Posts about Crypto
Earlier today Damian Williams, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York announced the unsealing of an Indictment charging SHAKEEB AHMED with wire fraud and money laundering in connection with his attack on a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange. Ahmed was arrested this morning.
you can view the announcement here: https://twitter.com/sdnynews/status/1678780204062490626
you can read the official press release here: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/former-security-engineer-international-technology-company-arrested-defrauding
U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said:
“This is the second case we are announcing this week to shed light on fraud in the cryptocurrency and digital asset ecosystem. As alleged in the indictment, Shakeeb Ahmed, who was a senior security engineer at an international technology company, used his expertise to defraud the exchange and its users and steal approximately $9 million in cryptocurrency. We also allege that he then laundered the stolen funds through a series of complex transfers on the blockchain where he swapped cryptocurrencies, hopped across different crypto blockchains, and used overseas crypto exchanges. But none of those actions covered the defendant’s tracks or fooled law enforcement, and they certainly didn’t stop my Office or our law enforcement partners from following the money.”
This was the hacker who exploited Crema Finance last year for 10 million and returned 8 million (turns out cutting these deals does not make you immune from criminal charges)
you can read more about that hack here: https://cointelegraph.com/news/crema-hacker-returns-8m-keeps-1-6m-in-deal-with-protocol
he also attempted to cover his tracks but apparently was unsuccessful
AHMED laundered the millions in fees that he stole from the Crypto Exchange to conceal their source and ownership, including through (i) conducting token-swap transactions, (ii) “bridging” fraud proceeds from the Solana blockchain over to the Ethereum blockchain, (iii) exchanging fraud proceeds into Monero, an anonymized and particularly difficult cryptocurrency to trace, and (iv) using overseas cryptocurrency exchanges.
This entire thing is kind of crazy and them being able to track him down in a year after it seems he used all the tools available to him in crypto to remain anonymous.
It shouldn't come as a surprise that Crypto Specific Subs - are served with an insane amount of Copium. When anything bad happens with the crypto you can check the Sub and find the latest spin for why "it is actually a good thing" and why the token is going to inevitably Moon.
Being a previous sub favorite and one of the most shilled Cryptos on this sub in 2021, everyone here is probably more familiar with the 46th Ranked Crypto, 'Algorand' - than higher ranked cryptos like: Stacks, Aave, FileCoin, or OKB. As a result, it shouldn't be surprising that Algorand gets an unequal amount of attention over it's horrendous bear market performance.
https://i.redd.it/lj2oqp6k7ebb1.pngEven today Algorand continues to drop and is currently the worst performing crypto over the last 7 days out of any crypto in the top 100 by Marketcap.
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For the past year, whenever I see anything bad happen to Algorand I check the Algorand Sub and often see the same rehashed lines
"Algorand is the easiest to use L1 and has the best tech this bear market doesn't matter"
or
"Now is the time to buy Algorand, Development is only getting easier"
When people call out Algorand for it's obvious flaws, like the Centralization of ALGO and the Foundation constantly dumping on retail. You see things on the Algo sub like:
"The more the Foundations dump now, the less they can dump later. This is going to become bullish in a bull market."
As a spectator it's easy to believe these lines, especially coming from people who are so confident that their crypto of choice will recover.
https://i.redd.it/2mo56sq7ydbb1.pngDespite that - Algorand has just continued to fall during this bear market and currently shows no signs that it might recover. Especially now that the biggest ALGO DEX is closing shop.
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It's true, the CryptoCurrency sub does have a horrendous record and will often shill pumping projects only to make the new buyers - bag holders. But for all of its flaws, this sub does have users that really know the Pros/Cons of different Crypto projects, and aren't just going to repeat the same lines of raw and unfiltered Copium that you'd find in a Crypto Specific Sub like Algorand
Don't look for investment guidance in a Crypto Specific Sub - If you do, you'll likely end up DCA'ing into a endlessly dumping project based off an insane amount of unfiltered copium from the existing (bag)holders.
While we all here are just waiting and waiting for Bitcoin to finally recover from this bear market and reach new all-time highs again, in other countries, like Argentina, that is no problem at all as BTC keeps hitting new ATHs here and has just recently made one in Argentina too.
But there is obviously a bit of a bad underlining to those new ATHs as the reason for them primarily is the still-accelerating inflation in Argentina. Just this year inflation broke over 100% in Argentina and that while the interest rates of the central bank are also at about 97%, there seems to be no way for Argentina to combat that sky-high inflation.
It even went as far that Argentina had to take the help of the IMF, with their largest Extended Fund Facility program ever of over $44B. But that also came with a sinister undertone, as the IMF is requiring Argentine government to promise them to basically stop Crypto adoption in their country.
Seems like the organisations that are meant to help countries in their worst situations are just taking advantage of them instead. In that case Bitcoin may actually be the one helping them the most.
