Non-custodial wallets allow complete control over the deposits, as users do not need permission from the bank for withdrawals. However, investors must not forget the private key associated with their wallets to avoid losing access to their funds.

Investors can find it complicated to choose between custodial and non-custodial wallets to store their assets. Banks usually offer services to keep custody of the cryptocurrencies of their customers. In other words, the latter must request permission from financial institutions whenever they need to withdraw money.

Unfortunately, banks may find a reason to deny permission to make withdrawals. However, the concept of non-custodial wallets or self-custodial wallets emerged when cryptocurrencies began gaining prevalence.

Non-custodial wallets allow users to keep control over their deposited crypto assets. Besides, the inherent nature of cryptocurrencies made self-custody financial services a practical option.

Non-Custodial Wallet Allows Withdrawing Funds at Will

By following the news, it is possible to see that the crypto market is not in its best shape. However, the current situation has led many crypto-related businesses to suspend their services to preserve themselves. Lending firm Celsius is the first that comes to mind as it had to pause withdrawals and transactions.

Vauld, another crypto lending firm, is also having problems with this. They recently announced that they would suspend withdrawals on their network due to unfavorable market conditions. Since both companies offered custodial wallets, they had control over the deposited crypto assets.

The suspension of the services on those platforms has prevented users from withdrawing their funds. Firms tend to take this measure to avoid massive withdrawals that could disrupt their operations. However, they generate further problems by not allowing users to take out their funds.

However, Investors Should Be Careful When Operating Non-Custodial Wallet

Although non-custodial wallets offer users the advantage of complete control over their crypto assets, there are some caveats. Investors must have the private key associated with their wallets. That mnemonic phrase consists of 12 to 24 randomly generated worlds, which they should not forget. If that happened, they would permanently lose access to their wallets and deposited assets.

However, investors may turn to the option of a cloud backup service that many non-custodial wallets offer. They can use any popular cloud service, like Google Drive or Apple iCloud, to store their private keys.

In addition, non-custodial wallets allow users to customize fees for public blockchain miners and validators. They can also interact with smart contracts supported by non-custodial wallets. All that is possible because non-custodial wallets have direct access to blockchains.

Cryptocurrencies have become relevant in the world economy, of which those investing in them are aware. Due to the current decline in overall markets, users look for alternatives to store their holdings. Non-custodial wallets are an excellent option to do so, but they must be careful not to lose their private keys.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin is trading at around USD 20,847 and has accumulated a 5.4% gain over the last 24 hours. While its daily trading volume is above USD 42.85 billion, its market capitalization is about USD 398.07 billion, according to CoinGecko.

By Alexander Salazar

OpenSea co-founder Devin Finzer revealed on his Twitter that the entity would fire 20% of its workforce.

Finzer pointed at the crypto winter as the main reason behind the decision. He said the move was necessary to maintain a solid position in the market. He thinks the bear market would bring a lot of improvements to the environment.

OpenSea stated that it made a sad and hard decision to reduce the size of its workforce by 20%. The entity expressed a worrying stance about the situation and waved goodbye to workers considered friends and excellent team members.

All the workers leaving the entity have played a significant role in OpenSea’s evolution. This team offered excellent backup to users, honored their mission in the company, and worked to strengthen the foundations of the NFT environment.

According to the entity, these people are talented workers. The entity will provide a severance, healthcare coverage into 2023, and accelerated equity vesting for those workers leaving. The entity will also help these workers with job placement and opening their networks to support them in every possible way.

OpenSea and Other Situations

In addition to the staff cuts, OpenSea already deals with other important issues within the company. The network fell victim to a hacking attack at the beginning of the year when PeckShield highlighted that they had 700 thousand dollars in ETH extracted from the site. The attacker allegedly employed anonymous crypto wallets and accounts on OpenSea to circumvent detection.

