Yield App’s New Referral Program Offers a Massive Bonus – Sponsored Bitcoin News

Yield App’s New Referral Program Offers a Massive Bonus – Sponsored Bitcoin News
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Yield App, a thriving digital wealth platform, recently unveiled its hotly anticipated Referral Program and it was worth the wait. With up to 1,000 $YLD (more than $200 at the current price) available for both the referrer and the new customers being referred, it is easily one of the most lucrative referral programs in the digital wealth space.

A referred customer must sign up for a Yield App account and pass KYC level 2 to begin using the platform. They must then become a Silver Tier member and deploy $1,000 into any Yield App portfolio(s) for 30 consecutive days to earn their reward. At the end of this period, the existing customer and their friend both receive a reward of up to 1,000 YLD, chosen at random.

Unlike other similar promotions, Yield App’s Referral Program differentiates itself by giving new customers as long as they need to accumulate the necessary amount of assets to qualify for a referral reward. Customers can refer as many friends as they like, but the referred friend must be a new Yield App customer and each individual can only ever use one referral code.

With a mission to unlock the full potential of digital assets and make it available to the world, Yield App bridges traditional and decentralized finance in the easiest way possible. Customers simply deposit their digital assets to earn market-leading annual rates on stablecoins (USDT USDC, DAI and TUSD) as well as blue-chip cryptocurrencies BTC and ETH. At the core of the platform’s strategy is its $YLD token, which rewards loyal community members with a higher yield the more YLD they hold in their on-platform wallets.

Yield App has been making headway in the digital wealth space. Launched in February 2021, the platform has already amassed nearly 80,000 customers and over $0.5 billion in managed assets. With the launch of its hotly anticipated Referral Program, the company has made a bold statement regarding its longevity, after recently passing Armanino’s proof of reserves audit to bolster transparency.

 

 

 


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ADA To Rebound With Integration Of USDT And USDC On Cardano?

ADA To Rebound With Integration Of USDT And USDC On Cardano?
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One of the best performer assets in the crypto top 10 by market cap, Cardano (ADA) keeps strengthening its ecosystem. As the network prepares for its next major Hard Fork Combinator (HFC) event, called Vasil, its DeFi sector could add some of the most popular assets in the space.

Related Reading | Majority Of Cardano (ADA) Holders In Loss As Price Slides To $1

At the time of writing, ADA’s price trades at $0.95 with a 2% profit in the last 24-hours.

ADA trends to the downside on the 4-hour chart. Source: ADAUSDT Tradingview

Cardano could soon have native support for Tether (USDT), and USD Coin (USDC). Charles Hoskinson, this network’s inventor, and CEO at Input Output Global (IOG), shared his enthusiasm for WingRiders.

A decentralized exchange running on Cardano, WingRiders partnered with another two projects called Flint Wallet and Milkomeda, created to provide sidechains with friendly user and developer UX, to launch these stablecoins on the mainnet.

According to a Medium post, Milkomeda will implement the Ethereum Virtual Machine on their Cardano sidechain. This sidechain will operate with a synthetic version of ADA called wrapped ADA (wADA).

In practice, this will allow users to leverage the Milkomeda sidechain and wADA to connect with Ethereum, as seen in the diagram below. This will remove friction from the process of trading ERC-20 tokens with native Cardano tokens. WingRiders said:

Milkomeda itself is an EVM based side chain of Cardano — supporting the ERC20 tokens stored for the user (for example on their Flint wallet or again using Metamask). A gateway will lock these ERC-20 tokens then issue Cardano native equivalents of these tokens on to the Cardano blockchain. This can be done via the Flint wallet.

Cardano ADA ADAUSDT
Source: Wingriders

Bitcoin And Ethereum To Integrate With Cardano (ADA)?

As WingRiders explained, the tokens on one side of the two chains will enter a smart contract to be “locked” as the synthetic versions are minted on the other side. In the case of the stablecoins, these digital assets will be “pre-mined” before the user request them and they will be “locked on the Cardano mainnet”.

In that way, users can benefit from a “simple” way to transact on this network. Stablecoin is some of the most important digital assets because it can operate as a “liquidity accelerator” and onboard new users, fresh capital, and new assets, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, to the ecosystem.

