NYAG Files Action Against Crypto Trading Platform,Takes Position... - cyptoranking.com

2024-04-26

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While users often become the target of phishing attacks on social media, bad actors have gone a step further and taken control of the official website of a Web3 project. Across several media interviews this past week, Zuckerberg has made it clear that recent developments in generative AI as key to maximizing myriad applications in the “metaverse.” In particular, the Meta CEO dialed in on the creation of digital avatars that will one day be embedded across the company's products. NYAG Files Action Against Crypto Trading Platform,Takes Position...Rewards such as meeting current and former players are also gaining steam among token holders, Newman added. Among the most popular is an offering called LiveTheDream, which lets fan token holders play a match in their team’s stadium alongside club legends. Ironically, a recent post shared by the market intelligence platform Santiment highlighted that 110,000 ETH, valued at $181 million, were withdrawn from crypto exchanges on October 5. While representing the largest daily outflow of ETH from exchanges since August 21, this move helped Ethereum’s price grow by 0.20% in just 24 hours.

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Ukraine is not a member of the European Union (EU) nor of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) despite having applied for membership in both. The European Commission wants Ukraine to reform its media, judiciary, and anti-corruption laws before considering it for EU membership. “Ankr is a prominent DeFi infrastructure company dedicated to making the decentralized world more accessible and user-friendly. We achieve this by providing a comprehensive Web3 infrastructure platform that caters to developers, enterprises, and end-users. Ankr's suite of services includes node hosting, staking, and developer-focused offerings such as RPC nodes and app chains. Our services are designed to be cost-effective, scalable, and secure, making it easier for developers to build decentralized applications (DApps) and for end-users to access and interact with the DeFi ecosystem. You probably already used some of our services without even knowing, and we partner with major DeFi projects like Aave, 1inch, SushiSwap, and several major L1's.” How to Withdraw from Trust Wallet to a Bank Account (2023)“EigenLayer enables users to restake their ETH and extend cryptoeconomic security of Ethereum to additional applications on the network. EigenLayer's Ethereum restaking platform is designed to automate the process of restaking staking rewards for users, providing several significant benefits. It simplifies the compounding of staking rewards by automatically reinvesting them, resulting in exponential growth of staked assets over time. This automation makes the process hassle-free and accessible, even for those new to DeFi. Users benefit from maximized returns due to the compounding effect, potentially achieving higher returns compared to traditional staking or holding strategies. This can lead to multiple innovations built on top of EigenLayer. From Infracture products like oracles, bridges, or L2's to more yield-focused products like Liquid Staking tokens with higher yields.” The Morgan Creek Capital founder claims the combination of Bitcoin network’s upcoming halving event and the potential approval of BlackRock’s spot bitcoin ETF will bring “tens of billions, if not hundreds of billions of dollars of demand into the physical spot market.”

