The crypto industry, as usual, has had its fair share of happenings, hacks, predictions and prison sentences over the last week.
The previous week saw a lot more X (formerly Twitter) accounts hacked again as phishers grow bolder, we had more "doom and gloom" predictions for Bitcoin and the crypto market in general, as well as the historic sale of a CryptoPunk NFT that someone sold for a whopping half-million dollars.
We have compiled all of these stories from the past week into a single article so that you can keep yourself up to date on the latest happenings in the crypto market.
Without wasting time, here's what we have:
The NFT market has been struggling to get back on its feet since the 2022 bear market.
However, once in a while, the NFT market turns green, attracting more investors.
This is what happened last week, when the largest NFT sale in 30 days hit the market, in the middle of a larger crypto market downturn.
CryptoPunk #6940 was sold for a whopping 205 ETH, worth around $507,617 at the time.
This massive NFT sale caused a noticeable uptick in the NFT market's sales volume, by an impressive 17%.
This metric hit an impressive $38.28 million in under 24 hours, marking the largest NFT sale in the last 30 days according to data from CryptoSlam.
The most interesting thing about this NFT, in particular, is that according to data from EtherScan, the NFT was minted in December 2017 for as little as $128, and was worth 215 ETH in April 2023 (about $397,924 at the time).
In a phishing attack last week, hackers used the email addresses of several Web3 companies including Cointelegraph, WalletConnect, and Token Terminal, to steal over $580,000 from victims with the usual airdrop scam.
According to reports, the attackers hacked MailerLite (which provides email services) and used its servers to send these malicious links.
The links took visitors to a fake website where they were prompted to connect their wallets, which were then drained and transferred to a multichain address that held 280 different kinds of tokens once the victims connected their wallets.
The interesting thing about this is that these emails looked authentic, and even showed the official addresses of these firms, along with their logo and branding
According to reports, the attack mostly targeted the users of SocialFi, De.Fi, as well as subscribers of Cointelegraph, WalletConnect, and Token Terminal.
In a new and surprising application of blockchain Inscriptions, someone has been able to inscribe a complete game onto the Dogecoin blockchain.
Earlier last week, @minidogeart, a developer, posted on Twitter that he had successfully inscribed Doom, the legendary first-person shooter game that was released in 1993 onto the Dogecoin blockchain.
According to his announcement, he did so using a technology called Doginals (which is similar to Bitcoin Ordinals), and anyone with an internet connection can play on the Dogecoin Doom website.
Doom, which was one of the biggest darlings to gamers in the 1990s, can now be played completely on any computer, off the data inscribed on the Dogecoin network, without needing any Web 2.0 databases.
Bitcoin faced some pretty strong headwinds in the middle of last week, especially after it fell far below $40,000 and went straight down to the $38,000 zone.
Because of this dip and because of the unforeseen issues with the ETFs not causing an immediate price rally as investors had hoped, Matrixport predicted that Bitcoin might drop in price to as low as $36,739 in Q1 2024, despite having recovered since then.
Matrixport's prediction is based on several factors, including the weak demand for these ETFs, and the insane profit taking from the GBTC investors (grayscale's investors).
The week would hardly have been complete without a lengthy prison sentence.
Mark Scott, a former partner at the U.S. law firm Locke Lord got a 10-year prison sentence during the week, for his role in the $400 million money laundering scam from OneCoin.
According to reports, Scott was arrested and eventually sentenced for his conspiracy to commit money laundering and bank fraud in November 2019.
For the sake of refreshers, OneCoin was one of the biggest crypto scams between 2014 and 2016, after investors were tricked into believing that it was a revolutionary crypto that could rival Bitcoin.
The key masterminds of this scam were Ruja Ignatova, also known as the "Cryptoqueen", and Karl Sebastian Greenwood, who was arrested in 2018 and sentenced to 20 years in prison in September 2023.
Disclaimer: Voice of Crypto aims to deliver accurate and up-to-date information, but it will not be responsible for any missing facts or inaccurate information. Cryptocurrencies are highly volatile financial assets, so research and make your own financial decisions.