However, bridges have become objects of attack by bad actors. Some of the biggest DeFi hacks in recent times have occurred on these platforms. Therefore, the potential for this partnership and ADA’s performance seems great, but not without potential tradeoffs.

Related Reading | Here’s Why ADA Could Replicate Ethereum’s 2017 bullish break-out 

The inventor of Cardano trusts the team behind the initiative. According to Hoskinson, IOG has been working with WingRiders for “years” on multiple projects. The inventor of Cardano said:

We’ve worked with the team for years. They are the ones who did the ledger integration for cardano and also adalite. I like and respect their engineers. They also caught the bug in Minswap and did a responsible disclosure saving the DApp from hackers. Good people get callouts.

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Uniswap Launches Swap Widget — Devs Can Embed the Dex With ‘One Line of Code’ – Defi Bitcoin News

Uniswap Launches Swap Widget — Devs Can Embed the Dex With ‘One Line of Code’ – Defi Bitcoin News
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On Thursday, Uniswap Labs, the company behind the popular decentralized finance (defi) protocol, Uniswap, launched a tool called the Swap Widget. Essentially, the widget allows developers and decentralized app (dapp) operators to embed the Uniswap decentralized exchange (dex) app with “one line of code.”

Software Engineers Can Now Embed Uniswap Swapping Functionality Into Web3 Dapps

One of the largest dex applications in terms of trade volume, Uniswap, announced the launch of a new widget tool that gives dapp operators the ability to integrate Uniswap into their third-party applications. The Uniswap blog post that announces the new Swap Widget explains that integration is easy as it only requires a single React component and one line of code.

“We envision a world in which everyone is able to access fair, open, and transparent markets,” the company said on Thursday. “The Swap Widget brings this vision closer to reality by allowing developers to easily embed Uniswap swapping functionality, allowing their users to seamlessly swap tokens, join a community or DAO, wrap assets, and more, without leaving their apps.”

The Swap Widget features a user interface that is customizable and for pricing the widget “bundles Uniswap Labs’ Auto Router to find the best price across Uniswap v2 + v3 token pools.” The widget also connects to layer two (L2) chains including Polygon, Arbitrum, and Optimism. Uniswap says that the Swap Widget is already available in a number of popular Web3 applications like Oasis.app, Friends With Benefits, and the non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace Opensea.

As of Thursday, the widget is fully available to embed into a Web3 application and people can follow instructions by leveraging Uniswap’s developer docs. In order to ask questions or get technical support, interested Swap Widget users need to join the group’s Discord channel. At the time of writing, Uniswap v3 has the largest trading volume out of a slew of dex protocols with $1.11 billion in 24-hour volume. There are 479 unique tokens available on Uniswap and roughly 923 pairs, according to dex platform statistics.

Tags in this story
dApps, DeFi, Defi Apps, Defi protocols, Devs, Embed Uniswap, Engineers, Software Developers, Swap Widget, Swapping, trading, uniswap, Uniswap V2, uniswap v3, Web3 Apps, Web3 Dapps

What do you think about Uniswap’s Swap Widget? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Jamie Redman

Jamie Redman is the News Lead at Bitcoin.com News and a financial tech journalist living in Florida. Redman has been an active member of the cryptocurrency community since 2011. He has a passion for Bitcoin, open-source code, and decentralized applications. Since September 2015, Redman has written more than 5,000 articles for Bitcoin.com News about the disruptive protocols emerging today.




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Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not a direct offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or a recommendation or endorsement of any products, services, or companies. Bitcoin.com does not provide investment, tax, legal, or accounting advice. Neither the company nor the author is responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article.

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Bitcoin Miners Receive Third Break This Year, Over 100K Blocks To Go Until The Halving

Bitcoin Miners Receive Third Break This Year, Over 100K Blocks To Go Until The Halving
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Bitcoin miners are celebrating the third break this year as their computational power increased due to a decrease of 1.26% in difficulty. This means that they will be able to mine more Bitcoins, and with it comes an endless supply of new coins. Miners also have another 108,160 blocks left until halving happens on or around May 3rd, 2024, which could bring some significant profits if prices keep going up.