That thread is one of the most midcurve things I have read. They make many assumptions off unrelated events without facts. FixedFloat does tons in volume and same with the other exchanges mentioned. Here is the source address of the April 2023 FixedFloat insider PEPE buys I… https://t.co/0kG2M7DNVi He further opined that a hawkish stance by the Federal Reserve on interest rates could usher the American economy into the cold arms of recession. Interactive Brokers Launches Cryptocurrency Trading in Hong KongMeanwhile, in an exclusive interview, Kusama officially confirmed inferences about the imminent release of the new initiative for the Shiba Inu enthusiasts: “The Shib.” Kusama affirmed the interview report by retweeting the post on his X account. Ardana’s rise and fallArdana was first announced in the summer of 2021, and by October 2021, it had raised $10 million from venture capital firms CFund, Three Arrows Capital (3AC) and Ascensive Assets. Thanks to its successful fundraise and the prominence of its backers, some investors came to believe that Ardana’s upcoming token, DANA, would deliver outsized market gains.The following month, Ardana announced that it was also partnering with Near Protocol to create an asset bridge between Cardano and Near.However, no Ardana stablecoin platform or bridge was ever launched, and the protocol closed down in November 2022 without a functioning product. The development team stated that the closure was due to “funding and project timeline uncertainty.” The closure happened amid the collapse of FTX, which had made it difficult for many projects to raise funds. One of Ardana’s backers, 3AC, had also gone bankrupt a few months earlier. Given this background, many didn’t question the official story.However, blockchain data and analysis by Xerberus show that Ardana’s failure may have had less to do with a lack of funding and more to do with risky asset management practices by Ardana Labs’ officers. A trail of questionable money Xerberus co-founders Simon Peters and Noah Detwiler told Cointelegraph they identified the Ethereum wallet Ardana Labs used to collect funds from the DANA initial coin offering (ICO) in November 2021. They stated that links to the address were included in the ICO platform Tokensoft’s web pages relating to the token. In addition, they claim to have identified a $1 million transaction from 3AC into this address at a time when 3AC had announced its Ardana investment.According to blockchain data, the first transaction to this account occurred on Sept. 2, 2021, when approximately 0.46 Ether (ETH) ($1,747 at the time) was sent into it. This was approximately two weeks after the Aug. 15 start date for the first round of Ardana fundraising. Beginning on Sept. 15, the account received multiple USD Coin (USDC) transfers that eventually added up to millions of dollars worth of stablecoins.Caption: USDC transfers into alleged Ardana fundraising wallet. Source: Etherscan.Once the funds were raised, they were moved into other wallets through a series of intermediate steps, Xerberus claims.As told by Peters and Detwiler, approximately $3.2 million worth of stablecoins was moved from the fundraiser wallet to a “Target Wallet” through two intermediate addresses. This amount is approximately 30% of the total funds raised. First, the fundraiser account sent the funds to what they refer to as “Proxy Wallet 1.”Diagram of Ardana fund flows. Source: XerberusAfter receiving the funds, Proxy Wallet 1 swapped all of the stablecoins for CVX, a utility token used to receive fees from the Convex Finance platform. Blockchain data shows that decentralized exchange (DEX) SushiSwap was used to make this swap.From there, the funds were sent to what the Xerberus founders claim is an old personal wallet (“Old Address”) of Ardana founder Motovu. According to them, Motovu declared that he made money in the previous bull market of 2017. They found that “between $200,000 and $400,000” was in this wallet before the Ardana ICO, but the bulk of the funds it later held were from Ardana.“When this project went under and when it failed, [Motovu] went onto a live Space and said, ‘A lot of my personal money that I had earned over the previous bull market in 2017’ […] is the money he made out of this old wallet,” Detwiler explained. “It sums up to something around $200,000 to $400,000, nothing more.”Blockchain data shows that approximately four minutes after the CVX tokens were sent to the Old Address, it transferred them to the Target Wallet. It is this wallet that they claim was used to purchase a variety of cryptocurrencies, ultimately causing Ardana’s funds to be lost in bad investments.CeFi exchanges join the trailIn addition to the amount moved on-chain to the Target Wallet, another $4 million was sent through centralized exchanges first, then transferred to the Target Wallet, according to the Xerberus co-founders.They claim to have identified the Kraken, Coinbase and Gate.io deposit addresses used by the Ardana team. To find these, they looked for addresses that received funds from the fundraising wallet and sent funds to a known exchange address. For example, one address in particular received funds from the fundraising wallet and only sent funds to the Coinbase 6 and Coinbase: Miscellaneous wallet addresses.Once funds were sent to a centralized exchange, determining what happened to them became more difficult. However, the team used a variety of techniques to determine with a degree of certainty where the funds went.In some cases, the team was able to identify funds that were sent to Kraken and then immediately sent out to another address, as Kraken often uses the same address to send and receive funds for each user, especially if the time