Web3 Researcher & Investment Analyst - Building in Stealth Mode 🥸
Crypto is borderless
Joined May 2021
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I remember the smug pride of Binance when they announced the SAFU fund.
Considering their history, their founder, & their nonchalance/blasé attitude to compliance i am not surprised in the slightest at the success if this attack.
It was always a matter of when, not if!
Binance's initial investigation suggests that the security incident may involve a compromised DevOps engineer’s laptop, which allowed an attacker to gain access to a service container and submit unauthorized withdrawal transactions. We have found no evidence of any wallet private key leak. We will share a detailed technical post-mortem once the investigation is complete and the facts are fully verified.
The estimated total impact sits at around $6.3B. We have worked with blockchain partners to freeze affected assets, with ~$3 billion frozen on-chain so far.
Binance will cover all losses from the SAFU fund and the company’s funds. User funds are safe. We will also publish an updated Proof of Reserves once the remediation is complete.
As an immediate precaution, Binance has:
- temporarily suspended deposits and withdrawals while security checks are completed;
- revoked the affected address authorisation;
- engaged law enforcement and blockchain intelligence partners to trace and recover funds.
Our teams are working around the clock to resolve this issue safely and thoroughly. We are working closely with our law enforcement partners to confirm the identity of these criminals and bring them to justice.
Please rely only on official Binance channels for updates. Please feel free to contact Binance Customer Support if you have any further questions.
binance.com/en/support/annou…
After what happened to Binance and Bitget, and considering that Brian here is also one of the bad guys of the industry, I wonder if there's a Polymarket how long it'll take before Coinbase is hacked? It seems inevitable to me.
I'm all for it, just clear out all the dross now!
We got flying cars, now it's time we get a modern financial system.
Let me Coinbase-pill you for a minute. Financial services is a massive industry. All fintech companies combined capture about 4% of total global financial-services revenues, while traditional financial-services companies account for the remaining ~96%.
Yet the financial services industry is going through two massive technological shifts right now with crypto and AI. This is our opportunity, and the transformation is happening fast.
Crypto is replacing the rails: stablecoins let anyone move money anywhere, instantly and almost free; tokenization lets anyone own any asset; and onchain markets let them trade it around the clock.
AI is replacing the interface: agents will increasingly research, decide, execute, and pay on behalf of people and businesses, putting a capable financial expert in everyone's pocket that can act for you, not just advise you. Together they can give every person and business the financial power that used to belong to a few. Coinbase exists to make that happen in a way people can trust.
Coinbase is using these frontier technologies to build the best modern financial account. Crypto rails, AI interface. Trading, payments, saving, borrowing, etc all in one.
We just released our Q3 earnings, and we set product records across the board despite the tough market. And I’m seeing signs that the market is turning.
Some Q3 highlights:
- We store more crypto than anyone in the world
- We have a global regulatory foundation with 80+ licenses
- 14th consecutive ATH of average USDC in CB products
- 5th consecutive ATH in CB1 subs
Best of all, the everything exchange is working. The progress since we announced last year has been awesome:
- 4th quarter of crypto trading volume market share gains, nearly doubled since this time last year
- $200M+ annualized revenue from prediction markets in Q3, one of our fastest growing products by revenue in history! With >60% daily trader growth QoQ
Jobs not finished until the entire financial system is updated with these frontier technologies.
Chris (Analyst) 🇬🇧 🇺🇦 🇵🇸 retweeted
“England: we're going to have to opt out of that one.”
This has aged magnificently.
It speaks to astounding talent that they could make 17th-century geopolitics hilarious to a 21st-century audience.
Chris (Analyst) 🇬🇧 🇺🇦 🇵🇸 retweeted
🧩 @FinTechWilliam
With all the hacks happening across crypto, Algorand should be going ALL IN on marketing its security advantage.
Since 2019:
-No known core protocol hack
-Zero downtime
-No chain forks
-Post-quantum accounts already live
-Broader quantum resilience targeted by 2027
As security becomes a bigger concern, both institutions and retail users will increasingly look for blockchains they can actually trust.
Algorand has a massive opportunity to own that narrative. But having the technology means little if nobody knows about it.
You need a strong CMO ASAP.
Algorand has a competitive edge today. But technology moves fast, and competitors won't stand still.
Don't waste this window
Is it just me who feels more sympathy for Bitget over Binance from this hack?
Bitget were once a scummy player in the game, but they were on the path to being a 'good guy' and forsaking all of their past shite.
Binance never stopped being a bad guy (or tried to).