On March 03, Bitcoin’s difficulty adjustment algorithm (DAA) dropped by 0.35% and again on March 17 by 1.49%. This is the third time in 2022 that the DAA dropped by 1.26% on Thursday at a block height of 731,808. 

Related Reading | Can The 600-Day MA Support Line Push Bitcoin Again?

Bitcoin saw a significant reduction in the difficulty adjustment algorithm on March 7, 2021. As a result, the DAA went down by 27.94%. This was one of the largest reductions in Bitcoin’s lifetime. However, since this change, the hashrate has increased.

With a 1.26% drop in DAA, miners find it easier to find the blocks. Two weeks ago, the difficulty was 28.59 trillion, and today with this decrease, the figures are 28.23 trillion. There are still 1,982 blocks left until the following DAA change.

Bitcoin is currently trading below its $40,000 support level with a 3.35% decline | Source: BTC/USD chart from Tradingview.com

Presently, the difficulty adjustment algorithm is expected to increase in the following change. The next DAA is estimated on April 28th. So the following change will happen two weeks from now. Using today’s Bitcoin price, the current block subsidy of 6.25BTC is worth $252,781. 

More Bitcoin Pools Joining As Just Over 100,000 Block Rewards To Go Until The Halving

Bitcoin miners get closer every day toward the block reward halving expected to occur on or around May 4, 2024. Some estimates assume it may appear on May 3, 2024. As a result, things are turning favorably for miners. Miners can expect a significant boost in revenue with this new halving schedule.

After halving, miners will see their reward cut in half, from 6.25 Bitcoins per block to 3.125 BTCs per block. The network produces about 900 coins daily (144 blocks), and Bitcoin’s inflation rate is 1.74%. So far, 90% of all imaginable bitcoins have already been minted- there are only 988481.23 left.

Related Reading | TA: Why Bitcoin Price Could Eye Strong Recovery Above $41.5K

It’s been a smooth few days for the mining community as difficulty continues to change, making it easier to find Blocks. Foundry USA currently holds top honors among all other pools over the last three days. They found 72 blocks and 16.63% or 33.54 EH/s of hashpower.

In recent days, some more pools have joined. For example, there were 11 known Bitcoin mining pools two weeks ago, but now the numbers are 14. 

Price Analysis

Bitcoin is currently trading at $39,775 at the time of writing. The coin is below its $40,000 support level. Bitcoin price has decreased 3.35% in the past 24 hours and 8.48% in the past week. 

                 Featured image from Flickr.com, chart from Tradingview.com

 

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Luna Foundation Purchases Another $5 Million in Bitcoin, LFG Wallet Holds 42,530 BTC – Bitcoin News

Luna Foundation Purchases Another $5 Million in Bitcoin, LFG Wallet Holds 42,530 BTC – Bitcoin News
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The Luna Foundation Guard (LFG) purchased an additional 123.89 bitcoin on Friday worth close to $5 million at the time of settlement. Since mid-March, Terra’s LFG has been acquiring bitcoin on a regular basis and after the purchase on Friday morning, the non-profit organization has approximately 42,530.827 bitcoin.

LFG Acquires Another Batch of Bitcoins for the Project’s Decentralized UST Forex Reserves

Ever since Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon said the Terra project would purchase $3 billion worth of bitcoin for Terra’s decentralized UST forex reserves, LFG has been acquiring quite a bit of BTC. Bitcoin.com News reported on LFG’s last buy when it obtained 2,508 BTC two days ago and the wallet held approximately 42,406.92 BTC after the acquisition.

On Friday, the non-profit organization LFG acquired a much smaller quantity of bitcoin as it deposited 123.89917 BTC worth close to $5 million at 1:55 a.m. (UTC). All of the funds deposited into the LFG address have stemmed from a Binance hot wallet, except for random dust transactions sent to the wallet on a daily basis.

Now LFG’s bitcoin wallet holds 42,530.827 bitcoin worth $1.71 billion at the time of writing. It is currently the 18th largest bitcoin wallet after 69 transactions that started on January 21, 2022.

The purchase of 123.89 BTC follows the creation of the Terraform Labs Global Founder Fellowship. “The aim of the Terra Global Founder Fellowship is to work with top tier early-stage VC firms, accelerator programs, and tech unicorn companies,” the Terraform Labs’ announcement explained on Wednesday.

