The hardware wallet storm 👝🌪
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The hardware wallet storm 👝🌪
Ledger wallet under fire for the new cloud-based seed phrase backup feature. South Korean politician quits party over crypto scandal. $1.28B Jump Trading heist. BTC whale wakes up after 12 years.
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The collapse of the crypto exchange FTX has pushed users to hardware wallets. Self-custody. That has brought the spot light on companies like Ledger and Trezor.
But those can be risky too. As Ledger unfolding highlights.
What happened now?
Ledger released its latest firmware update Ledger Recover service.
Here's the deal: It lets you split your precious seed phrase into shards and you can back up these shards with not one, not two, but three custodians - including Ledger itself.
It applies to Ledger Nano X hardware wallets and will roll out under firmware release 2.2.1. The identity card requirement pertains to EU users, the UK, Canada, and the US.
But, Ledger requests a copy of your passport or national identity card.
Price: $9.99 a month. But is that all the price you pay?
Here's the catch: Ledger had previously experienced many data breaches. Including the massive exploit in July 2020 in which the hacker dumped personal information on over 270,000 customers on the internet. Personal information leaked, phone numbers were flying, and home addresses were dancing on the internet streets.
Hackers used that intel for an extortion campaign. It's no wonder people are a bit hesitant to trust Ledger with their seed phrases. 👇🏻
The whole point of a hardware wallet is that the seed locked in the secure element of the device cannot be sent out. And People are still a bit jumpy after the recent chaos, a.k.a FTX in the crypto world, so they're leaning towards hardware wallets instead. And asking for private keys and government ID is not a clever move for Ledger right now.
Hence, the crypto community is not in favour of this.
Even Binance CEO doesn't think this is a good idea:
Some are even cancelling Ledger altogether:
Life goes on🕺
Bitski, is also joining forces with Ledger to bring in some security features - users can import their wallet credentials into Bitski using self-custodied keys.
Also, Ledger recently had a "stylish" necklace phase (we all did).
TTD Scam 😵
There was a raid party in crypto exchanges Upbit and Bithumb.
But why, you ask?
Well, it turns out there was a political scandal brewing, and it involved Kim Nam-kuk, a representative in the South Korean National Assembly. This guy apparently had his digital asset wallets on Upbit and Bithumb.
On May 14, Kim Nam-kuk resigned from his political party and said:
"Today, I am briefly leaving the Democratic Party that I love. I decided that it would not be right to be a burden to the party and party members any longer."
Apparently, he owned around 800,000 WEMIX tokens worth $4.5 million.
South Korean prosecutors investigated all the transactions and account information of Kim in the exchanges.
Last March, right before the enforcement of the so-called 'Travel Rule,' he pulled a disappearing act on all his precious coins.
The rule requires crypto exchanges to spill the beans and report personal information about crypto owners when a transferred amount exceeds 1 million won.
The same guy was actually one of the sponsors of a bill proposing to delay income taxation of virtual assets back in July 2021. Six months before the withdrawal.
TTD WTF 🤷
Jasmine Monsegue, aka Spacebrat, released her first free NFT called “Gleam” through an open edition mint, and it went 🚀
Minted over 300,000 times. The Holograph-based multichain NFT could be minted on Ethereum, BNB Chain, Avalanche, and Polygon.
TTD Numbers 🔢
$1.28 Billion
The amount Jump Trading netted propping up Terra stablecoin
High speed-trading platfrom Jump Trading has been confirmed as the company that propped up the TerraUSD stablecoin one year prior to its collapse, according SEC filings. The Wall Street Journal reported.
What do we know?
The filings state Jump purchased over 62 Million UST after the asset lost its peg in May 2021, which restored its $1 parity and allowed founder Do Kwon to credit the recovery to the Terra Luna algorithm. Jump benefited from the arrangement in a deal which enabled the purchase of Luna tokens at a steep discount, and eventually netted the firm $1.28 billion in profits.
TTD Whale 🐋
A Satoshi-era Bitcoin whale moves 139 BTC after a 12-year hibernation.
What do we know?
The owner spent about $2,250 to purchase the coins in June 2011.
The wallet transferred 139 BTC to a new SegWit address on May 11.
The current market value of the asset is roughly $3.5 million.
What more do we know?
Analysts call bitcoin bought over seven ancient.
The activity of these ancient Bitcoins has picked in 2023.
3,200 coins have emerged from dormancy since the start of the year.
1,100 of which date back to 2013.
Why does it matter?
Coin movements from ancient wallets can imply that the owner is moving them to an exchange in preparation for selling at a massive profit. Sales of this volume can impact the market Bitcoin price.
However, holders occasionally transfer their Bitcoin to new addresses for safekeeping. According to analysts at Glassnode, there is a lower chance of holders selling their Bitcoin after 155 days.
According to data from IntoTheBlock, 69% of Bitcoin addresses now have a weighted average holding period of over a year. A recent survey also revealed that the number of Bitcoins retained for a long time is increasing by 100,000 every month.
TTD Surfer 🏄
Justin Sun has made series of accusations the brother of Huobi founder Li Lin, Li Wei, alleging that he acquired HT token for free and cashed out
OKX will debut a marketplace within its wallet that supports minting and trading Bitcoin Ordinals across over 60 supported chains by June.
Job postings by Amazon indicates the company is planning to hiring AI engineers to build a ChatGPT-like search interface on its online web store.
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