Price Highs, Bull Runs, and Thieves: Bad Crypto News of the Week

Another good week for Bitcoin last week. The dollar price rose more than 5 percent, taking it to around $11,700. That rise wasn’t smooth. A flash crash took $1,500 off the price at one point, although investors remain bullish and the VIX volatility index, which is based on the S&P 500, is “extremely bullish.” Other volatility measures, though, suggest another drop to $10,000 before a new rally, while the Winklevoss twins think that the amount of infrastructure and capital in the crypto markets will make this bull run very different from the 2017 run.

It’s not just Bitcoin that’s been on a run, though. Ethereum has hit a two-year high of $400, supported by decentralized finance protocols, the anticipated arrival of ETH 2.0, and the general rise in the altcoin market.

Meanwhile, in the analog world, the US printed more money in June than it did in the first two centuries after its founding.

Where there are riches, there are also thieves, and hackers have broken into a cryptocurrency trading platform in Europe. The thieves stole more than $1.3 million from 2gether. The platform has offered customers its own 2GT token as a replacement. 

Bitfinex is still trying to track down hackers who stole more than 120,000 Bitcoins back in August 2016. The exchange is offering a reward of up to $400 million and is even willing to give the hackers 25 percent of the total property recovered.

As for that big Twitter hack that saw accounts as large as Elon Musk’s, Joe Biden’s and Bill Gates’s ask for Bitcoins, authorities have now arrested a 17-year-old in Tampa, Florida. He has been something of a trend-setter, though. Hackers have been taking over big YouTube channels, changing their names to topics like SpaceX and Elon Musk, and offering similar Bitcoin giveaways. The hackers appear to be using phishing attacks targeting the owners of large channels.

Not all law evasion is bad though. Chinese Internet users have turned to the blockchain to share a censored news article. The article is about a company that gave faulty vaccines to babies. 

In Tel Aviv, the stock exchange is now launching a blockchain-based securities platform. Audius has raised $3.1 million to support its “SoundCloud on the blockchain.” The company previously raised $5.5 million but now has 250,000 users and 40,000 artists.

And according to Heath Tarbert, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a large part of the financial system could soon end up using the blockchain. It’s on a run. 

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