The Terra Global Founder Fellowship partners include Jump Crypto, Delphi Digital, Outlier Ventures, Long Hash Ventures, SCB10X, Alpha Finance Lab, Ship Capital, Basis Set Ventures, and Insignia Ventures.

Terra’s stablecoin UST was also listed on Binance US on April 13, and UST’s market capitalization on April 15 is only $200 million away from surpassing the stablecoin BUSD’s market valuation. Terra’s UST has seen its market cap grow by 15.5% during the last 30 days.

LFG’s Gnosis safe address has seen a lot of action in recent times as well. The address recently saw a deposit of 86,923,440 tether (USDT) three days ago. This was after the non-profit withdrew approximately 100,000,000 USDT the day before.

Statistics show the LFG Gnosis safe address holds around $549.6 million in stablecoins with the most dominant being usd coin (USDC). The address currently holds $398.16 million worth of USDC, $151.4 million worth of tether (USDT), and a small fraction (0.056 ETH) of ethereum worth $168.56.

Tags in this story
$3 Billion, Balance, Binance US Listing, Bitcoin, Bitcoin (BTC), BTC, BTC balance, collateral, crypto assets, do kwon, Gnosis safe address, lfg, LFG’s bitcoin wallet, LUNA, Luna Foundation, Luna Foundation bitcoin, luna foundation guard, public companies, Stablecoin, Terra, terra (LUNA), Terra Blockchain, Terra Global Founder Fellowship, Terra’s Luna Foundation, terraform labs, Tether, UST, UST Stablecoin

What do you think about the Luna Foundation’s growing stash of bitcoins? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Jamie Redman

Jamie Redman is the News Lead at Bitcoin.com News and a financial tech journalist living in Florida. Redman has been an active member of the cryptocurrency community since 2011. He has a passion for Bitcoin, open-source code, and decentralized applications. Since September 2015, Redman has written more than 5,000 articles for Bitcoin.com News about the disruptive protocols emerging today.




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Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not a direct offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or a recommendation or endorsement of any products, services, or companies. Bitcoin.com does not provide investment, tax, legal, or accounting advice. Neither the company nor the author is responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article.

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Ripple CEO Optimistic On SEC Case, Why XRP Saw Weak Response

Ripple CEO Optimistic On SEC Case, Why XRP Saw Weak Response
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In an interview with CNBC, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse revealed to feels optimistic about the company’s future and its legal battle. The payment solution company was sued by the U.S. Securities And Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2019 for the alleged illegal sales of a security, XRP.

Related Reading | Price Analysis: Where’s XRP Headed After Ripple’s Big Win

Initially, the battle was expected to be an easy win for the regulators. This had a negative impact on the price of XRP, the cryptocurrency that powers the XRP Ledger, and some of the products from the payment company.

However, Ripple has been using its resources and appears to be turning the table in its favor. In court, the payment solution company has presented evidence that claims the SEC was made aware of XRP, and Ripple’s business model with the cryptocurrency using a product called Ripple Network.

The evidence goes as back as 2013 and includes documents that suggest the SEC failed to provide clarity over the digital asset’s classification as a security. According to legal experts, the evidence could demonstrate to the court that Ripple was actively seeking to remain compliant with U.S. securities law.

In that sense, Garlinghouse told CNBC the following on his perception of the status of the case:

The lawsuit has gone exceedingly well, and much better than I could have hoped when it began about 15 months ago. But the wheels of justice move slowly.

Other evidence has come to light that could continue to favor Ripple. As highlighted by CNBC, the judge handling the case ruled against the SEC editing emails about how it has treated XRP and other cryptocurrencies, including Ethereum.

The second crypto by market cap, there are currently no standing cases against it as it is not deemed a security. If Ripple can successfully argue that XRP and ETH operate as decentralized cryptocurrencies, could score a win in its legal pursuit.

Ripple Touched Bottom, Only Up From Here?

Despite the legal battle, Ripple has not seen a slowdown in its operations. According to its CEO, the company is “already operating in the worst-case scenario”, but registers “record growth” outside of the United States.

On the other hand, the XRP token records a 7% profit in the last 24-hours potentially as a reaction to Garlinghouse’s statements. The market seems to be positively pricing any development around the legal case with the SEC, but the macro-economic outlook still seems unfavorable for risk-on assets.

