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Binance hack saga: From getting hacked, to community unity, to getting security help from McAfee

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In recent times, Chengpeng Zhao-led cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, has become somewhat of a prestigious entity in the crypto world. It is not just one of the leading digital exchanges in the space but has also gained tremendous popularity among the crypto-nerds because of its low transaction fees, high liquidity and specials discounts if users pay in BNB (exchange’s native token).

On Wednesday morning Asia time, Binance published a blog post on the medium which shook the whole crypto-mania as the exchange disclosed that they discovered a large-scale security breach into their network.

According to the release, On May 7th at 17:15 (UTC), cybercriminals (the hackers) were able to penetrate the “so-called” secure hot-wallet of the exchange and siphoned off approximately $40M worth of 7000 BTC.

The hackers were able to procure API keys, 2-factor authentication codes and other information through phishing and viruses techniques that helped them to carry out the transaction. The crypto exchange notes,

“The hackers had the patience to wait, and execute well-orchestrated actions through multiple seemingly independent accounts at the most opportune time. The transaction is structured in a way that passed our existing security checks,”

Binance further said in its statement that,

“It was unfortunate that we were not able to block this withdrawal before it was executed. Once executed, the withdrawal triggered various alarms in our system. We stopped all withdrawals immediately after that.”

Although, digital exchanges getting hacked has become quite a norm these days as according to the Wall Street Journal, up to $1.7B worth of digital currency has been stolen over the years by cyber thieves. But now that becoming the case with the technology like Binance, which is famously regarded as the hyper-secure and impregnable, to get hacked, posed yet another warning to the crypto-nerds that “your money might not be as safe as you think.”

In the wake of this unfortunate incident, the crypto exchange ensures its community that they need not worry whether their funds will be affected. On the contrary, they will be compensated entirely through the exchange’s internal insurance system named “#SAFU fund.” In other words, it is in fact, the company which got harmed from this malicious attack with the loss of almost 2% worth of its BTC reserves.

Crypto-community jumped all over with their offers to help

Soon after the announcement was made, various digital exchanges started to work with Binance to impede any deposits connected with the hacked wallets. Whereas, the community offered their help to the victim via donations. In the meantime, Justin Sun, the CEO of Tron and BitTorrent, also offered his support to his friend (Binance’s CEO CZ) over Twitter (his usual medium for connecting with crypto-mania) to buy $40M worth of BTC, BNB, TRX and BTT that equals the reported theft from the exchange (7000BTC) if Mr. CZ permits.

Chengpeng Zhao though responded with appreciating words for everyone stating that “We are hurt but not Broke” and “we will cover the loss from the #SAFU fund.” His tweet reads:

John McAfee, the digital security expert also came forward to pledge his support for the platform after he heard the unfortunate news. Using his Twitter account, the software mogul while flaunting his 51 years of experience in cybersecurity, offered his help to Mr. CZ.

Interestingly, little time after the help was offered (approximately 2 hours), Binance’s CEO responded to Mr. McAfee by accepting his proposal to benefit from his expertise.

Apparently, both are in communication with each other regarding the issue and hopefully, it will bring a fruitful conclusion to the ongoing Binance hack saga.

Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.

After Tron, Liverpool FC sends partnership invitation to Binance’s CZ

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The five times European champions Liverpool FC and currently on course to be crowned English champions for the 19th time after a long time now looks into cryptocurrency and blockchain.

Recently, the founder and CEO of Tron, Justin Sun announced to have received a unique and innovative invitation from the giant English club about a partnership. And now, merely three days later, Binance’s CZ becomes the next in line.

Cryptocurrency and Blockchain in Marketing Operations

The recent activity with Liverpool FC indicates that the club is looking to include cryptocurrency and blockchain in its marketing operations. Like Justin Sun, now Binance CEO, Chanpang Zhao has received a similar invitation from the club to discuss partnership opportunities in more details.

Marcel Weigmann, Partnership Development Manager at Liverpool FC, stated that they are a high profile marketing platform and will bring significant commercial to Binance Exchange.

Is Liverpool FC up to something?

The invitations the club is sending in succession without a doubt means something. The most probable scenario is that Liverpool FC might be planning to release their cryptocurrency on the Tron platform with support from Binance exchange.

Apparently, Liverpool FC is not the first team in the English top flight league to enter the crypto space as eToro (a trading platform provider) had earlier signed a partnership with several other clubs including Brighton & Hove Albion., Tottenham Hotspur, Crystal Place F.C., Southampton F.C., Cardiff F.C., Newcastle United F.C., and Leicester City F.C.

