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Coinbase has changed its head of custody , potentially as a strategic decision for handling services related to spot Bitcoin ETFs. The departure of Aaron Schnarch, the former Chief Executive Officer of Coinbase Custody, marks a pivotal shift in the company’s leadership. Schnarch’s position has been filled by Rick Schonberg, who joined Coinbase in 2021 and brings experience from previous stints at Goldman Sachs, State Street, and Tagomi. Breaking: After @Grayscale shuffles their team before the ETF approvals, @Coinbase follows suit with Rick Schonberg replacing Aaron Schnarch at Coinbase Custody. Aaron Schnarch, chief executive officer of Coinbase Custody, left in recent weeks, a spokesperson confirmed. He was… pic.twitter.com/rUajrSXK6f — MartyParty (@martypartymusic) December 29, 2023 You might also like: Cryptocurrency option trading soars as January ETF expectations escalate Coinbase’s custody division is recognized as a preferred choice for Bi...

Disclosure: The views and opinions expressed here belong solely to the author and do not represent the views and opinions of crypto.news’ editorial. Now that crypto’s volatile streak has calmed down considerably, many projects are looking to bring traditional finance, or TradFi, institutions into the blockchain fold. From banks to asset managers and investment firms, the crypto industry’s message to them has become this: The door is wide open, so step inside. You might also like: Blockchain developers must pull crypto out of its money laundering peril | Opinion But why? If there’s one thing that TradFi institutions are not particularly famous for, it’s embracing new technologies. Fintech companies that deal with fiat currency are typically more nimble here if PayPal jamming themselves into the stablecoin sphere is anything to go by. If you look at big-league banks and storied financial institutions , however, most are notoriously slow at matching adoption to the pa...

NEAR Foundation partners with Polygon Labs to develop zkWASM, a cutting-edge zero-knowledge solution enhancing interoperability and security for WASM chains. The NEAR Foundation, renowned for its contribution to the NEAR protocol’s ecosystem, and Polygon Labs, have announced a pioneering venture to create zkWASM—a zero -knowledge proof technology tailored for WASM-based blockchains. This collaborative effort was unveiled at NEARCON, the annual flagship event for the NEAR community, taking place in Lisbon. This strategic partnership promises to merge NEAR’s proficiency in WASM runtime with Polygon’s mastery of zero -knowledge scaling technologies. The initiative is designed to bridge NEAR Protocol with Ethereum, granting WASM chains access to Ethereum’s expansive liquidity. It also lays the groundwork for an interoperability layer currently in the works, enabling a shared liquidity pool across various blockchain landscapes, including alternative layer-1s and EVM layer-2...

The world’s largest so-called decentralized exchange, Uniswap, has introduced a 0.15% fee on its most popular trading pairs — a move that will not benefit UNI tokenholders. Incredibly, Uniswap Labs founder Hayden Adams claims that this new fee is separate from Uniswap Protocol’s fee switch function, which UNI token holders govern. Aggravating UNI holders with this decision continues a long history of overlooking Uniswap’s curious coin offering. Indeed, the price of UNI has declined 91% since its all-time high. Worse, Uniswap functioned for two years without the need for any governance token. Coinciding with a generous allocation to Adams and a group of early insiders, Uniswap oddly bolted its UNI token onto its otherwise well-functioning ecosystem on September 16, 2020. With $3 billion in total value locked (TVL) and a #1 ranking on DEX volume leaderboards, Uniswap .org is by far the world’s most popular website to swap digital assets in a non-custodial manner. It has process...

Jeffrey Huang withdrew the lawsuit after ZachXBT edited his article that Huang claimed to be defamatory. Taiwanese music celebrity Jeffrey Huang, also known as "Machi Big Brother," has withdrawn a defamation lawsuit against internet sleuth ZachXBT. In a bilateral announcement dated Aug. 14, Machi Big Brother said "Zach has many times in the past been of great service to the crypto community and pursuing legal action against him was a last resort but not the right path," after ZachXBT made a series of his amendments to his article that sparked the defamation suit from Huang.  I am withdraw ing my defamation suit against @zachxbt. Zach has many times in the past been of great service to the crypto community and pursuing legal action against him was a last resort but not the right path. I appreciate that Zach has made important amendments to his… — Machi Big Brother (@machibigbrother) August 14, 2023 Meanwhile, ZachXBT stated that he "updated my article with...

