The Real Side of Online Privacy: A WIRED Analysis of the 96 Active Shooter Incidents in Russian and the Case of Joe Sullivan
In order to uncover connections between many of the incidents that were investigated, WIRED compared the information from the 96 incidents to the information from the original reports of active shooter incidents. The director of programs and one of the co-conspirators of the Educator’s School Safety Network said it was real to people for 15 minutes when they experienced it. “There’s a period of time in these incidents where people are literally running for their lives, law enforcement is responding with their weapons, and people think it’s the real thing.”
Despite the international community’s efforts to deprive Russia of its access to the global economy, investigators around the world are still trying to stop the influx of capital to Russian military and paramilitary groups. The trial of Joe Sullivan, a former executive of the data-sharing service, is being watched by the technology industry because it is likely the first time a corporate executive has been convicted of a crime related to a data breech. The Biden administration’s new executive order on privacy seems like more of a Band-Aid than a solution, and it attempts to convince Europeans that their data is safe when stored in the US.
Meta says that it found more than 400 malicious apps on the market that it said were using Facebook credentials to take over users’ accounts. We looked at how social media can impact one’s sense of self, the toll of living your life online, and how it can erode privacy.
Plus, there’s more. Each week, we highlight the news we didn’t cover in-depth ourselves. Click on the headlines below to read the full stories. Stay safe out there.
Source: https://www.wired.com/story/binance-hackers-minted-569-million/
What happened in FTX? The Lehman moment of a giant cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, and its next-to-leading contender
The hackers didn’t seem prepared for their windfall. Elliptic quickly traded a portion of their token for other cryptocurrencies. That helped them to get over 50 million dollars in ether based token. Money can be frozen in other cryptocurrencies that they traded their BNB for, like Tether andUSDC. Binance, meanwhile, managed to temporarily shut down its BNB blockchain to prevent the hackers’ newly mined currency from moving further. “So we have a very sophisticated exploit, managing to mint yourself $569 million,” says Elliptic research lead Thibaud Madelin. What followed was a complete mess, to be honest.
Customer withdrawals had surged last Sunday after Changpeng Zhao, CEO of giant crypto exchange Binance, said Binance would sell its entire stake in FTX’s digital token, worth at least $580 million, “due to recent revelations.” Four days before, news outlet CoinDesk reported that much of Alameda’s $14.6 billion in assets were held in the token.
Industry insiders are debating whether to call the implosion of FTX, which filed for bankruptcy on Friday, a “Lehman moment,” referring to the 2008 collapse of the investment bank that sent shockwaves around the world. Many think it’s an apt comparison.
“This was one of the most trusted entities in the crypto space, so it will take some time to recover,” said Jay Jog, co-founder of the blockchain startup Sei Labs, which is based in California.
The company, which is valued at $32 billion, had recruited high-profile backers that included SoftBank, Tiger Global, and celebrities like Tom Brady, Gisela Bndchen and Naomi Osaka. The arena is where the Miami Heat play.
The situation is still developing quickly. It is possible that it could affect the entire sector, which was worth more than $1 trillion in August.
Over the summer, as digital assets tumbled in value, Bankman-Fried put up about $1 billion to bail out firms and shore up assets to try to keep the entire industry afloat. Only a few white knight are left to rescue FTX and others.
“The number of entities with stronger balance sheets able to rescue those with low capital and high leverage is shrinking within the crypto ecosystem,” strategists at JPMorgan said in a note to clients this week.
Traditional investors are reassuring their clients that they can deal with the consequences. Losing money on a $95 million investment would have a small impact on assets, according to the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.
Sam Bankman-Fried’s Cryptocurrency Flux Future Fund – The Fate of the FTX Foundation, as it Comes to an End
Soon after, another big personality entered the chat. The CEO of the world’s largest exchange publicly announced that it would be liquidating its FTX holdings. The plan to acquire FTX was abandoned after the signing of the letter of intent.
But as spooked investors pull funds from crypto, more pain could arrive. It’s thought thatbitcoin could fall to $13,000, 22% lower from where it is now. Fok said the digital coin could drop below $10,000, a low it hasn’t plumbed since 2020.