On higher timeframes, the token still trends to the downside far from its $2 high in 2021. A positive conclusion of the case could send XRP to those highs.

XRP trends to the downside on the daily chart. Source: XRPUSD Tradingview

Related Reading | Ripple Vs. SEC: XRP Showing Strength In The Legal Fight As New Evidence Arises

Garlinghouse added the following on the importance of Ripple’s case for the crypto industry:

This case is important, not just for Ripple; it’s important for the entire crypto industry in the United States. It would really be negative for crypto in the United States (…). If you determine XRP as a security of Ripple, we have to know every person that owns XRP. That’s an SEC requirement. You have to know all of your shareholders. It’s not possible.

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Want to Dodge Your Crypto Tax? Learn the Risks From Koinly – Sponsored Bitcoin News

Want to Dodge Your Crypto Tax? Learn the Risks From Koinly – Sponsored Bitcoin News
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In recent years, the IRS has made one thing abundantly clear – if you make money from crypto, they want their cut. So if you’re underreporting or outright avoiding crypto taxes, be warned: the penalties are steep. Before you take the wrong turn, learn the risks from crypto tax experts, Koinly.

Is cryptocurrency taxed?

The million dollar question – and the answer is a definite yes. Virtually every country in the world requires you to pay taxes on crypto.

The exact tax you’ll pay will vary – but in general you’ll pay either Capital Gains Tax or Income Tax, or both in some cases. You can learn more about how crypto is taxed in your country in Koinly’s crypto tax guides.

What will tax offices know about my crypto?

Now that Crypto has gone mainstream, tax offices are sending a clear message to investors – you can run, but you can’t hide.

As a digital asset, you might think there’s no way your tax office can know about your crypto, but it’s not the case at all. Tax offices including the IRS in the US, the ATO in Australia, HMRC in the UK, and the CRA in Canada are compelling crypto exchanges to share Know Your Customer (KYC) data on demand. This is done to ensure tax compliance and catch taxpayers avoiding crypto taxes.

The IRS in particular have been using the John Doe summons to legally compel crypto exchanges to hand over user data. They’ve already won a John Doe summons against Coinbase, Kraken and Poloniex.

So what happens if you’re caught evading crypto taxes?

Crypto tax evasion in the US

The IRS has identified two types of crypto tax evasion:

  1. Evasion of assessment
  2. Evasion of payment

The penalties for each type of crypto tax evasion differ.

Evasion of assessment

The most common type of crypto tax evasion is evasion of assessment. Taxpayers who willfully omit income, underreport income, or overstate deductions commit this crime. Examples of crypto tax evasion include:

  • Not reporting capital gains from sales or other disposals.
  • Under reporting capital gains from sales or other disposals
  • Not reporting additional income received in cryptocurrency.
  • Not reporting business income received in cryptocurrency.
  • Paying wages in cryptocurrency without reporting it.

Evasion of payment

A taxpayer who hides assets or funds that could be used for payment of their tax liability is said to be evading payment after a tax assessment has been made. Tax evasion of this nature is less prevalent in the crypto space – but not entirely unknown.

IRS crypto tax evasion penalties

Tax evasion and tax fraud are both federal offenses in the United States. Depending on the severity of the evasion, you can face up to $100,000 in fines ($500,000 for corporations) or up to 5 years in prison. Therefore, if you’re thinking of risking it, don’t.

What if I’ve previously avoided crypto taxes?

The IRS recently updated Form 14457 – the Voluntary Disclosure Practice Preclearance Request and Application – to include a section on reporting virtual currencies. Form 14457 lets taxpayers who may be facing criminal prosecution for violation of tax laws, voluntarily disclose information to the IRS that they previously failed to disclose.

Provided the IRS hasn’t initiated proceedings already, a voluntary disclosure can help you avoid criminal prosecution if you’ve previously evaded assessment or payment.

By making a voluntary disclosure, you agree to cooperate with the IRS and pay any due taxes in full in order to avoid criminal prosecution. Based on the penalties, disclosure is a much better option than a potential $100,000 fine or prison sentence.