A number of pools using Vyper have been exploited due to a malfunctioning reentrancy lock that potentially exposes all pools with wrapped Ether (WETH). Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols are undergoing a stress test following a critical vulnerability was found on versions of Vyper programming language, resulting in the theft of millions of dollars' worth of cryptocurrencies on July 30. A number of pools using Vyper 0.2.15, 0.2.16 and 0.3.0 have been exploited due to a malfunctioning reentrancy lock, targeting at least four liquidity pools on Curve Finance protocol. "The short answer is that everything that could be drained was drained. The targeted pools are aETH/ETH, msETH/ETH, pETH/ETH and CRV/ETH. All remaining pools are safe and unaffected by the bug," Curve Finance said on Discord. BlockSec, an auditing firm for smart contracts, noted that the reentrancy could potentially place all pools with wrapped Ether (WETH) at risk of attack. Please note that this reentr...

During the second bull peak of 2021, most cryptos rallied along with Bitcoin when it created the $69,000 peak. Along with the price of assets, even the funds locked on DeFi protocols like Uniswap climbed highs. Such was the state of Vechain too. Back in December 2021, the TVL on the platform stood as high as $35 million. Then, during the bear market onset, this metric noted a sharp fall. By June 2022, the number was hovering 89% lower, around $4 million. Leaving aside one recovery attempt, the TVL kept shrinking. At press time, the value of all the assets locked on VeChain was only worth $1.13 million, down 97%. Source: DeFiLlama Currently, VeChain has only two protocols, both of which fall under the DEX category. Vexchange, the decentralized swap platform, contributes a 2/3rd of the TVL share. VeRocket, the token exchange platform, on the other hand, has the remaining 1/3rd say. Over the past month, the value of funds locked on both protocols has inclined by 11% and 32% respect...

In a post-mortem report, Arcadia Finance developers said an attacker stole funds by liquidating a vault before it could perform a health check, interrupting the app’s normal flow of operations. The Arcadia Finance attacker used a reentrancy exploit to drain $455,000 from the decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol, according to a July 10 post-mortem report issued by the app’s development team. A “reentrancy exploit” is a bug that allows an attacker to “reenter” a contract or interrupt it during a multi-step process, preventing the process from being completed correctly. The team has sent a message to the attacker demanding the return of funds within 24 hours and threatening police action if the hacker fails to comply. Post Mortem of ongoing situation, providing a technical overview and sharing more information on next steps.https://t.co/NPNbbSzKBQ — Arcadia Finance (@ArcadiaFi) July 10, 2023 Arcadia Finance was exploit ed on the morning of July 10 and drained of $455,000 worth of...

Cointelegraph analyst and writer Marcel Pechman explains how Argentina’s 150% inflation is actually helping the altcoin market by luring more investors. On today’s Macro Markets show, veteran stock market and Cointelegraph analyst Marcel Pechman starts by analyzing Argentina’s 150% inflation , which proves that people continue to work and consume (somehow) even if their local currency loses its value. What is the lesson here? For starters, everyone wants free money. That explains why altcoin s and airdrops continue to attract attention, regardless of whether the majority of investors end up being unprofitable. You might think that those investors would quickly learn their lesson, but in reality, quite the opposite occurs. All it takes is a new market ing strategy — a new way of promising free money — just like the Argentines have a tendency to forget the mess the governments have caused over the course of 10 years. For Pechman, the bottom line is: Forget any promise of free money or ...

