Binance Freezes XRP Following Hack; Bitcoin Ordinals Sales Drop 61% Amid Sim-Swap Attack on FTX
Summary:
January 2024 saw a 61% decline in Bitcoin Ordinals sales, and cryptocurrency exchange Binance froze $4.2m worth of XRP following a hack on Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen's wallet. Additionally, three individuals have been implicated in the $400m sim-swap hack of crypto exchange FTX in 2022. The steep drop in sales is possibly due to an oversaturated nonfungible tokens market, and the rise of competing blockchains like Solana.
January saw a significant drop in the Bitcoin Ordinals market as sales dipped by a staggering 61% from the previous month. In a move to aid Ripple's co-founder, Chris Larson, Binance froze XRP assets worth $4.2 million stolen by a cyber thief. Furthermore, three culprits have been associated with the theft of $400 million from cryptocurrency exchange FTX in 2022, alleged to have been facilitated through a sim-swap attack.
The noticeable decline in the purchase of Ordinals inscriptions on the Bitcoin network, down to $335 million, was documented by NFT aggregator CryptoSlam. The sudden spurt of Ordinals last year had capped sales at $868 million in December, marking the greatest turnover in the collection’s legacy. Anndy Lian, an expert on intergovernmental blockchain, proposed to Cointelegraph that the downturn may be attributed to a saturated nonfungible tokens market consequent to a spree of fresh projects and artists.
He noted, with the burgeoning influx of options, customers are plainly spoilt for choice, particularly with alternative blockchains, for instance, Solana gaining momentum. According to CryptoSlam, Ethereum NFT sales in January dipped by 2.2%, whilst Avalanche's sales surged gratifyingly by 89%.
Elsewhere, Binance, a cryptocurrency exchange, intervened to freeze $4.2 million of XRP pilfered from the wallet of Ripple co-founder, Chris Larsen in a $112 million hack on January 31. Binance's CEO, Richard Teng publicly praised on-chain investigator, ZachXBT and the Ripple squad for their invaluable assistance. The unidentified hacker neglected to employ crypto mixer services or decentralized exchanges to anonymize their tracks, allowing Binance to halt the stolen funds.
Larsen later divulged that multiple personal XRP accounts were compromised with 213 million XRP misappropriated. A trio consisting of Robert Powell, Carter Rohn and Emily Hernandez have been implicated by US prosecutors for spearheading a sequence of sim-swap attacks and are alleged to have instigated the FTX hack of $400 million in 2022. The hack coincidental occurred a few hours post the company's bankruptcy filing.
The trio purported to have hijacked identities of 50 individuals and duped telecom providers into diverting victims' numbers to their mobiles. An excerpt of the court filing implicates Hernandez in imitating an employee of the victimized company and Powell in illegally accessing their AT&T account, leading to the unauthorized transfer of $400 million in virtual currency.
Elliptic, a blockchain security firm, speculated in a blog post that FTX could potentially be the victimized company as unauthorized transactions of roughly $400 million were noted in their crypto wallet hours post its bankruptcy filing. This presumption was validated by a Bloomberg report which identified FTX as the victim in the indictment papers.
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Published At
2/2/2024 10:01:32 PM
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