Global crypto tax evasion

The IRS isn’t the only tax office cracking down on crypto tax evasion – tax agencies all around the world are doing the same.

In the UK, the penalty for tax evasion can be anything up to 200% of the tax due and up to seven years imprisonment in serious cases. HMRC has just recently seized NFTs for the first time in a suspected tax fraud case.

Tax evasion in Australia is punishable by up to two years imprisonment and a fine of 200 penalty units (around $33,000).

Tax evasion in Canada can result in a penalty of up to 200% of the taxes evaded and a five-year jail term.

How Koinly can help with crypto taxes

Crypto taxes are complicated for many investors due to the lack of guidance from tax offices, as well as the sheer volume of transactions they need to calculate taxes on. But Koinly can help.

Koinly calculates your crypto taxes for you. All you need to do is sync the wallets, exchanges and blockchains you use with Koinly using API or by importing a CSV file of your transaction history. Koinly will then identify your cost basis, identify your taxable transactions and calculate your subsequent capital gains, losses and income – all in one easy to read tax summary (and totally free of charge).

After that, you can download your Koinly tax report to give to your tax office. Koinly offers a huge variety of reports for crypto investors around the world. This includes TurboTax reports, the IRS Form 8949 and Schedule D, the ATO myTax report, and more.

Avoid audits and penalties. Let Koinly do the work for you. Sign up today and see how much you owe!

 


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OFAC Update Claims Ronin Hack Is Tethered to North Korea’s Hacker Syndicate Lazarus Group – Bitcoin News

OFAC Update Claims Ronin Hack Is Tethered to North Korea’s Hacker Syndicate Lazarus Group – Bitcoin News
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According to the U.S. Treasury and the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), the recent Ronin bridge hack may have been tied to the North Korean hacker syndicate called Lazarus Group. Federal law enforcement officials have tied the flagged ethereum address connected with the Ronin bridge exploit to the group of hackers and added the crypto address to OFAC’s Specially Designated Nationals And Blocked Persons list (SDN).

Ronin Bridge Exploiter’s Address Added to OFAC’s SDN List

On April 14, the U.S. government published an OFAC SDN list update which includes the ethereum (ETH) address involved in the recent Ronin bridge exploit. Bitcoin.com News reported on the Ronin bridge attack on March 29, after the protocol associated with the blockchain game Axie Infinity lost $620 million in crypto assets. To date, the Ronin bridge attack has been one of the largest decentralized finance (defi) exploits in 2022.

According to the U.S. Treasury and OFAC, the ethereum address, which is already flagged on blockchain explorers under the name “Ronin bridge exploiters,” belongs to the North Korean hacker syndicate called Lazarus Group. The ethereum wallet holds 144,837.79 ether worth roughly $438.6 million using today’s ether exchange rates. The newly updated SDN list explains that Lazarus Group has various names including the “Guardians of Peace,” “Hidden Cobra,” “Red Dot,” “Temp.Hermit,” and the “New Romantic Cyber Army Team.”

Transactions With Any SDN-Listed Crypto Addresses Are Prohibited by the US Government

OFAC has warned the public about Lazarus Group in the past, as U.S. authorities believe the hackers have been involved with major crypto hacks and ransomware threats. There have also been many research studies that investigate the North Korean hacking group’s alleged activities. The U.S. Treasury’s and OFAC’s update on Thursday notes that the hacker syndicate is reportedly located in the Potonggang District, Pyongyang, North Korea. Transactions with the OFAC specified ethereum address are prohibited for U.S. persons and financial institutions.

According to a report published by the United Nations (UN) in March 2019, North Korea and the country’s supreme leader Kim Jong-un allegedly stockpiled at least $670 million worth of cryptocurrencies. On July 24, 2020, the U.S. Army published an investigative report that alleged North Korea has roughly 6,000 cyber hackers including the notorious Lazarus Group.

