crypto market, Bitcoin, Voice of Crypto
The long-awaited Bitcoin halving arrived last week, sparking a positive trend across the crypto market.
Inflows are returning to crypto ETFs, and overall market health appears to be improving.
A Nebraska man received a 30-year sentence for stealing computing power to mine Bitcoin illegally.
Blockchain investigator ZachXBT exposed the identity of the hacker behind the $11 million PrismaFi theft.
Hackers also compromised Tom Holland's X account to promote a fake Spiderverse NFT project.
Last week’s events contained one of the most important epochs in crypto
The fourth Bitcoin halving, which reduced miner rewards in half once again, from 6.25 Bitcoin per block to 3.125 Bitcoin per block.
However, several other interesting events also took place, some of which included how a Nebraska man got sentenced to 30 years in jail, after a cryptojacking scam, how the identity of the PrismaFi's hacker who stole $11m git uncovered, and how Spider-Man star, Tom Holland's X account got hacked and was used to promote a crypto scam.
Here are some of the most interesting things that happened with the crypto industry, over the last week.
The Bitcoin halving hit the mainnet on 20 April, after four years of steady anticipation.
As it stands, nothing much holds the incoming bull run from taking full effect, and cryptocurrencies all over the market have even started to turn green, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
The crypto market has turned green
Inflows into the ETFs have also started to come back, according to data from Farside. It also saw around $59.7 million worth of inflows in general, which is a step up from the last five days of continuous outflows.
In general, the crypto market in general is showing great signs of health.
The steady decline in the GBTC holdings
In more bearish news though, data from Coinglass shows that Grayscale’s GBTC outflows have now become extreme, considering how the ETF now contains half the assets it started with when the 11 Bitcoin ETFs were approved in January 2024.
Will this be the end of Grayscale’s GBTC ETF?
There are several ways to mine Bitcoin, and not all of them involve opening up a mining rig and using GPUs.
It is possible to forcibly "hijack" someone else’s computer, and then use their resources to mine Bitcoin for personal gain, in a crime known as cryptojacking.
In an indictment dated 15 April, the Brooklyn United States Attorney's office charged a man from Nebraska, Charles O. Parks with scamming two well-known cloud service providers.
Parks allegedly stole computing resources valued at $3.5 from the service providers and used them to mine bitcoins valued at $970,000.
The accused was taken into custody on 13 April 2024, and is scheduled to appear before the federal court located in Omaha, under charges of wire fraud, money laundering, and engaging in "unlawful monetary transactions".
Earlier in March, the Prisma team discovered a series of transactions on the MigrateTroveZap contract, that ultimately led to the loss of 3,257 ETH, worth $11.1 million at the time.
At first, the attacker claimed that the attack was only a whitehat effort, after speaking to the Prisma deployer.
However, soon after this, all of the money was eventually transferred to Tornado Cash, in an apparent theft.
Last week, blockchain sleuth ZachXBT fished out the attacker behind the PrismaFi hack in a series of X posts, showing that the exploiter, known as 0x77 (or Trung) might be linked to multiple other attacks.
The Prisma exploiter
At the end of the ZachXBT revealed the exploiter’s personal information, phone numbers and emails, showing that they had enough of a solid technical background to successfully steal the funds.
Tom Holland, the latest star of Sony and Marvel's Spiderman-Movies' X account also got hacked last week and used to push a crypto scam.
Tom Holland’s accounts got hacked
The account, which has over 7 million followers, was used to announce that the Spider-Man actor was establishing a "Spiderverse" in collaboration with Binance, along with a link to a fake website that encouraged Twitter users to buy Spiderverse NFTs.
It all looked like another crypto scam, with no reports of victims yet, as of writing.
Overall, the original post featuring the crypto scam link has already been removed.
Raj Kundra, a well-known businessman and the husband of Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty, is allegedly being investigated by India's Enforcement Directorate (ED).
This investigation is in connection with a money laundering case involving a crypto Ponzi scam known as "Gain Bitcoin", with Kundra not being the investigation's primary suspect.
So far, the ED has seized property valued at almost $12 million as part of the continuing investigation, including Shilpa Shetty's Mumbai apartment.
"Gain Bitcoin," which was founded in 2017 by Ajay and Mahendra Bhardwaj, quickly raised over $800 million by promising investors a 10% monthly return, which was payable in Bitcoin.
Investigations also show that Amit Bhardwaj, the scam's promoter, sent Kundra 285 Bitcoins, which are currently valued at over $18 million. The tokens were allegedly meant for a fake Bitcoin mining company in Ukraine, and it's possible Kundra still has them kept somewhere.
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.