In that climate, the “crypto winter” is poised to get even worse, especially as fears about the broader economic backdrop continue to erode the appetite for risky assets.
Confidence in the crypto industry has been destroyed by the episode, and will embolden global regulators to tighten the screws. If the scrutiny helps restore faith in the industry, some of the biggest names in the business will welcome it.
“It reinforces the view that any sort of financial enterprise needs extensive regulation,” said James Malcolm, head of foreign exchange strategy and crypto research at UBS. “Probably by 2024, the whole world will look much more coherent and watertight.”
“We’ve been set back a few years,” he said. “Regulators rightfully will scrutinize this industry much, much harder, which is probably a good thing, to be honest.”
FTX is a safe and easy way to get into crypto, and David learns about it after the ad ends. A dismissive David says, “Ehhh, I don’t think so. And I’m never wrong about this stuff — never.”
Rival Binance had said it would explore an FTX bailout earlier this week but almost immediately backtracked after the company said FTX was essentially beyond saving.
The staff of the FTX Future Fund publicly quit Thursday, claiming they had committed more than 120 million dollars in grants. The five-person team wrote that they have questions about the legitimacy and integrity of the business operations that were funding the FTX Foundation.
Sam Bankman-Fried woke up on Monday still a billionaire, even as his cryptocurrency empire was beginning to unravel. By Friday, his fortune was completely wiped out.
Bankman- Fried has a desire to make as much money possible in order to give away. His philanthropic endeavors are in doubt at the moment.
Samuel, who asked to be referred to only by first name to preserve his anonymity, says he lives somewhere in Southeast Asia and is currently between jobs, which means money is tight. The cryptocurrency in his FTX account was his nest egg.
Samuel’s portfolio was made up of a lot of one of the Cryptocurrencies called XRP, which was depressed due to an ongoing lawsuit between it’s issuer and the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Samuel had been sitting tight and hoping that the legal battle would come to an end with a positive ruling, so that the price of the coin could go up. But now, with his tokens locked up in FTX, he won’t be able to reap the rewards for his patience. “I could see the finish line, but this latest drama has me hanged by the balls,” he says. It is so much hardship.
FTX moved users’ funds to offline wallets early Saturday morning after a wave of “unauthorized transactions” drained hundreds of millions of dollars from the beleaguered cryptocurrency exchange. Ryne Miller, the general counsel at FTX US, didn’t confirm a hack, but said on Twitter that the company made the move to “mitigate damage” caused by the potential theft, as transferring funds offline, or to “cold storage,” helps prevents outsiders from gaining access to them.
FTX closed its Digital Markets in a $bmPhi$-Centrifugal Black Hole. Two executives from the Bahamas capital Nassau revealed how much outside funding he needed to cover the
They said that a large portion of the total has vanished. One source put the missing amount at about $1.7 billion. The other said the gap was between $1 billion and $2 billion.
That Sunday, Bankman-Fried held a meeting with several executives in the Bahamas capital Nassau to calculate how much outside funding he needed to cover FTX’s shortfall, the two people with knowledge of FTX’s finances said.
Bankman-Fried showed several spreadsheets to the heads of the company’s regulatory and legal teams that revealed FTX had moved around $10 billion in client funds from FTX to Alameda, the two people said. The spreadsheets showed how much FTX lent Alameda and what it was used for.
The Royal Bahamas Police Force said that investigators from the Financial Crimes Investigation Branch are looking into if any criminal conduct occurred after the collapse of FTX Digital Markets.
On Friday, FTX said it had turned over control of the company to John J. Ray III, the restructuring specialist who handled the liquidation of Enron Corp – one of the largest bankruptcies in history.
The story of Bankman-Fried: A dark side of crypto-politicians and financial technologist. An insight from a former banker
Emily is the executive director of global content at CoinDesk, a media, event, indices and data company, and she was a policy advisor to the US State Department. She is the author of a book. Who? My Comrades Are: Voices From the Internet Underground.” The opinions in this commentary are her own. CNN has more opinion.
No one agrees with the answer because there isn’t anyone who needs a savior. The whole point of crypto is that it is supposed to be decentralized and transparent. Bankman-Fried’s rise and fall shows how far the industry has strayed from that ideal. One of the largest-than-life personality run entities are the ones that operate in thecrypto world. FTX and its leader is a great example.
