Singapore State Investment Fund Temasek Eliminates Position in Coinbase

The investment giant previously held about 8,168 shares in the U.S.-listed crypto exchange.

By Nelson Wang

Singapore’s state investment fund Temasek, one of the largest investors in the world, has sold off its modest position in crypto exchange Coinbase (COIN), according to its latest SEC filings.

- In its third quarter filing, the fund listed ownership of 8,168 Coinbase shares worth approximately $2.1 million, but its Q4 filing shows no Coinbase holdings. Temasek’s total portfolio was valued at $301 billion as of the end of 2021.

- Coinbase’s stock has declined about 40% since its IPO last April.

- Meanwhile, Temasek was one of the investors in FTX.US’s recent $400 million Series A fundraise at an $8 billion valuation. It was not known how much Temasek had invested in FTX.US; other prominent investors in the round included Paradigm, Softbank and Multicoin Capital.

Source : coindesk.com

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Russia-Affiliated Addresses Received 74% of Ransomware Revenue Last Year: Chainalysis

 Moscow City firms received as much as 48% of their crypto from illicit addresses.

By Eliza Gkritsi

Almost three-quarters of revenue from ransomware attacks last year, or $400 million, went to addresses that are “highly likely” to be affiliated with Russia, according to a report from crypto analytics firm Chainalysis.

- The firm determines whether ransomware strains are affiliated to Russia based on three criteria: Whether they avoid attacking former Soviet countries, markers such as language and location, and whether they are related to Russia-based cybercrime organization Evil Corp., Chainalysis said on Monday

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- Ransomware attacks have grown in the past year, according to a joint report of U.S., U.K. and Australian cybersecurity authorities. North American addresses are the biggest targets, according to another Chainalysis report. The U.S. government is pushing for measures to combat this type of attack, in which hackers hold a firm’s data hostage.

- In 2019-2021, between 29% and 48% of all crypto going to addresses belonging to businesses in Moscow City, the Russian capital’s financial center, came from “illicit and risky” addresses, said the research report.

- The recipients included Suex, an over-the-counter exchange that has been sanctioned by the U.S. government, Eggchange, whose co-founder was reportedly arrested by Russian authorities in November, and peer-to-peer exchange Bitzlato.

- These firms are linked to money laundering of the illegally obtained funds, Chainalysis said.

- Some instances of firms receiving low proportions of illicitly obtained crypto can be attributed to their lack of awareness, rather than criminal activity, the report said.

- Of all the crypto going to Moscow City, funds coming from scams, at $313 million, and darnknet markets, at $296 million, made up the majority of illicit crypto in that time period. Ransomware came third at $38 million.

Source : coindesk.com

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$4.4M Stolen in Hack of Blockchain Infrastructure Firm Meter

 According to PeckShield, the hack on Saturday saw more than 1391 ETH and 2.74 BTC stolen.

By Jamie Crawley

Blockchain infrastructure company Meter has had $4.4 million stolen in a hack.

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based firm provides decentralized finance (DeFi) infrastructure services for cross-chain operability of smart contracts.

According to blockchain analytics firm PeckShield, the hack on Saturday saw more than 1391 ETH ($4.3 million) and 2.74 BTC ($115,000) stolen.

The hackers exploited a feature on Meter that automatically wraps and unwraps gas tokens like ETH and BNB for user convenience.

"However the contract did not block direct interaction of the wrapped ERC20 tokens for the native gas token and did not properly transfer and verify the correct number of WETH transferred from the callers' address," Meter tweeted.

Meter added that it is working on compensating all users affected.

Source : coindesk.com

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Tesla Recorded $101M Impairment Losses on Bitcoin Holdings in 2021

Tesla said that it investment an aggregate of $1.5 billion in bitcoin in the first quarter of 2021.

By Jamie Crawley

Tesla recorded around $101 million of impairment losses from changes in the value of their bitcoin holdings in 2021.

Elon Musk's electric vehicle company disclosed these losses in a filing with Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) explaining how its digital asset holdings could affects its profitability.