Significance of the Partnerships

As it is with the general crypto space benefits, the partnerships will improve the club’s fan experience purchasing merchandises, tickets as well as the voting on important issues within the club.

Furthermore, it will provide a seamless transfer of players in exchange for cryptocurrencies. Therefore, Liverpool bringing down the invitations down to paper might be a big step towards mass adoption for the cryptocurrency and blockchain.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.

Bitcoin hits $5,300 and drags the market up

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A couple of days ago as Bitcoin’s price was moving sideways around 5,200, the road to a USD 100 increase seemed like a long way to go. But the mother of all cryptocurrencies is trading at USD 5,343 as we write this, so it has just crossed the $5,300 resistance level. Let’s review the market’s state as of two days ago.

Bitcoin was drifting around USD 5.200,00 after it went up by a meager 2.2%.

It found a bit of an obstacle, but it kept going up after it started the week (for the second consecutive week) on bullish tones. The previous weekend wasn’t that good. The market experienced something of a correction that saw the price go back down to the USD 5.000,00 level. But Monday’s events proved that the drop wasn’t significant in its own right, but rather a typical weekend bearish run, which is nothing special and tends to happen 52 times a year.

That’s all cosmetic. The central, more meaningful point, would be to find out if Bitcoin’s price will find it’s way back to its yearly highest value so far (USD 5.417) which happened on April 10th, exactly a week after the USD 1.000.00 spike that changed the market inside of a single hour. Some analysts (especially one at Forbes) are on record signaling the six thousand level as an easy target to reach in the short term. But technical resistance levels are much lower than that, so it’s a tricky prediction.

And things are not good for Bitcoin only. As the cryptoverse’s premier coin, and as the base coin for cryptocurrency trading in most exchanges, Bitcoin’s influence in the market is such that when it goes up, the whole market goes up.

Even Bitcoin Cash SV (BSV) which has been something of a disaster since it came online a few weeks ago (and has been decried as a toxic element in the cryptosphere by some crypto exchanges and by none other than John McAfee) has been going up. Granted, the increase was of 1.13% which is not exactly spectacular. But after the coin lost 24% of its already scarce value when Binance, Kraken and other exchanges started talking about delisting it from their platforms, even the smallest increase is a welcomed draft of fresh air for Craig Wright’s project.

BitCoin Cash ABC, on the other hand, has been doing reasonably well since Mr. Wright and its entourage went away to create the BSV fork.

And now while Bitcoin has gone past $5,300 mark, surprisingly, Binance Coin (BNB) crossed the $25 mark after going up by a whopping 14% in the last twenty-four hours.

So Bitcoin has been going up for the last sixteen days. Is this enough to think that the long-awaited bullish run has arrived already? We doubt so. The behavior has not been all that bullish if you take into account that most of the increases in price happened in a single day during a single hour.

After that, most of the action has moved sidewise so while there’s an upward trend, it’s still exceedingly slow (less than 10% in more than two weeks) to think that this is the run that will finally solve the protracted crypto winter. Be prudent.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.

Binance delists Bitcoin SV (BSV) because of founder’s behavior

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Changpeng Zhao is Binance’s CEO and founder. And Binance is the world’s largest and most influential cryptocurrency exchange in the world, so when Mr. Zhao speaks, the cryptosphere listens. It’s much like how the world pays attention to every word that comes out of the Fed’s president when it comes to Forex and fiat currencies, primarily the USD.

Craig Wright

Another character in this article is none other than Craig Wright. This is a complex and cantankerous character which has some degree of charisma. He’s a very divisive figure in the cryptocurrency environment. He’s claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto himself, he’s the man who got the whole “Ripple as a security” controversy started, and he likes to speak loudly against any cryptocurrency he disapproves of (and the list is long). Not too long ago, Craig attacked Tron, too.

His latest exploit was to create enough tension within the Bitcoin Cash project so that the project had to split (fork) into Bitcoin Cash ABC and Bitcoin Cash SV. The SV (BSV) version has not performed very well since the original (BTC ABC recovered quickly from a drop in price). That puts a dent on Mr. Wright credibility since that’s the blockchain project he currently leads for all practical purposes.

How the latest clash between CZ and Craig started

Keeping up with his established character, Mr. Wright went after the Twitter user that came up with the Lighting Torch initiative, who goes by Hodlnaut. Mr. Hodlnaut called Mr. Wright a fraud in a Tweet because he insists on being the real Satoshi Nakamoto.