Many users expressed through Twitter that they detected some flaws and suspicious behaviors within the platform. One of them asked the entity why an account named @natechastain had a few secret wallets purchasing front-page drops before they got recorded and selling them shortly after the front-page-hype spike for profits.

OpenSea responded by saying that it would manage a rapid review of the incident, later confirming that the situation was under the magnifying glass of a third party. The entity then amended rules to stop employees from purchasing or selling from collections actively offered on the marketplace.

On the other hand, a scam for revealed by the official OpenSea Twitter account in May. This scam focused on a fake ad saying that OpenSea and YouTube had teamed up to bring out a new NFT collection. A link supposedly offered a spot on the waiting list to acquire these NFTs, but it ended up being another attempt to scam.

On July 1, an employee of Customer.io, OpenSea email delivery partner, gained access to the non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace database. The attacker managed to leak sensitive data from customers and even sent some newsletters from subscribers to an unauthorized external party.

Customers got warned that the incident could serve as a nest of email phishing attacks. Any customer who gave their email address to the company in the past got warned that they must assume they are victims of the leak.

OpenSea moved its pieces to brace itself during this crypto winter. The entity will keep bringing assistance of every type for its ex-workers to avoid leaving them behind. According to OpenSea, these workers must keep their good reputation in the crypto environment.

By: Jenson Nuñez

Sanctioned addresses had caused the increase of crypto funds sent to mixers. The Russian darknet Hydra and the North Korean Hacker group Lazarus group attribute a prominent 80%, but total illicit activity linked to the crypto environment remains less than 1%.

Bitcoin and crypto mixers have experienced an all-time high in usage as fraudsters, and many sanctioned entities look for places to hide their illegal gains.

Digital assets sent through mixing features have increased to their highest levels, according to a July 14 report conducted by blockchain analysis entity Chainalysis.

Mixers obtained a bad reputation as they have become the most used procedure for cybercriminals and rogue states to launder illegal digital currencies. Chainalysis highlighted that at least 10% of all funds sent from illicit crypto addresses got sent to mixers.

The 30-day moving standard of digital assets sent to mixers approached an all-time high of $51.8 million in April. The amount sent to mixers in Q2, 2022 surpassed $600 million, but most arrived from punished entities and extracted funds.

The current conflict between Russia and Ukraine, including global sanctions on many protagonists of this war, damaged mixer usage during the first half of this year.

Mixer Legalities

Mixers are not illegal items and bring authorized services for those who require financial privacy. The U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) explained that mixers are money vectors that need enrollment under the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA). Naturally, this situation would not take effect as it negates the primary purpose of mixers.

Addresses linked to punished entities such as the Russian darknet market Hydra and the North Korean hacker team called Lazarus accounted for 80% of funds sent to mixers in 2022; taking advantage of this permitted means of escape.

The report also expressed that hackers related to the North Korean administration have extracted more than $1 billion in digital currencies, mostly from DeFi protocols, this year. The remainder came from crypto- derived residing in protocol exploits, scams, ransomware, and other dark corners of the crypto networks.

In April, many reports highlighted that the Ethereum mixer Tornado Cash had agreed to set a suspension over all the punished addresses.

How do Crypto Mixers Work?

Mixers complicate operations linked to transactions by employing many different procedures. They cut off the connection between the sending address and the receiving one making assets very difficult to trace and follow.

The Crypto funds sent to mixers get housed or “mixed” randomly before getting sent to the beneficiary, which makes tracing the originating address a difficult mission to accomplish. Further anonymity can get achieved by staggering the transactions and adjusting the fees and deposit types.

The weaker points are the most prominent operations linked to transactions because they could overwhelm the mixing pools, making it easier for blockchain to carry out its traceability procedure.

Another huge struggle is that ill-informed policymakers link mixers with the whole shady activity connected to the crypto world makes up around 0.62% of all crypto operations, according to a Chainalysis report that got revealed earlier this year.

By: Jenson Nuñez