between transactions is short. In other cases, Kraken sent the deposited funds to another of its wallets, making it no longer obvious what the user did with the funds. Deposits sent to Coinbase and Gate.io are always sent to other wallets and pooled with other users’ tokens. So, with transactions involving these exchanges, the team could not determine what happened as easily.However, they analyzed all outgoing transactions made by each exchange within an hour of the fundraising wallet depositing to it. They found that many outgoing transactions were for the exact same amount as the deposits. For example, the fundraising wallet would deposit $220,000 worth of Tether (USDT) to Gate.io. Then, 40 minutes later, the exchange would send exactly $220,000 in USDT out to a different wallet. Ultimately, much of these funds ended up in the Target Wallet, providing what Xerberus sees as solid evidence that the same user made the outgoing transactions.Peters and Detwiler cautioned that this process does not prove with certainty that the transactions were made by Motovu or a member of the Ardana team. “This is not a UTXO [unspent transaction output] trail or a ledger trail. This is not a blockchain exact trail. […] However, the time frames and amounts do correlate with each other,” Detwiler stated. According to them, a total of $4 million was sent to the Target Wallet through these methods, bringing the total amount of funds sent into it to $7.2 million.Some funds remain, while some were spent on developmentResearch conducted by the Xerberus team shows that approximately $1.82 million worth of Ardana’s funds were spent on development costs associated with the project, including team member’s salaries. They contacted a person they referred to as “the main contractor for the project,” who gave Xerberus their wallet address. This address showed payments totaling $1.82 million, which is approximately 20% of the funds raised.In addition, they claim that approximately $1.4 million worth of USDC has not been lost and still remains in the possession of the project in a wallet they refer to as the “Treasure Chest” account. This account’s first transaction was an incoming transfer of 0.3 ETH, worth $562.29 at the time, which was sent to it from the Target Wallet.Related: Multichain victims search for answers in $1.5B exploit as new evidence emergesNearly $4 million lost in bad tradesAccording to Xerberus’ Sept. 6 report on Ardana, nearly $4 million of the Target Wallet’s token balance was lost through bad trades. The wallet owner transferred most of the funds to two Safe (formerly Gnosis Safe) multisignature accounts. These funds were used to make trades on DEXs PancakeSwap, Uniswap, SushiSwap and GMX, resulting in near-total losses. The Target Wallet also made its own losing trades.Blockchain data shows that the Target Wallet made over 1,000 transactions, most of which were interactions with DEX contracts.Transactions of the account identified as “target wallet” by Xerberus. Source: Etherscan.Ardana’s liquidation and closureXerberus claims that the on-chain behavior of the Ardana team began to change in March 2022, when the team’s wallets began “dumping” their assets onto DEXs. They continued to sell all remaining assets until November 2022, at which point the project officially announced it was closing. The funds obtained from these sales still remain in the treasury wallet.The firm says it created an early warning system that can help alert investors when a project is engaging in risky behavior that may lead to a closure. Xerberus calls this “Blockchain Native Risk Ratings based on verifiable mathematics,” and it says investigations like the Ardana one are used to “fine-tune” its risk model, which it expects to “transform crypto markets, making them the safe alternative to traditional financial markets.”Cointelegraph attempted to contact Ardana’s Motovu through LinkedIn, hoping to receive his side of the story. A reply was not received within the two weeks leading up to publication.Many Ardana investors were firm believers in the Cardano ecosystem. They expected Ardana to be the project that would finally get Cardano the attention they felt it deserved. Instead, over $10 million in capital was sucked out of the Cardano community, with virtually nothing left to show for it in the end.The Ardana story is a sober reminder of the risks of investing in new Web3 startups with no functioning product. Although these projects can lead to outsized gains, they can also lead to catastrophic losses. Investors may want to take a close look at a project’s on-chain behavior when considering whether to invest in these types of projects.Cointelegraph editor Zhiyuan Sun contributed to this story. Related: Binance’s indecision to freeze wallets drew controversy in this $11M rug pull

Community of Satlantis backed their platform and shared their disappointment in Mojang (and indirectly Microsoft) through social media platforms: #Bitcoin and the Wyckoff Method.Has been working since $BTC bottomed out last year in 2022 (see next tweet).Just choppy PA until we shoot towards $40,000 and leave a LOT of people in disbelief. pic.twitter.com/dh1Vb73JCs— 𝕄𝕠𝕦𝕤𝕥𝕒𝕔ⓗ𝕖 🧲 (@el_crypto_prof) October 9, 2023 How To Buy Polkadot-Forbes Advisor UKGPU bitcoin mining The legal struggle between the SEC and Ripple Labs, the firm behind the cryptocurrency XRP, has been one of the most carefully followed cases in the cryptocurrency and blockchain world. The SEC's case, filed in December 2020, claims that Ripple sold XRP coins in an unregistered securities sale. Ripple has categorically refuted these charges, and the matter has seen major legal and regulatory developments.

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