Tags in this story
axie infinity, defi exploits, ethereum address, ethereum addresses, Ethereum wallet, Financial Institutions, Guardians of Peace, Hacker Group, Hacker Syndicate, Hackers, Hidden Cobra, Kim Jong-un, Law Enforcement, Lazarus Group, north korea, OFAC, Potonggang District, pyongyang, ransomware, Red Dot, Sanctions, Treasury, U.S. authorities, united nations, United States, US Persons, US Treasury

What do you think about the U.S. government claiming that the Ronin bridge hacker is associated with the infamous Lazarus Group? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Jamie Redman

Jamie Redman is the News Lead at Bitcoin.com News and a financial tech journalist living in Florida. Redman has been an active member of the cryptocurrency community since 2011. He has a passion for Bitcoin, open-source code, and decentralized applications. Since September 2015, Redman has written more than 5,000 articles for Bitcoin.com News about the disruptive protocols emerging today.




Image Credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not a direct offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or a recommendation or endorsement of any products, services, or companies. Bitcoin.com does not provide investment, tax, legal, or accounting advice. Neither the company nor the author is responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article.

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Terraform Labs gifts another $880M to Luna Foundation Guard

Terraform Labs gifts another $880M to Luna Foundation Guard
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Terra blockchain developer Terraform Labs (TFL) has gifted the Luna Foundation Guard (LFG) 10 million LUNA, worth around $820 million at current prices.

LFG is a nonprofit organization attached to Terra tasked with collateralizing the network’s algorithmic stablecoin, Terra USD (UST), to keep it pegged with the U.S. dollar.

TFL’s latest announcement came on Thursday via Twitter, but it did not outline what the funds would go toward specifically. However, transaction data from Terra Finder shows that 7.8 million LUNA (roughly $630 million) was promptly transferred out of LFG’s reserve wallet on Thursday.

Given Terra’s recent form, led by founder Do Kwon — who has the goal of accruing $10 billion worth of Bitcoin (BTC) to back UST’s reserves — many expect that some of the funds will go toward building its stash of digital gold. Another chunk of LUNA may be burned (a way in which the UST/USD peg is maintained.)

Some additional AVAX could be on the shopping list as well, considering both TFL and LFG purchased $100 million worth of the coin last week.

Following Terra’s recent (and ongoing) Bitcoin buying spree, which includes the purchase of roughly 2,500 BTC (around $100 million) only two days ago, the wallet belonging to LFG has become the third-largest hodler of digital gold globally, only tailing MicroStrategy and Tesla.

The latest donation to LFG comes just over a month after TFL gifted $1.1 billion worth of LUNA so that it could be burned to mint UST and grow its reserves.

According to LFG’s accounting records, its total reserve balance stands at $2.44 billion at the time of writing, with BTC representing around 70% of that figure at $1.71 billion.

Related: Terra price key support level breaks after 30% weekly drop — more pain for LUNA ahead?

Despite all of the bullish developments with Terra of late, the price of LUNA is down 7% over the last 30 days to sit at $81.65 at the time of writing.

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Part 3 — Blockchain heuristics through time | by Coinbase | Apr, 2022

Part 3 — Blockchain heuristics through time | by Coinbase | Apr, 2022
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In our last post we introduced the cornerstone of scaling up blockchain analysis, commonspend, and its pitfalls. In this blog post we’ll explore more complex and novel blockchain analysis scaling methods, their drawbacks and why time is a critical feature of blockchain analytics.

Change prediction is the second most commonly applied UTXO heuristic. It aims to predict which receiving address is controlled by the sender. A hallmark of UTXO blockchains is that when addresses transact, they move all outputs. The surplus amount is normally returned to the sender via a change address.

Consider the transaction below and try spotting the change address that belongs to the sender:

The change address is likely 374jbPUojy5pbmpjLGk8eS413Az4YyzBq6. Why? In this case, prediction logic relies on the fact that the above address is in the same address format as the input addresses (P2SH format, where sender’s addresses start with a “3”).

Among other factors, rounded amounts (i.e. 0.05 or 0.1 BTC) are often recognized as the actual send, with the rest being redirected to the change address. This suggests that change prediction relies not only on technical indicators, but also on elements of human behavior, like our affinity for rounded numbers.

Naturally, a more liberal change prediction logic that takes into account multiple variables in favor of a desired outcome can potentially lead to misattribution and mis-clustering. In particular, blockchain analytics tools can inadvertently fall into the trap of unsupervised change prediction — that’s why it is vital for blockchain investigators to be mindful of the limitations posed by this approach.