Chris (Analyst) 🇬🇧 🇺🇦 🇵🇸 retweeted
Yaşanan yaklaşık 6 milyar dolarlık hack ile ilgili kafamı kurcalayan çok fazla şey var.
60+ Altcoin çaldı. Hepsini tek tek ve yavaş yavaş ETH'ye çevirdi.
ETH'lerin büyük çoğunluğunu halen bridge yapmadı veya THORChain vs kullanarak BTC'ye çevirmedi ya da satmadı. Farklı cüzdanlara bölüştürdü ve bekliyor. İşlemlerini izlemeye devam ediyorum. Muhtemelen bunlardan birini zamana yayarak dönüştürecektir. Tıpkı Bybit'in 1.5 milyar dolarlık ETH hacki sonrasında THORChain kullanarak washlaması gibi.
Öte yandan 240 Milyon dolar değerinde TRX çalınmasına rağmen TRX'in pump yapmasındaki sebep kafa kurcalıyor.
Çaldığı BTC'ler Binance'ın SAFU fonundan daha yüksek bir meblağ.
CZ, çalınan miktar önemli ölçüde değil, biz bunu karşılarız diyor. Benzer şeyi 2022'de FTX CEO'su SBF'de söylemişti. Evet gerçekten de karşılayabilir, SBF'de gerçekten karşılayabilirdi. Ancak ona izin vermemişlerdi. Burada ne olacak merak ediyorum.
Yine aynı şekilde Coinbase'in attığı paylaşım da manidar. "Coinbase Güvende ve Emniyette, Binance durumunu etkin bir şekilde izliyoruz ve destek sunmak için ekiplerine ulaşıyoruz." diyor. Bunun birebir aynısını 2022'de Binance'da FTX düşüşü zamanında söylemişti.
Geçtiğimiz günlerde AI bulgusu olan PHP hack sonrası yine CZ'nin bir paylaşımı var. Bu paylaşıma 4 görsel sığdığı için diğerlerini alta koyuyorum. Hiçbir crypto cüzdanı %100 güvenli değil, Hiçbir yazılım hatasız değil, hiçbir teknoloji %100 emniyetli değil diye attığı paylaşım, sanki bugünlere önden mesaj verir cinsindendi.
Resimleri birleştirmeye çalıştığımda yeni döngünün gerçekleşebilmesi için yeni krizlerin ortaya çıkması gerekiyor gibi bir anlam çıkartıyorum tüm bunlardan. CZ ve Binance çoktan ipleri ABD tarafına vermişti zaten. Binance devri kapanıyor Coinbase'i en büyük tekel yapıyorlar diye yorumluyorum bu olayları. Ancak %100 kesin böyledir diyemem.
Yine CZ'nin söylemlerinden biri de şüpheleri daha fazla arttırıyor. "Her ne kadar Binance ile ilişiğim kalmasa da bir hissedar olarak kullanıcı varlıklarının etkilenmemesini önemsiyorum".
Bugünkü hack LAZARUS'un hack davranış biçimini yansıtmıyor. Başka teraneler dönüyor bu çok net.
Öte yandan Tether 1.567 milyar dolar Circle 800+ Milyon dolar, toplamda 2.3 milyar dolar civarı parayı nasıl oluyorda bu kadar hızlı, hazır ve nazır tetikte bekliyor ve 15 dakikadan çok daha kısa sürede blackliste alabiliyorlar, çokça akıllı sözleşmeler yazan birisi olarak söylüyorum mümkün olmayan bir durum.
Haber Alma>Şüphelenme aşaması>Hack ihtimali>Karar alma>Aksiyona geçme gibi süreçler bu kadar hızlı alınamaz. Captain Sully bile uçuştan hemen sonra kuş çarpması sonrasında çift motorunu kaybettiğinde, uçağın kontrol mekanizması (kokpit) içeririsinde olmasına rağmen bu kadar hızlı kararlar alıp uygulamaya geçememiştir. Bu da hazırlıklı bir planlı eylem olabilme ihtimalini güçlendiriyor. Fakat yine de söylediğim gibi kesinliği olmayan tahminlerime ve yorumlarıma dayanıyor bunlar.
Peki ne olacak şimdi?
Tüm süreci takipteyim. On-chain aktiviteleri de izliyorum. Takipte kalın bildirimlerinizi açın. Kritik görüdğüm bilgileri aktarıyor olacağım.
Chris (Analyst) 🇬🇧 🇺🇦 🇵🇸 retweeted
In a few days MPs will vote on the Budget. So many people have made every effort to ensure they are all appraised on the situation the UK is facing.
