure in the community.

A hacker exploited a security vulnerability in the decentralized finance protocol (DeFi) Harvest Finance, developed by an anonymous team. The hacker stole $ 24 million in tokens and then returned $ 2.5 million to the protocol for unknown reasons.

The attacker needed just 7 minutes to execute an arbitrage attack, with which he carried out a series of steps through the Uniswap, Curve Finance, and Harvest protocols before reaching his goal of draining funds. He first got a $ 50 million flash loan on Uniswap.

He then started trading between USDC and Tether (USDT) to make the prices of the two tokens swing wildly. When he noticed the price of Tether starting to drop on Harvest, he proceeded to exchange it at a discount for stablecoins obtained on the flash loan.

In short, what the attacker did was manipulate the prices in Curve and Harvest to obtain higher returns. Then he probably converted the funds into the synthetic version of Bitcoin, renBTC, which is useful in the Ethereum network, and by using the Ethereum Tornado Cash mixing tool, he achieved to withdraw the funds.

The Harvest protocol is a performance culture platform that is less than two months old. It offers its users higher profitability that it collects from different lending protocols and optimizes them to return the maximum profit to those who deposit stablecoins and Bitcoin. According to DeFi Pulse, more than $ 1 billion in total value locked up at the end of last week.

 The alert about the irregular situation circled during the early hours of Monday when analytics service provider DeFi prime warned that something strange was happening at Harvest Finance and needed to be closely monitored. Once the Harvest team confirmed that the attack took place, users began withdrawing their funds. Shortly after, they withdrawn about $ 350 million from the protocol.

The platform’s native FARM token plummeted by more than 60% in less than an hour, according to data from CoinGecko.

Later, Harvest Finance reported that it decided to cold-protect user funds while blocking deposits. At the moment, there are no further details on how the attack occurred or if it was the result on a flaw in the smart contract code. Harvest Finance claims that they made an analysis on its smart contracts and evaluated them through PeckShield and Haechi Labs.

A DeFi vulnerability that was sung

The attack comes after DeFi analyst Chris Blec warned that there are reasons enough to mistrust the platform. Blec affirmed that the administrators of Harvest Finance got locked in the contracts of the protocol, an “administrator password that can drain funds.” However, until now, it is unknown if there could be any relationship between the aforementioned administrator password and the sudden loss of funds from the protocol.

Harvest provided some bitcoin addresses for the attacker and said there is a “significant amount of personally identifiable information about the attacker.” He claimed that this is well known in the cryptocurrency community. Also, he offered a reward of $ 100,000 for the first person or team that approaches the attacker.

The team behind the protocol also reported that it asked various exchanges to block the attacker’s addresses.

The attack underscores the fragility of DeFi protocols that routinely face similar attacks. As CriptoNoticias reported recently, so far in 2020, another five DeFi platforms also suffered attacks; some repeatedly like bZx, which generated at least $ 30 million in losses. The attacks reveal that hackers seek to exploit the weaknesses of the smart contracts of the different protocols.

By: Jenson Nuñez.

The price of Binance Coin (BNB) dropped by more than 13% against Bitcoin. Only the returns of Chainlink (LINK) were close to that of Bitcoin in recent days.

The price of Bitcoin (BTC) has recently achieved a bullish momentum, which has spread to the rest of the cryptocurrencies in the market. However, while the value of major altcoins has risen relative to that of the US dollar, the situation has been different when compared to the pioneering cryptocurrency.

In recent days, blockchain analytics firm Glassnode published its latest weekly report. In that document, they highlight that the bullish market has given Bitcoin a greater boost than other major cryptocurrencies. Among these are Ether (ETH) from Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Chainlink (LINK), Polkadot (DOT), Ripple (XRP), and Binance Coin (BNB).

