Protos headlines
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DeFi hack attack: Three exploits snatch $11M in a single day
Crypto and DeFi projects continue to be hacked at a dizzying pace, and few days in recent weeks have been incident-free. That said, Thursday was a particularly busy day, with three projects hit for a total of more than $11 million worth of crypto. By the end of play, Payy Network had lost $1.8...
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Are US Treasuries now a better investment than rental property?
It would be more profitable for the average investor to buy a 10 year US government bond than to become a typical landlord. Indeed, this relative profitability is at its highest level since July 2007. Negative housing spreads occur when the interest rate “spread” between low-risk US Treasuries are...
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Estée Lauder facing new stockholder suit over alleged use of gray markets
A new Southern District of New York lawsuit alleges Estée Lauder retail sales in Asia relied on “a pervasive, prohibited gray market resale industry” and prohibited, duty-free resellers called daigou. One stockholder has sued Estée Lauder’s board in Manhattan federal court on Tuesday over the...
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Mighty Mike and the scam-coded future
A bizarre drama played out on YouTube this past week, when a channel called Mighty Mike Plays posted a video explaining how nine-year-old “Mighty Mike” apparently got a hold of his father Dave's company card and spent $118,000 on a YouTube ad campaign. However, the story immediately appeared to...
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Revolut reveals customer data breached twice this month
UK bank Revolut has revealed that its customers data was breached twice this month after the firm’s former third-party US broker, DriveWealth, suffered a social engineering attack. The breach, revealed today by both Revolut and DriveWealth, happened on September 4 and September 5, and reportedly...
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Kalshi’s AI ad turned an Asian YouTuber into ‘a white dude’
An AI ad for crypto prediction market Kalshi stole a YouTube video by popular Asian content creator Elliot Choy and “turned him into a white dude.” Choy shared a screenshot of Kalshi's advert alongside his original New York apartment video yesterday. The content creator said, “I guess Kalshi saw...
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Apollo limits private credit withdrawals for third consecutive quarter
The slow-motion liquidity crisis in private credit has rolled into its third quarter, with Apollo gating another three months of withdrawal requests from its flagship retail private credit fund. On Tuesday, the fund disappointed investors who had asked to cash out 14.7% of their shares. It will...
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Thousands of Curaçao crypto casinos see data leaked following hack
A team of journalists has leaked the data of thousands of Curaçao-registered casino operators after the island nation's gambling regulator revealed it was hacked last week. The database of over 40,000 documents includes financial plans, audits, business structures, and funding sources, from over...
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HTX’s proof of reserves doesn’t match its blockchain balances
Justin Sun-owned HTX claimed in its September proof of reserves (PoR) that it held 360949.90 USDS in 0xdaa4393013f359fd63a133a3b893d311aba4e471 at a block height of 25876316. However, that address at that block height actually contained 0 USDS. The only transaction where this address actually...
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Hack VC deletes X post after disgruntled former employee found dead
Crypto venture capitalists at Hack VC deleted a post about disagreeing with a disgruntled former employee, Hsin-Ju Chuang, who has tragically passed away. Its official X account currently has no mention of her passing. Its deleted post read , “While our understanding of events differs materially,...
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FTX and Alameda Research still causing the effective altruists problems
Last week, Protos reported that a philanthropic organization associated with the effective altruism movement, Manifund, had hired Caroline Ellison, providing the former CEO of Alameda Research her first major job opportunity since being released from prison. However, the hire caused catastrophic...
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Cosmos hub halts for 24 hours after Neutron governance attack
Cosmos Hub validators halted block production on Tuesday, following a governance attack on Neutron which initially led to losses of $9.5 million. Of that sum, the attacker was only able to extract around 20%, with the remainder stuck on halted networks. With block production having resumed since...
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Crypto hacking group ShinyHunters says it stole data of 5,000 FBI agents
Crypto hacking collective ShinyHunters claims to have stolen the personal details of 5,000 FBI agents after gaining access to its database. It shared a sample of the stolen data with a number of outlets yesterday. The data includes family members, social security numbers, and details of...
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Meta’s AI bond just hit a record low as its stock soared
The world’s largest private debt offering, a bond series for one of Meta’s AI data centers, has slumped to its worst level since the deal priced at par last October. As the Nasdaq composite closed at an all-time high on Tuesday in an AI-led rally , unease rose in the credit market for the industry....
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Suspicious Kalshi bot shuts down amid wash trading claims
A trading bot making cheap uniform trades on a Zohran Mamdani Kalshi market has stopped trading after it raised suspicions that the prediction market was wash trading its perp volume. The wash trading allegations began last weekend when “Beni,” a pseudonymous quant analyst, claimed Kalshi’s 24-hour...
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Bitcoin treasury stocks have gone ice cold
Over the past 18 months, the vast majority of publicly traded companies that pivoted to a BTC treasury strategy have lost money since their initial purchase announcement. Globally, nearly 200 public companies hold BTC, according to monitoring service Bitcoin Treasuries, although most have small...
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Strategy paid $100M extra to buy back the bitcoin it sold
Strategy has spent recent weeks rebuying 5,553 of the BTC it sold over the summer. After selling low in the summer and re-buying high this autumn, the opportunity cost of its roundtrip trade exceeds $100 million. Despite years of promises that he'd never sell, Michael Saylor’s company sold 6,948...
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Paul brothers are investing heavy into gambling, AI, drones, and defense
Infamous entertainers Logan and Jake Paul, who are now making PR stops at the Treasury and the Department of War, are also heavily invested in gambling, AI, drones, and defense contracts, according to the website for their venture capital fund, Anti Fund. Their portfolio includes Anduril, OpenAI,...
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Binance faces second probe over Iran-linked billions
US officials are probing Binance again as they try to uncover whether or not the Dubai-based crypto exchange knowingly allowed Iran-linked trades and violated US sanctions against the country. Bloomberg reported Tuesday that the Manhattan US attorney's office and Justice Department's (DoJ)...
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Crypto-draining FOMO app was available on Apple store for a week
Analysts have urged iPhone users to update their IOS after crypto-stealing malware was discovered in malicious Safari browser links and the FOMO app. SlowMist's Chief Information Security Officer, Shān Zhang, encouraged his followers last Saturday to update to the latest version of IOS following...
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Meet Jev, the AI that claims it can’t hallucinate
Self- proclaimed ChatGPT “co-creator” Diogo Almeida is running a viral marketing campaign for a new AI model, Jev, based on his work on the OpenAI chatbot's core function, Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF). The problem is, he's admitting that his own invention doesn't work well....
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Crypto casinos might get doxxed after Curaçao regulator hacked
Crypto casinos registered in Curaçao face having their sensitive data doxxed after the island's gambling regulator announced last week that it had been hacked. Curaçao became a magnet for online casinos thanks to its relaxed gambling laws under the Curaçao Gaming Authority (CGA). The CGA revealed...
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$2M stolen in triple attack on Fetch.ai, NuNet, and SingularityNET
It’s been a busy weekend for one black hat who stole hundreds of millions of tokens from Fetch.ai, NuNet and SingularityNET, netting around $2.25 million of realized profits. According to a report from Bitquery, however, the nominal value of the tokens minted was several times higher at the time of...
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Justin Sun announces math prize but has no proof of funds
Justin Sun recently announced that his new “Justin Sun Prize” would begin in earnest, with $1 million being offered for those who can solve 66 mathematical problems and verify their proof. The only problem? Sun hasn’t shown any evidence that there’s $66 million in funding for those who are able to...