Our Defence Chiefs have said we have a few years to rearm. That means plugging key capability gaps, building scale, mass and resilience, reforming how we design, procure and manufacture to keep pace with the changing nature of warfare and technology. It means meeting our NATO obligations.
The public get this. As an island nation our energy, data and trade security is vulnerable. Government is telling them to prepare for aggression designed to impact our way of life. We are told to store beans and bottled water.
In today’s Budget the government needed to advance our readiness and resilience, and show how we will deliver for NATO.
The Chancellor resigned when Defence Secretary to highlight the gulf between the government’s duty and its actions. So, what has changed since?
There have been cuts to immediate defence budgets, next year there will be less money for activity, wages, kit, equipment and training.
There has been no plan unveiled for us to reach 3.5% GDP by 2035, or 3% by 2030. Forecasts predict we will flatline at 2.7% until the end of the decade.
Other departments have been asked to fund the shortfall in the DIP. On the upside, by and large departments did deliver on savings the last time this was asked of them. And there was a nod to some defence reform today. But two problems remain: the imbalance of funding with capital rising but RDEL being cut, and the £11 billion shortfall between the DIP framework and our NATO commitment.
The Treasury has also taken back some funds from the MOD, freed up from lower pension costs.
After today we are 14th in NATO for GDP % spend, and 31st for rearmament speed (second to last).
It is never too late to do the right thing, but it now may be too late to be ready.
Every MP must understand the reality the UK now faces. In a short while we may suffer the consequences of inaction against agreed commitments. If the predicted conflict is at the scale most Europeans now believe is likely, fighting that war could cost us half our GDP, or 5x the entire welfare budget.
Parliament must see the sense in spending a tenth of that to prevent such an event.
We will soon know.
Chris (Analyst) 🇬🇧 🇺🇦 🇵🇸 retweeted
This "Be Ready" omission in the budget is genuinely bemusing. It creates the inescapable assumption that rebuilding societal resilience (at a time when the Defence Secretary says the UK needs to be ready for the possibility of war by 2030) is not a priority for the Andy Burnham government
There is not a single mention in the Budget of the government's new three-year "Be Ready" campaign to strengthen national resilience in the face of mounting threats (from severe weather to war).
This feels like an oversight⬇️
assets.publishing.service.go…
Chris (Analyst) 🇬🇧 🇺🇦 🇵🇸 retweeted
If you've ever wondered why smart TVs are so cheap, this is why.
@log4j rooted his Samsung and found an always-on hot mic, automatic content recognition, geolocation, network mapping, ad targeting and user profiling, shared with Samsung's "400 partners".
A lot of it can be blocked in <15 min, wrote a basic guide below.
What your TV is doing
The main culprit is ACR (automatic content recognition). Your TV screenshots what's on screen, fingerprints it, and sends it home to build your ad profile. Samsung does it every 500ms, LG every 10ms [1].
What is insane: it happens on connected devices too.
Plug in your laptop, your console, your work machine, and your TV can fingerprint that via HDMI [1].
He also found that if your Samsung doesn't have a mic, it'll look for one from a connected soundbar or bluetooth device.
teapawt.org/log4j/status/211376224…
It's on by default, and you likely agreed to it on the setup screen you clicked through in 10 seconds.
Step 1: Turn off ACR
Samsung: Terms & Privacy → Viewing Information Services
LG: Live Plus
Vizio: Viewing Data
Roku: "Use info from TV inputs"
Sony/Google TV: Samba Interactive TV
Menus vary by model, but those are the names to look for. While you're in there, opt out of interest-based ads, reset your advertising ID, decline every optional privacy agreement, turn off voice recognition, and delete apps you never open.
Step 2: Give smart devices their own network
Put the TV, cameras, speakers and vacuum on your router's guest/IoT network. The logic is simple: these devices rarely get patched. If one gets compromised (getting drastically more frequent with AI), it shouldn't be able to see your other devices or home network.
Step 3: Block trackers for the whole house with DNS-level filtering
NextDNS (cloud-based) is easy and has a solid free plan. Pi-hole is a little bit more work if you prefer self hosting. For simplicity we'll focus on the former.
1. Sign up at nextdns.io (free tier is plenty)
2. Privacy tab: add a blocklist (OISD is a good bet) and turn on Native Tracking Protection for Samsung, LG, Roku, Amazon (see attached image)
3. Setup tab: copy your endpoint
4. Paste it into your router's DNS settings as DNS-over-HTTPS/TLS (or use the IPs + "Link IP" if your router only does plain DNS)
5. Bonus: block outbound port 53 except to your router. Some devices hardcode their own DNS to get around you
Then open the NextDNS logs and watch how often your TV phones home. It's eye-opening. If an app or update breaks, find the domain in the logs and allowlist it.
