September 21, 2022 / Unchained Daily / Laura Shin

Daily Bits✍️✍️✍️

Crypto exchanges FTX and Binance are bidding for the assets of bankrupt crypto lender Voyager Digital.
Alameda Research, Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto trading firm, will repay a $200 million loan to Voyager Digital.
NFT marketplace OpenSea announced support for Arbitrum, a layer 2 blockchain on Ethereum.
Defi platform Maple Finance launched a $300 million lending pool for BTC miners.
After a passed governance proposal, Maker will add the GnosisDAO token as collateral to mint DAI.
BitGo claimed that Galaxy Digital left the acquisition deal “prematurely.”
MicroStrategy bought $6 million of Bitcoin and its shares dropped by 6%.
China plans to extend its CBDC trial to four additional provinces.
Crypto exchange Kraken joined a consortium to build an enterprise-grade, multi-chain liquid staking protocol.

Today in Crypto Adoption…

Nova Labs, the entity behind the crypto-powered wireless network Helium, announced a partnership with cellular giant T-Mobile to provide 5G coverage.
The Nasdaq is reportedly planning to launch its own crypto custody service.
The state of Colorado will accept crypto payments for taxes.
Popular trading app Robinhood listed Circle’s USDC as the first stablecoin available on the platform.

The $$$ Corner…

Web3 fraud protection startup Sardine raised $51.5 million led by a16z.
Integral, a Web3 finance platform, raised $8.5 million in a funding round led by Electric Capital.
Tres, a financial accounting software startup for web3 companies, announced a $7.6 million round.
Gaming studio Random Games closed a $7.6 million round backed by Grand Theft Auto creator David Jones.

What Do You Meme?

What’s Poppin’?

Wintermute Suffers a $160 Million Exploit, But Remains Solvent

by Juan Aranovich

Crypto market maker Wintermute was hacked for $160 million, according to CEO and founder Evgeny Gaevoy.

Gaevoy announced the attack on Twitter. He assured that the firm remains solvent, that the exploit was related to the DeFi operations of the firm and that the over the counter and CeFi operations stand intact. “We are solvent with twice over that amount in equity left,” Gaevoy said.

Wintermute’s CEO also said that they are treating this as a “white hat” hack, and is encouraging the attacker to get in touch with the team. A white hat hack refers to an ethical security hacker who identifies a vulnerability in the code, exploits it, and then returns the assets for free, or for a bounty.

“If it can happen to Wintermute… Stay safe. Stay paranoid,” said Dragonfly managing partner Haseeb Qureshi.

According to Rekt, a website that tracks all the hacks in crypto, this is among the top 10 exploits of all times, coming in at no.7 on the list. The largest one is still the Ronin’s attack, followed by Poly Network and Wormhole.

Even though the Wintermute team has not provided an official post-mortem yet, experts say the hacker likely took advantage of a “vanity address” vulnerability, which was recently discovered by the 1inch team.

“The attacker is likely a seasoned hacker/solidity developer. They created a helper contract, deposited stables into curve to avoid blacklisting, and figured out this vulnerability in a closed sourced vault contract in the first place,” said Mudit Gupta, Polygon’s chief information security officer.Earlier this year, Wintermute also suffered an attack worth $27 million. However, that one was related to a simple mistake: Wintermute provided the incorrect address for a delivery of 20 million OP tokens, which were delivered to the wrong person.

On The Pod…

Is Bitcoin Doomed to Fail? Eric Wall and Justin Bons Face Off

In a heated debate, Eric Wall, crypto blogger and investor, and Justin Bons, founder and chief investment officer of Cyber Capital, discuss Bitcoin’s security model, whether there are fundamental flaws in its design, and which is the best consensus mechanism. Show highlights:

why Justin stopped believing in Bitcoin and why he calls it “technically one of the worst cryptocurrencies”
how Eric’s views on Bitcoin changed over time
the problems they see with Bitcoin’s security
why Eric attacks BTC maximalism, even when he is a Bitcoiner
how the Bitcoin community will change in the next decades, and why the security problem is a challenge that could be solved
whether BTC should increase its inflation and whether that would break the store of value proposition
why Justin thinks that BTC fails as money and won’t play a relevant role in the future
what happened around the time of the blocksize debate back in 2015-2017
whether there’s something wrong with Bitcoin’s culture and why Eric compares it to a doomsday cult
why Ethereum has external dependencies that can impose systemic risks, according to Eric
whether proof of stake or proof of work is a better consensus mechanism
whether Ethereum is more censorship resistant than Bitcoin
why BTC is a speculative asset and what Justin believes is needed for crypto to finally flourish

Book Update

My book, The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze, which is all about Ethereum and the 2017 ICO mania, is now available!

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

The Top 10 Nobody Wants to Enter 😰