On Monday, Euler Finance, a DeFi platform, experienced a security breach that resulted in substantial losses for investors. In an unexpected turn of events on Thursday, the hacker responsible for the exploit returned 100 ETH to a random user who claimed to have lost life savings in the hack.
The motive behind this ‘act of kindness’ is still unclear, but I will always maintain that many thieves have home training in the Web3 space.
On a more positive note, King Bitcoin has been surprisingly surging on the heels of a banking sector crisis, and widespread bank runs. Pushing above $26,000 on Tuesday and making a new high for the year. Long may we continue to see this momentum.
Here are the crypto stories from around the world this week
India and UAE to explore CBDC bridge
According to an announcement on Wednesday, India and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have partnered on CBDCs.
Per the release, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates (CBUAE) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in Abu Dhabi stating that the central banks will jointly conduct a proof-of-concept (PoC) and pilot(s) of a bilateral CBDC bridge to facilitate cross-border CBDC transactions of remittances and trade.
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The primary objective of the collaboration is to explore interoperability between the CBDCs of the two nations. It is expected to enhance the efficiency and transparency of cross-border transactions.
Investors sue FTX influencers
A class-action suit has been filed against FTX Youtube influencers, seeking $1 billion because they “promoted FTX crypto fraud without disclosing compensation.” The suit was filed on Wednesday in the Southern District of Florida, Miami Division.
Kevin Paffrath, Graham Stephan, Andrei Jikh, Jaspreet Singh, Brian Jung, Jeremy Lefebvre, Tom Nash, Ben Armstrong, Erika Kullberg and Creators Agency LLC are named as respondents. According to the suit:
“Though FTX paid Defendants handsomely to push its brand and encourage their followers to invest, Defendants did not disclose the nature and scope of their sponsorships and/or endorsement deals, payments and compensation, nor conduct adequate (if any) due diligence.”
The lawsuit adds to a growing list of cases against celebrities who promoted FTX.
Euler attacker returns stolen funds
Euler Finance lost around $197 million in crypto on Monday after suffering a flash loan attack. Euler offered 10% of the funds, worth $19.7 million, as a bug bounty on the terms that the exploiter returned 90% of the assets to the DeFi lender and users, but there was no response from the attacker.
However, in an odd turn of events on Thursday, one Euler Finance victim recovered their funds after contacting the unidentified exploiter. The victim sent a message to the hacker, saying their life savings was held on Euler Finance. While the victim claimed they had 78 wstETH worth $140,000 on the platform, the hacker shockingly returned $165,000 in ETH to the victim.
Notably, there is no way to confirm if the user who received the 100 ETH had indeed lost funds in the hack or if it’s the same hacker playing with the intelligence of people with different accounts.
Bitcoin ad in front of SVB
A truck displaying an advertisement for Bitcoin was seen outside the headquarters of the now-collapsed Silicon Valley Bank this week in California, attracting the attention of the cryptocurrency community and media
A Bitcoin enthusiast and street artist is known as Cryptograffiti. placed the ad on a truck and parked it outside the entrance to the HQ of the now-collapsed banking giant, according to a posted video on Twitter on Wednesday.
This move is believed to portray the strength of cryptocurrencies over traditional finance, with the message to “Be Your Own Bank.”
ETH Devs set new Shanghai Upgrade date
The target date for the highly anticipated Shanghai hard fork on the Ethereum network has now been set to the 12th of April. Ethereum core developers approved this target deadline during their All Core Developers Execution Layer call on Thursday.
Related post:
All you need to know about Ethereum’s upcoming Shanghai Upgrade
The Shanghai mainnet upgrade features five Ethereum Improvement Proposals, including EIP-4985, enabling staked Ether withdrawals on the Beacon Chain, completing Ethereum’s transition from proof-of-work to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus.
The newly-set target date, April 12, will now be confirmed by developers on GitHub.
That is all for this week, see you same time next week!
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