Hackers Ask for $70M in BTC to Publish Decrypter

July 6, 2021 / Unchained Daily / Laura Shin

Daily Bits ✍️✍️✍️

Data from CoinShares shows that digital asset funds saw an inflow of $63M last week — the first inflow in over a month.
Revolut, a digital bank that offers crypto trading, is reportedly in “detailed talks” with Softbank about a fundraising round that would value the company at $30B+.
The Global DeFi Coalition has put forward six proposals for regulating DeFi in an open letter to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).
NFT sales hit $2.5B in the first half of 2021.
The American CryptoFed DAO was approved by Wyoming on Sunday — becoming the first legally recognized DAO in the US.
UK Bank Barclays is blocking customers from using Binance.

What Do You Meme?

Bitcoiners were not happy with a recent article by the Financial Times titled “Let’s all please stop calling dollars ‘fiat money.’”

What’s Poppin’?

Last Friday, ransomware cybercrime syndicate REvil executed an attack that impacted the systems of at least 200 companies in the US.

On Sunday, REvil published a ransom demand asking for $70 million in Bitcoin in return for a decrypter that would bring systems back to normal. The hacking group claims that its attack compromised more than 1 million companies worldwide.

REvil is also connected to the attacks, and subsequent Bitcoin ransoms, of Colonial Pipeline and JBS Holdings. The two companies ended up paying ransoms of $5 million and $11 million in Bitcoin, respectively, to resolve the hacks.

For now, no ransom has been paid or reported, and President Biden has directed US intelligence to investigate the situation.

For more on this developing story: The Guardian, Decrypt.

On The Pod…

The Bitcoin Hash Rate Has Dropped. How Long Will It Take to Return?

Kevin Zhang, vice president of business development at Foundry, breaks down the latest developments surrounding China and bitcoin mining. Show highlights:

how he came across crypto and which Bitcoin OG he joined at Bitcoin.com to help start its mining operations arm
what Foundry does and its relationship with Digital Currency Group (DCG)
why DCG wanted to build out a mining infrastructure business
what news from China in early March kickstarted the process of the mining ban
how China’s Central Television broadcasting company might have brought extra scrutiny to cryptocurrencies
what the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party has to do with its Bitcoin mining ban
why the Inner Mongolia and Sichuan Bitcoin mining bans were especially disruptive for Chinese miners
how much of China’s hash rate Kevin estimates has been shut down since May
where are miners relocating to
why Chinese mining equipment will not be allowed to turn on in the US
whether or not China’s Bitcoin mining ban will stick
why China banning bitcoin mining will be good for the network in the long run
what significant risk to Bitcoin’s network is solved by China banning bitcoin mining
how much Bitcoin’s hash rate will drop and what effect this will have on miner revenue
why Kevin thinks that Bitcoin is good for renewable energy
how immersion cooling technology works
what tangible benefits miners could find by moving to North America
if El Salvador’s volcanic bitcoin mining plan is feasible
what Kevin predicts will happen in the Bitcoin mining industry for the latter half of 2021

Book Update

My book, The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze, is now available for pre-order now.

The book, which is all about Ethereum and the 2017 ICO mania, comes out Nov. 2nd. Pre-order it today!

You can purchase it here: http://bit.ly/cryptopians