Consider a more challenging example:

We have legacy addresses (starting with a “1”) sending on to two other legacy addresses. So which one is the change address?

The best way to figure out which address is the change address is to look at how each address spends BTC onwards. Usually output addresses receiving rounded amounts are not change addresses — but this could be wrong. So let’s just place our bet on the latter output address:

1Hs6XkSpuLguqaiKwYULH4VZ9cEkHMbsRJ — its next transction is as follows:

At first glance, this sort of looks like the pattern we saw in a previous transaction. The only aspect that stands out is a significant decrease in fees.

Looking at a second output address — 12Y8szPTeVzupEfe5RXs84fRsJJZBVhTgG — we see that its next transaction is distinct from the transaction it previously made:

The fees also look low compared to our initial transaction. And we notice that both our output addresses’ next transactions involve the original 1Hs6XkSpuLguqaiKwYULH4VZ9cEkHMbsRJ address in their outputs. Following the address’s next transaction we arrive to output #1’s next transaction.

To simplify, let’s visualize:

The diamonds in the above graph represent transactions — whereas the circles represent addresses. Notice that input address 15sMm6Rkf9hzz6ZtrrdhxdWZ8jGW12gQ93 commonspends in a transaction with 12Y8szPTeVzupEfe5RXs84fRsJJZBVhTgG. Therefore, output address #2 is in fact our change address!

This example illustrates how complicated change prediction can become leading to erroneous results.

Entities that attempt to preserve privacy in very public blockchains, such as exchanges and dark markets, may go out of their way to create their own wallet infrastructure that makes it difficult for blockchain investigators to identify how they operate. For these cases, blockchain analytics companies will create bespoke heuristics for these particular entities.

Still, no heuristics are foolproof. Parameters and limitations for blockchain analysis depend on how restrictive the scope is — or how much room is left for interpretation. A conservative approach would dictate not attributing anything that cannot be determined with close to 100% certainty; a liberal approach would allow wider attribution, at the cost of expanding the potential margin of error.

This also applies to any bespoke heuristic that is constructed with specific blockchain entities in mind. This is illustrated well by the above mentioned coinjoin Wasabi example. Although the transaction in question highly likely to belongs to Wasabi wallet, we need to ask ourselves what this transaction is displaying:

Most likely this transaction is displaying Wasabi addresses commonspending with other users’ addresses. As complexity increases, the accuracy of attribution decreases — especially if we consider that a user might own one or more addresses in this transaction.

Every blockchain analytics tool will have a different set of parameters and rely on different heuristics. That is why differences between clusters displayed by various tools are so common — for example, the SilkRoad cluster will each time look differently, depending on the blockchain analytics software used to conduct its analysis.

In fact, even with only comonspend applied, we see how the block explorers CryptoID and WalletExplorer both show different sizes of the Local Bitcoins cluster.

Einstein would probably admire blockchains, because they are one of the few examples of where the future can change the past — at least from an attribution perspective. For example, 14FUfzAjb91i7HsvuDGwjuStwhoaWLpGbh received various transactions from a P2P service provider between August and mid-September 2021. So we might think that this address could belong to an unhosted wallet.

But if we check on that address a couple days later on September 30, 3021, we suddenly notice that it’s been tagged as Unicc, a carding shop. What happened? This address commonspent 15 days later with an address we already knew belonged to Unicc — making it a part of the Unicc cluster.

This is a simple example, but you can imagine from a Compliance and market intelligence perspective that these after-the-fact attributions can have some ripple effects.

Blockchain analytics is an increasingly complex field of expertise. It is not as straightforward as it seems and the difficulty is compounded by the fact that conclusions are drawn not only from blockchain, but also from external sources that are often ambiguous.

It is not possible to call blockchain analytics science — after all, scientific experiments can be replicated by unrelated parties who, by following a set scientific methodology, will come to the same conclusions. In blockchain analytics even the ground truth can have multiple facades, meanings and interpretations.

Certainty of attribution is almost scarce and because multiple parties are relying on different tools for conducting transaction tracing on blockchains, it can sometimes yield dramatically different results. That is why educational efforts in this area should continuously emphasize that even the most robust, tooled-up methodologies are prone to errors.

Nothing is infallible — after all, blockchain analytics is more art than science.

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