The controversial crypto personality must have taken this comment in a very personal way (which is rather strange as lots of cryptonauts have expressed similar or worse opinions about the man) and declared open season on the Twitter user. He’s offering USD 5.000,00 in BSV for any information regarding Hodlnaut’s true identity.

The community hasn’t reacted very favorably to Mr. Wright’s initiative, and the hashtag #WeAreAllHodlonaut has popped out in Twitter to express support for the Twitter user (whose account is now deleted).

Hodlonaut was indeed very vocal about his opinions about the BSV founder. He called him “a very sad and pathetic scammer. Clearly mentally ill” and he also played a role in creating the #CraigWrightIsAFraud hashtag.

Things are getting so hot that even Wright’s lawyer had to come forward and speak on behalf of his client. He defended him by saying that “has not fraudulently claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto” because he is Satoshi Nakamoto.

His statement also says that he wrote the now legendary Bitcoin white paper, completed the first Bitcoin transaction, and was pivotal for the network’s growth and development. And he now wants Hodlnaut to offer him an apology and to acknowledge his allegations as false.

Hodlnaut is not alone at all in his views about Mr. Wright. This person is widely known as “faketoshi” in the crypto verse. As shown in the above tweet, according to WikiLeaks, he’s “a proven serial forger of documents claiming that he is the inventor of Bitcoin.” Motherboard news published an article almost four years ago in which he denounced the “proof” Wright provided for Bitcoin’s authorship. It said that they were “probably backdated and point to a hoax.”

But for some reason, Craig Wright has chosen to pick on an anonymous (and influential) former Twitter user to vent his anger about the community’s doubts. And that’s not all.

Mr. Wright’s problems do not start and finish in the virtual world. He faces a USD 4 billion lawsuit against him for stealing (allegedly) about 1.1 million BTC from the late David Kleinman’s estate. Mr. Klainman was a crypto developer when it was just getting started.

And last December a researcher reported that the Bitcoin SV allows for tokens to be spent twice which is equivalent to say that it’s utterly useless as a genuinely useful cryptocurrency.

So when you put all of the information in the previous paragraphs together, it’s no wonder that lots of people in the cryptosphere are sick and tired of Craig Wright’s antics. Which brings us back to Binance and its CEO.

Binance’s warning

Mr. Zhao announced last Thursday that he’s ready to delist BSV from Binance if the controversial founder doesn’t change his ways. The community reacted by supporting Mr. Zhao’s position and encouraging other cryptocurrency exchange platforms to do the same and stop supporting the BSV coin.

That could be a possibly fatal blow for a blockchain project that’s already facing bad times and that. And guess what, Binance CEO did not take long take an action after the warning.

The ball is in Craig Wright’s court, of course. It will be fascinating to see how he decides to manage this situation.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.

Binance Launchpad 101: Here’s how you become the early bird of new projects

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You’ve undoubtedly heard about Binance before. It was founded in 2017 by Changpeng Zhao and Yi He. It was based initially in China, but then it moved to Japan as the Chinese government banned cryptocurrency trading in 2017.

By now it also has offices in Taiwan and Malta, which is one of the most cryptocurrency-friendly countries in the word. It’s even issued its very own digital token, called BNB. The thing about Binance is that it’s the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange by trade volume, and it’s probably the exchange with the broadest selection of trading pairs.

Earlier this year, in January, to be precise, the company announced that it would take advantage of its Binance Launchpad platform to raise funds for new tokens at the tune of one per month, more or less.

The results didn’t take long to show. Perhaps the most expected launch so far was the BitTorrent Token one (BTT). It’s a coin based on Tron’s token technology that will power the BitTorrent P2P decentralized network as it merges into Tron’s blockchain network.

It took fewer than 15 minutes to raise USD 7.12 million, which made the whole community pay a bit of attention. The move also winked at the possibility of ICOs making a spectacular comeback, more or less as it was in 2017.

BTT hasn’t been the only success story so far. Binance’s Launchpad’s second fundraiser was in support of Fetch.AI. It was even more rapid: USD 6 million in a very impressive ten seconds.

The tokens in question saw their prices soar after the Binance listing went live. And that, again, created massive interest in a big chunk of the crypto community.

Binance is calling these kinds of events “Initial Exchange Offering,” and that’s how it’s marking the commencement of massive exchanges using its platform to come online. Following Binance’s spectacular success in this regard, five other exchanges are taking a page from Binance’s book to come up with Initial Exchange Offering platforms of their own. They are Okex, KuCoin, and Bittrex, among others.