"In the year ended December 31, 2021, we recorded approximately $101 million of impairment losses resulting from changes to the carrying value of our bitcoin and gains of $128 million on certain sales of bitcoin by us," the filing said.

Tesla said that it made an aggregate investment of $1.5 billion in bitcoin in the first quarter of 2021. The market value of its bitcoin holdings as of the end of 2021 was $1.99 billion.

A year ago, the company announced that it had purchased $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin and thereafter began accept it as a form of payment. In May, Tesla CEO Elon Musk went back on this announcement over concerns about the environmental impact of bitcoin mining.

Musk later said that the company would accept the crypto once it is confirmed that 50% of mining is carried out using clean energy.

Source : coindesk.com

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Aleo Blockchain Raises $200M for Privacy-Minded DeFi

The lovechild of Ethereum programmability and Zcash privacy is getting a funding boost from SoftBank, Tiger Global and others.

By Danny Nelson

Pledging to launch its private, programmable Aleo blockchain network “later this year,” crypto startup Aleo Systems Inc raised $200 million in a recent funding round.

SoftBank and Kora Management co-led the company’s Series B, with big-name venture capital firms such as Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Tiger Global, Samsung Ventures and others joining in.

The round comes as Aleo shifts into layer 1 launch mode. Its privacy-focused tech differs substantially from decentralized finance’s most popular programmable blockchains, like Ethereum with its built-in openness. That makes Aleo’s success hardly a guarantee, even in a frothy market.

The timing is perhaps more interesting given recent privacy-related developments in the wilds of DeFi. The Avalanche-based DeFi platform Wonderland was crippled following revelations that a pseudonymous executive was previously involved in the infamous QuadrigaCX collapse.

Nonetheless, Aleo’s backers believe there’s demand for scalable privacy networks. In an interview with CoinDesk, COO Alex Pruden, an a16z veteran, said regulators, consumers and businesses could all benefit from the system Aleo plans to deploy.

Privacy tech

Pruden said Aleo will promote privacy-focused DeFi programmability.

“The way to think about it is, Aleo is like if the Ethereum model and the Zcash model had a baby,” he said. (Ethereum is a dominant smart contracts blockchain and Zcash is a privacy-focused transaction platform.) An alternative analogy: “Zcash with smart contracts.”

Aleo’s privacy chops derive from the same privacy tech underpinning Zcash. Zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) are a method of authenticating the validity of a crypto transaction without broadcasting its details; this allows users to keep their money matters private.

“Zero-knowledge execution,” or Zexe (pronouced “sexy” with a Z), is Aleo’s smart contracts-friendly evolution of ZKPs. It will see users execute off-chain transactions that pair with on-chain cryptographic proofs. Crunching often complex transactions off-chain promises more “scalability, efficiency and privacy” than doing it all on-chain, according to Pruden.

Read more: A16z Leads $28M Funding Round for Data Privacy Platform Aleo

Ethereum’s on-chain computations slow down that network, he said. That on-chain, off-chain dichotomy is part of the reason why Aleo’s smart contracts will not be Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible.

A new smart contracts programming language called “Leo” takes the place of Solidity, Ethereum developers’ lingua coda.

A critical company

Aleo Systems Inc. is poised to wield an outsize role in its eponymous blockchain’s growth, according to Pruden’s account. Acting as a caretaker, core developer and hype man for the network, it plans to ultimately build a profitable business atop the open-source blockchain.

“What better team or company to build a business on top of an existing layer one than the team that built the layer one, right?” Pruden said. “It’s like a flywheel, a virtuous cycle.”

Pruden said the company hasn’t committed to decentralizing Aleo’s governance, but it hasn’t ruled it out, either.

Regardless, the $200 million will help Aleo Systems pump life into its pet project.

“That’s really what the Series B is all about: Raising additional capital for that purpose to build products and services on top of the Aleo Network,” Pruden said.

Source : coindesk.com

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