Why they do this
TV prices are down 97% since 2000 [2]. Most of that is better manufacturing and brutal competition. But once margins on the hardware hit zero, the cost moved to you.
In Q3 2024, Vizio lost $6.7M selling TVs and made $115.8M in gross profit from ads and viewing data [3]. They've said on earnings calls that they keep TV prices low to grow the audience they sell to advertisers. Walmart bought them in 2024.
This isn't a conspiracy theory either. Vizio paid $2.2M to the FTC in 2017 for tracking 11 million TVs without consent. Last December, Texas sued Samsung, LG, Sony, Hisense and TCL over ACR. Samsung and LG have since agreed to stop collecting that data without explicit consent [4].
TL;DR
1. ACR off
2. Ads + voice off
3. Smart devices on their own network
4. NextDNS filtering on the router
Sources:
[1] ACR study: arxiv.org/abs/2409.06203
[2] Cost of US consumer goods: aei.org/economics/chart-of-t…
[3] Vizio Q3 2024: sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/…
[4] Texas v. Samsung: texasattorneygeneral.gov/new…
Hey @GNev2 i'm a lifelong Utd fan. Your commentary is as disgraceful as our ownership.
@SkyFootball please #SackGaryNeville!
Chris (Analyst) 🇬🇧 🇺🇦 🇵🇸 retweeted
You can’t build the future of finance on cryptography quantum computers could break.
As tokenization scales, post-quantum security needs to be a core infrastructure decision.
My latest: algorand.co/blog/you-cant-bu…
Chris (Analyst) 🇬🇧 🇺🇦 🇵🇸 retweeted
🚨Wes Streeting only talked about how the UK needs to prepare for food shortages and cyber attacks, because I asked him when the government was going to start its national conversation on defence during a question and answer session at the opening of a gun hall.
If the defence secretary hadn’t given such a meaningful reply (thank you @wesstreeting), then no government minister would have spoken out publicly about this topic on the day that the Cabinet Office finally published its new advice on being ready for emergencies.
This long-awaited “Be Ready” moment was meant to be a really important signal - launching a three year campaign to shift the whole of our society to a footing that is more resilient to any kind of shock.
Instead, no government minister had been scheduled to speak publicly today specifically to launch this vital piece of work.
It was just going to be a website update and a written statement to Parliament.
This does not send the signal that getting the UK ready for any potential disaster - up to and including war - is a top priority for our new prime minister…
skynews-defence.noosphere.ap…
They haven't even started 'researching' into becoming an L1 yet, nevermind #StarkNet transitioning to L1.
Yet $STRK say (in previous posts) they'll be fully post-quantum ready by end of 2027 (13 months).
When Founders lie, and set impossible targets, those are major red flags!!
The community has spoken!
The results are in, with a strong majority voting Yes to starting the research into Starknet becoming an L1.
A few notes:
- The final results are an overwhelming 93.52% in favor. This is a clear YES.
- The next step is for a working group to lead the needed research and work to make this change possible in the best path there is
- @StarkWareLtd and the @StarknetFndn will be allocating significant resources to make sure this work is done in the best way possible
- STRK will remain the token of the network
- There are many challenges to tackle, review, research, and discuss. We will do thorough work to address all of them and we want to hear from the community
- Any path to transition to an L1 will be brought to a community vote
This is a huge shift and a milestone, but the AI and quantum challenges ahead require it.
Let’s get to work!
Chris (Analyst) 🇬🇧 🇺🇦 🇵🇸 retweeted
I’ll be live on @therollupco podcast tomorrow at 2:30 PM ET to talk about quantum and what the October 22 OMB deadline means for banks and markets.
Tune in here: youtube.com/@TheRollupCo/str…
Chris (Analyst) 🇬🇧 🇺🇦 🇵🇸 retweeted
Hey @StarknetFndn , what happened to @myBraavos ?
Not seen a whisper, no public activity since December 25'.
Bramble is live.
A self-custody wallet native to Starknet, built by Starknet Foundation.
Swap. Store. Shield.
Download Bramble now → bramble.fi
Hey @StarknetFndn , what happened to @myBraavos ?
Not seen a whisper, no public activity since December 25'.
Bramble is live.
A self-custody wallet native to Starknet, built by Starknet Foundation.
Swap. Store. Shield.
Download Bramble now → bramble.fi