This was meant to be different. The 2008 financial crisis, which led to disappointment among bankers and politicians, paved the way for the creation ofbitcoin, the first major cryptocurrencies. In light of the distrust in financial institutions, the basic idea was that this new system didn’t require you to trust anyone at all. A bad actor shouldn’t be able to alter the integrity of the ledger because everyone can see it.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/12/opinions/crypto-white-knight-problem-sam-bankman-fried-ftx-parker/index.html
On the Cult of Personality in Crypto and Social Media: Ian Allison’s Unfaithful Comments on FTX and Alameda
But Bankman-Fried had a far from transparent empire. Everything seemed fine until my colleague Ian Allison, a journalist at CoinDesk, wrote an article last week revealing that the balance sheet of Bankman-Fried’s Alameda, which is the sister company of FTX, was largely made up of FTT, a token that FTX created. This raised questions about the stability of FTX’s sister company and drew attention to the strikingly close ties between FTX and Alameda.
He takes full responsibility for his mistakes. He wrote in a long thread that he was responsible for making sure that things went well. I, ultimately, should have been on top of everything. I clearly failed in that. I’m sorry.
The cult of personality problem is not limited to crypto. We see it in social media as well, another supposedly leaderless and decentralized technology. Twitter is now subject to the whims of owner Elon Musk, the richest man in the world.
What to do with FTX and the second most valuable Cryptocurrency: The role of decentralised exchanges and the shadow of the Tornado Cash
FTX said it was looking into whether the assets were stolen. Crypto risk management firm Elliptic said $473 million in crypto assets appear to have been nabbed from FTX.
“We’re definitely watching the movements of these funds,” says Chris Janczewski, the head of investigations at TRM Labs and a former special agent at the IRS’s criminal investigations division. A potential thief has hundreds of millions of dollars. They went into a bank and took all the money, and then the dye packs went off. Everyone knows that the money is connected to the bank robbery. Can you tell me what to do with it?
Elliptic’s analysis shows that at least a quarter of a billion dollars stolen from the form of a variety of Cryptocurrencies were quickly traded through decentralised exchanges, where they could be exchanged for ether and Dai. Even though it is possible to cash out those coins and the rest of the stolen loot, it is unlikely to be done on a centralized exchange as often as you would like. The thieves can try to put the money through a service that will blend them with other users. When large sums of money are flowing into those mixers, analysts can often defeat them. The Tornado Cash service was sanctioned by the US Treasury in August and it rendered cryptocurrencies vulnerable to seizure for many exchanges.
The second most valuable Cryptocurrency is not faring much better. It was trading at about $1,230 on Monday, having sunk over 20% over the last week, CoinDesk data showed.
Changpeng Zhao, the head of the biggest scurvy exchange, said there is a lot of risk. “We have seen in the past week things go crazy in the industry, so we do need some regulations, we do need to do this properly,” he added.
The speaker was known as CZ and he was at the conference in Indonesia. He said last week that it’s probably an accurate analogy to compare the current cryptocurrencies and the 2008 global financial crisis.
Anomalous Movements in Crypto Assets: The Case of the Singapore-based Crypto.com – FTX’s CEO Sam Bankman-Fried
FTX moved its headquarters from Hong Kong to The Bahamas last year, with former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried hailing it as “one of the few places to set up a comprehensive framework for crypto” at the time.
Miller said that FTX was “investigating abnormalities” regarding movements in crypto wallets “related to consolidation of FTX balances across exchanges.”
As scrutiny of big players in the crypto world increases, Singapore-based Crypto.com admitted to accidentally sending more than $400 million in ether to the wrong account.
Kris Marszalek, the CEO of the exchange, said the 320,000 ETH was transferred to a corporate account from an offline wallet three weeks ago.
The process and systems for managing internal transfers have been strengthened. The native token on the platform has fallen in value.
Marszalek’s firm has acted as a responsible, regulated player since its inception, and he said he will soon prove all the detractors wrong.
“It is very, very normal for a bank to move user assets for investments and try to make returns,” he explained. He said that it is almost certain that the exchange will go down if it operates that way. adding that the industry collectively had a role to play in protecting consumers.