Last week, Binance and WazirX fired back and forth over responsibility for the July.
Two men were arrested for stealing $230 million from a single victim in the largest individual crypto theft of the year.
Germany shut down a whopping 47 crypto exchanges for knowingly allowing cybercriminal activities.
A group of hackers attempted to exploit several major X accounts but only made less than $10k.
The official YouTube channel of the Indian Supreme Court was hacked and used to promote XRP.
The crypto industry went through its usual phase of ups and downs over the last week, with hacks, scams, arrests, and governmental crackdowns.
Last week, we had a new development with the WazirX hack from July, a massive hack on several major X accounts that turned up some pretty disappointing returns.
We had a case of crypto thieves stealing a staggering $230 million from a single victim, amid reports of the official YouTube channel of the Indian Supreme Court being hacked—and used to promote XRP.
Here are some of the biggest news stories from last week, to keep you up to date.
Last week, Binance responded to allegations from Nischal Shetty, the owner of Zettai Pte Ltd, a Singaporean company connected to WazirX.
In a Twitter (X) thread, Shetty alleged that the exchange was acquired by Binance, with the crypto exchange giant operating its crypto-to-crypto pairs and withdrawals.
Binance responsible for repaying investors
Shetty also alleged that Binance owns WazirX's domain name, and has root access to its AWS servers as well as all of its assets and profits.
As such, Binance should be responsible as well, for repaying creditors.
Binance fired back with a statement in which it stated:
“Their attempts to shift responsibility is disappointing […] but it should not distract anyone from the glaring issues:
The need for the WazirX team to be held accountable for user funds lost under their management.”
Binance stated that it was exploring the possibility of acquiring the exchange and even signed a contract.
However, the transaction was never closed—in essence, Binance does not own or control the exchange.
Last week, we saw one of the biggest social media hacks in 2024, in terms of scale.
A group of crypto hackers simultaneously took over the X accounts of several major brands including MoneyControl, Oliver Stone, Lenovo India, Yahoo News UK, People, and Krystal DeFi.
Soon after this hack, they pulled the usual shill of a Solana memecoin called $HACKED.
Independent blockchain sleuth, ZachXBT reported that this wave of hacks was a little different from the regular ones.
These hackers explicitly stated that these accounts were hacked—they then strangely attempted to use that information to promote the token:
"On each account we hack we publish the token address so we pump it and make profits together."
This approach at transparency didn’t work, however, because according to DEX Screener, the token they promoted jumped by around 900% in around an hour before dumping again.
This took its market cap from around $67,000 to a meager $3,100.
In essence, ZachXBT believes the hackers only made about $8,000 despite managing to hack so many accounts at the same time—less than enough to buy a mini-van.
Last week, we also saw one of the single largest crypto scams on an individual come to light.
Federal agents arrested two men, Malone Lam and Jeandiel Serrano for stealing $230 million worth of Bitcoin (about 4,100 BTC) from a single victim, believed to be a Genesis creditor.
They allegedly used several online accounts and advanced social engineering to trick the victim into sharing their private keys, which they then used to access the accounts, transfer funds, and launder it all.
The duo then went on a spending spree, traveling internationally, visiting nightclubs, and buying luxury vehicles, watches, jewelry, designer handbags, and rental homes in Los Angeles and Miami.
Upon stealing the funds, they allegedly split about $243 million in crypto between each party, before sending them off to more than 15 exchanges.
They then began swapping back and forth between Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, and Monero.
So far, more than $9 million has been frozen and $500,000 has already been returned with investigators working hard to claw back the rest.
Last week, Germany also shut down a staggering 47 exchanges for intentionally creating an "underground economy" that allowed hackers to thrive.
Germany's federal criminal police office also said in a 19 September statement that "[these exchanges have been] deliberately concealing the origin of criminally obtained funds on a large scale through [the] inadequate implementation of legal requirements for combating money laundering."
In essence, the major customers of these exchanges were black market merchants, ransomware developers, and operators of botnets: All of which they were aware of, but failed to take action against.
See you soon
These exchange websites now display a warning that reads: “This is for you, ransomware affiliates, botnet operators, and darknet vendors. These exchanges have led you to believe that their hosting cannot be found.”
See you soon
Source: Germany
It gets even more threatening. The later part of the message reads “We have their data – and therefore we have your data. Transactions, registration data, IP addresses. Our search for traces begins. See you soon.”
In a bold move on the part of the hacking community, scammers took over the official YouTube channel of the Indian Supreme Court on 20 September.
Soon after taking control of the account, the scammers rebranded the entire thing, deleting all prior videos and replacing them with Ripple-themed content.
Official YouTube channel hacked.
Source: TradingView
One of the newly uploaded videos showed a deep fake of Ripple CEO, Brad Garlinghouse urging people to invest and that "XRP would hit $2 this month"
So far, with the help of YouTube, the account has been recovered once again.
This adds the Indian Supreme Court to the long list of YouTube hacks through which scammers shilled XRP for some reason.
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.