There are currently more than 34,000 types of BRC-20 tokens in circulation. On June 21, self-custody wallet provider BitKeep announced support for BRC-20 tokens issued on the Bitcoin network. With the feature, users can view, rank and transfer BRC-20 tokens and nonfungible tokens (NFTs). Developers also stated BRC-20 in-wallet swaps are coming “in [the] future."  Last month, cryptocurrency exchange OKX also announced support for BRC-20 assets via the OKX Wallet app. Many centralized and decentralized exchanges have also rolled out BRC-20 support.  Although bullish on its outlook, Trust Wallet currently does not support BRC-20 token s. They also cannot currently be stored on MetaMask.  Best wallet for your #BRC20 assets! ️ Great news: BitKeep now supports #BTC #Taproot addresses! Easily manage your #Ordinals BRC20 Token/NFT assets in BitKeep wallet, and complete transactions with a simple click In future, we will also support the BRC20 #Swap function! pic.twitter.com/W48wsNH5k...

April was a month of hacks, exploits and rug pulls, resulting in over $100 million in net losses across DeFi platforms. Welcome to Finance Redefined, your weekly dose of essential decentralized finance (DeFi) insights — a newsletter crafted to bring you the most significant developments from the past week. April saw several hacks, exploits and rug pulls that resulted in a net loss of over $100 million among several DeFi protocols. Amid the growing memecoin frenzy, the chances of exploits have increased multifold, with WallStreetBets — a popular trading sub-Reddit group — allegedly rugging its users for $635,000 just days after airdropping about $15,000. DeFi protocol Level Finance was a victim of an exploit resulting in the loss of nearly $1 million. The attacker manipulated a “claim multiple” bug in a Level Finance smart contract to steal more than 214,000 native Level Finance (LVL) tokens from the exchange. The volume of liquid staking protocols has dramatically risen in the past co...

Allbridge offered a hacker who pilfered $573,000 from its platform a chance to come forward as a white hat and forgo any legal ramifications. The attacker behind a $573,000 exploit on the multi-chain token bridge, Allbridge, has been offered a chance by the firm to come forward as a white hat and claim a bounty. Blockchain security firm Peckshield first identified the attack on April 1, warning Allbridge in a tweet that its BNB Chain pools swap price was being manipulated by an individual acting as a liquidity provider and swapper, which allowed them to drain the pool of $282,889 in Binance USD (BUSD) and $290,868 worth of Tether (USDT). In an April 1 tweet following the hack, Allbridge offered an olive branch to the attacker in the form of an undisclosed bounty and the chance to escape any legal ramifications. To hacker's attention: addressing the incident and the next steps 1. We continue monitoring the wallets, transactions, and linked CEX accounts of individuals involved in t...

ETH worth over $101 million had been returned to the lending protocol as of March 25. The exploiter still controls part of the stolen assets. The hacker behind the $196 million exploit on lending protocol Euler Finance has returned the majority of the stolen assets, according to on-chain data.  In a transaction on March 25, the exploit er return ed 51,000 Ether (ETH) worth around $88 million at the time of writing. A second transfer of 7,737 ETH was made on the same day, worth over $13 million. Previously, on March 18, the hacker sent 3,000 ETH to the protocol, worth nearly $5.4 million at the time. The exploit er still controls some of the stole n assets. the euler exploiter has returned 51k ETH ($90m) https://t.co/RooIjugGsd — ekin (@eking0x) March 25, 2023 On March 13, the hacker carried out multiple transactions stealing nearly $196 million from the protocol in a flash loan attack, dubbed the largest DeFi hack of 2023 so far. Stolen assets include 8.8 million DAI, 849,000 ...

MicroStrategy’s Lightning Network solutions include Satoshi-powered incentives for marketing and website cybersecurity. MicroStrategy executive chairman Michael Saylor has shared his firm’s plans to release Bitcoin Lightning Network-powered software and solutions in 2023. In a recent Twitter Spaces on Dec. 28, Saylor shared that the company is exploring software and solutions that utilize the Lightning Network, such as solutions that “support” enterprise marketing as well as a cybersecurity solution aimed at corporate websites. The Lightning Network is a layer-2 payment protocol layered on top of Bitcoin’s Blockchain that allows for off-chain transactions, raising payment throughput and lowering transaction fees. The business intelligence and tech company, known for its massive Bitcoin holdings, has been looking to beef up its Lightning Network-versed team, most recently announcing it was looking to hire a Bitcoin Lightning Software Engineer to build a Lightning Network-based software...