Since IEOs are becoming so popular, especially when launched at Binance over Binance Launchpad, we will use this article to offer you a thoroughly detailed guide so you can start using the platform and join in all the fun sometime in the near future by entering one of the planned events for fundraising.

Binance Launchpad: How to use it

We start with the basics. Login into your Binance account. Don’t you have one? Well, just get one. The initial process doesn’t even take three minutes; it’s effortless and direct (afterward you will need to prove your identity, but more on that later).

So now we’re in. Find the menu’s top left of the menu and click “Binance Launchpad”. The option will show as part of a drop-down.

The Home Screen

You’ll arrive at the platform’s home screen. There, dead center, you’ll see the featured projects at the launch pad. Each project’s status is carefully described to provide a full understanding of each project’s situation.

The projects on the left are about to start selling tokens, and you can find an abstract detailing the launch’s primary information. Among other pieces of data, you’ll find the number of tokens scheduled to be sold during the session, as well as the starting time.

Each project has a dedicated page within the platform, and you can see it by just choosing the project that interests you and click on it. There you’ll find the project’s information in full detail.

If you’re following us while using your Binance account so far, you’ll see that the general information about the project’s IEO event is at the top and it includes the following information: price, start time, session supply, starting date and hour. And there’s the “Buy Now” button. As we write this, that button didn’t work because the sale had not started yet, but it will be active when the time comes.

Requirements

  • Then, below, there’s the requirements tab. If you want to join in the token sale, you have to complete all the requirements mentioned in the tab. Each project has a different set of conditions, but a fairly common requirement is to comply with the platform’s general verification process. It takes four steps:
  • Type in your personal information.
  • Once your personal information is complete, you’ll need to provide a picture of your ID. This is not as cumbersome as it sounds at first. It’s actually a quick process. Your laptop has a camera that can take pictures, but it’s a better idea to make the required picture using your smartphone’s camera. That’s because it’s essential for the text in your ID to be very clear and readable. That makes things move forward more quickly, and it will save you the hassle of repeating this second step because of a bad quality picture.
  • The next step is about facial information. It’s not precisely about facial recognition, but about proving that your face matches your ID, that you’re the guy active right now on your account. Binance is meticulous, to say the least. You have to submit a picture of your face. The photo must include the date as well, and also the word “Binance” next to your face. This can indeed be done with your laptop’s camera, just make sure that the date and the legend “Binance” is obvious and readable. This is a standard step in most websites in which real money moves in and out of the platform.
  • You’re done. Almost. The next step is just to wait a bit of time for the Binance team to contact you and tell you that you are indeed approved, or, to let you know that something went wrong and you have to repeat one of the three steps.

An important bit of information: not every user from every country can participate in the event. You need to know if users from your country are allowed and you’ll find that out at the requirements tab as well.

Project Information

You should always familiarize yourself with the full information of any project that catches your eye. Any responsible investment needs in-depth research before you put any of your hard-earned money into it.

All the information you need is either in the requirements tab or in the project’s dedicated page, and you should make sure you’ve read it all, analyzed it all, and understood it all. Pros, cons, potential advantages and challenges, use cases for the new tokens, etc. We strongly suggest that you don’t go in lightly. There’s no excuse. Binance makes sure you can find out everything you need to know to make a good decision.

If you, however, consider that you still don’t have all the information you need, there’s good news. Binance has built a research center in which they carry out very detailed reviews for each of the projects listed. Is reading a full report too much information to decide? We don’t think so. On the contrary, knowledge is power, and we’re talking about your money here, so any amount of research is justified.

And that’s it, pretty much. There’s nothing more to it. Once you’ve assimilated the information you need to decide, you are all set to invest in the Binance Launchpad for the first time.

If you comply with the requirements, then just make sure you know when the sale will begin and be prepared to be online and join in as it happens.

One thing you need to take into account is that you can’t use fiat currencies to transact at Binance. The exchange is crypto to crypto which means that you need to own digital assets beforehand (bought elsewhere, with your local legal tender), then transfer them to your Binance account, and in the case of IEOs, you also need to know what coins will be accepted.

Every project will sell its new tokens only in exchange for some specific coins, and if you’re going to participate in time, you need to know what tokens are those, and, more importantly, you need to own some of them in advance.