Between October 19^th and 25^th, the price of Bitcoin increased by about 14% against the US dollar. In those same days, LINK appreciated by more than 12%, while BCH and ETH experienced increases of at least 8% in their prices. DOT (6.1%) and XRP (4.3%) also had an appreciation against the U.S. dollar. Of the list that Glassnode studied, only BNB underperformed.

However, despite that increase in the U.S. fiat currency, all of the aforementioned cryptocurrencies suffered losses against Bitcoin. Specifically, BNB and XRP had declines of more than 13% and 12%, respectively. LINK was the only one on the list that lost the least (1.2% of its value), compared to BTC.

During the last week, the price of Bitcoin has experienced a significant rise. The news that PayPal will include cryptocurrencies on its platform seems to have led the price of BTC to overcome the USD 13,000 barrier, and even approach USD 13,800 at times.

Bitcoin’s Performance Outpaces That of Traditional Markets

Over the past seven days, Bitcoin’s performance has outpaced the major altcoins in the market. However, this is not the only time that has happened. The performance of the first cryptocurrency has also outpaced that of traditional markets so far this year. It has recorded increases larger than those of equity indexes, precious metals, and stocks.

On October 23^rd, the closest thing to the increase in the price of Bitcoin in percentage terms was the appreciation of Google’s stock. The price of BTC has risen by around 80% in 2020, but the shares of the company are up 70%.

The prices of gold and silver have risen by more than 50%, coming a little closer to BTC’s performance. However, the performance of indexes such as the S&P 500 (6%) and the Nasdaq (30%) have been lower than that of Bitcoin.

It is possible to observe that Bitcoin has been decoupling from the behavior of traditional markets. This has occurred since the beginning of the economic collapse that the pandemic caused in March. High levels of correlation between BTC and gold, and even the S&P 500, followed that event.

By Alexander Salazar

The Asian bank DBS is aiming at companies of all sizes to raise capital on its exchange. The financial institution manages more than USD 426 billion in assets.

Shortly, the largest bank in Singapore and Southeast Asia will launch an exchange platform for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. The name of this platform is DBS Digital Exchange.

The financial institution, which has been in business for more than half a century, is responsible for USD 426 billion in assets. They have learned that those who adapt better will survive longer in today’s financial world. The announcement of their new product seems to indicate this. They acknowledge that “financial assets are ready to be the future of the digital economy of the future.”

They announced on their website in recent days. Even though no one knows why they removed it, the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine offers a glimpse of the project.

These are three products aimed at “small and medium-sized companies, as well as large corporations.” This triad includes a cryptocurrency exchange, a custody service, and a security token offering (STO) platform for capital rising.

Platform for Capital Rising with Tokens

Once the Monetary Authority of Singapore regulates DBS Digital Exchange, the platform will allow trading U.S., Hong Kong, and Singaporean dollars, as well as Japanese yen, for Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Ether from Ethereum (ETH), and XRP from Ripple. The parent company, DBS Bank, will take care of the custody of the funds in a new section for this purpose, whose name is DBS Digital Custody.

Although the implementation of Initial Security Token Offering (STO) is not yet operational, the institution says that it will focus on qualified investors. When they launch the tokens, users will be able to trade them on the exchange.

Generally speaking, the exchange will only accept the participation of financial institutions and professional market makers. Individual investors will only be able to access the exchange through its members, such as in the case of the DBS Private Bank.

Initially, the exchange will only be operational on weekdays during business hours, and it will be closed on weekends and holidays. However, they suggest that they will review it in the future.

The borders that separate banks and cryptocurrency exchanges are increasingly blurred. Exchanges like Kraken obtain banking licenses and banks like DBS launch their exchanges. In 2018, the Monetary Authority of Singapore began to build bridges between the two industries to improve their relations.

It seems that the purpose of the current race is to attract the new wave of institutional investors. These are just beginning to venture into Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general.

The relevance of crypto assets worldwide has grown exponentially in recent months. The main banks of the world have realized this, which has led them to undertake various activities. Some have been developing their digital currencies and others are creating their exchanges.

By Alexander Salazar