That’s how all the launches have happened during the year with one exception. The BTT (BitTorrent token) token thing used only BNB and TRX (Tron’s Tronix currency). Which is why that launch was essentially two sessions occurring at the same time.

As we wrote in the previous paragraphs, the “Buy Now” button won’t be active until the sale begins. When it becomes alive, it will allow you to buy the number of tokens of your choice using the session’s selected token.

So let’s say the button is alive and you click on it. What happens next?

You’ll see a small box. In this box, you define the number of new tokens you want to buy. On the top of the box, you’ll see your BNB (or the token relevant to the sale). Under, you’ll find the maximum number of coins you can buy based on your cap. At the bottom of the box, you’ll need to provide a verification code. Last, you submit your request for the Binance Launchpad token sale.

The request will get you assigned to the tokens’ sale queue. This is not the time to refresh or leave the page. Be patient and wait for things to happen. Once the token sale is finished, you’ll be told. The Binance team will let you know if your luck was kind enough to get in the sale or not. If you did, the new tokens would be shown in your balance. If you didn’t then your balance remains precisely as it was before you sent the request.

Final thoughts

We hope you can see that joining in a Binance Launchpad fundraiser is very easy and takes minimal effort. The Binance team has gone out of its way to ensure that everything is simple, accessible, easy to go through and, yet, very thorough and meticulous.

One thing to keep in mind, though, is that this kind of events create immense amounts of interest in the community. Thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands) of users try to join in. Remember the Fetch.AI sale: it was over in ten seconds, no more. So while participating is exceedingly comfortable, getting a good place in the queue is not. The amount of competition is just insane, and that’s the one thing that complicates everything else.

But aside from that competition, the rest of the process is utterly seamless, easy to do, and easy to understand. If you’re not going to join, it just can’t be because of the level of technical difficulty.

Binance has found a way to be innovative, useful. It’s a pivotal exchange in the cryptoverse because of the sheer volume it has, but the new tool (the launchpad) is making it even more critical because it provides an easy way for projects to launch their coins which, on top of everything, get listed at Binance which is already something of an achievement.

Of course, Binance isn’t inventing ICO’s. Ethereum has been doing that for ages, but Binance’s approach has several advantages over Ethereum’s. Ethereum can only launch cryptocurrencies based on Ethereum’s token technology (ERC20), and with the scalability problems it’s had for months, there’s just no way in which it could support events such as those happening in Binance.

Binance’s IEO’s, on the other hand, can launch new cryptocurrencies of any kind at all, it’s not limited to Ethereum’s only. And it can manage insane amounts of traffic successfully and dependable. So Binance’s solution is a lot more versatile, a lot more powerful, reliable and, because of the high gas prices at Ethereum’s network, a lot cheaper as well.

So now you know everything you need to know if you want to join the current IEO’s fever. Lots of interest projects are about to get released and make their sale. You’ll surely find an exciting project that takes your fancy and just calls for you to participate. Just get well informed, be thorough in your preliminary research, and try to make sure you join the sale in time to actually get some of the new tokens. We wish you the best of luck!

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.

Binance lists BTT, available for trade in 3 pairs

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A couple of days ago, Justin Sun, the founder and CEO of Tron, the 8th popular cryptocurrency in the world, informed the crypto enthusiasts through his twitter account that BitTorrent’s token BTT, which is based on Tron’s TRC-10 cryptography, has been officially launched on Binance (which is considered as the global leader in terms of trading volume in crypto verse).

Interested people can trade BTT with Binance (BNB), Bitcoin (BTC), and Tether (USDT), the tweet concluded.

Binance, which unquestionably has established themselves as the most vibrant digital currency exchange in the crypto-sphere, has been working with BitTorrent and Tron to launch TRC-10 based token BTT and to conduct the public sale (ICO) of the said token on its launchpad which was held few days ago and caught attention when it took unimaginably short time to complete the sale.

Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of Binance applauded the process where 59 billion BTT were sold under 18 minutes. Later Justin Sun, the CEO of Tron also talked about it on twitter.

“It is official: In the BNB session, all 23.76 billion BTT were sold to token sale participants within 13 minutes and 25 seconds. Meanwhile, in the TRON session, all 35.64 billion BTT were sold within 14 minutes and 41 seconds. #BTT $BTT #BitTorrent #TRON”

The news brought a lot of excitement to the Tron community, and they have welcomed the news with open arms and thanked the news bearer in their own unique whole-heartedly way.

Another Tron lover encouraged the efforts of the crypto creator by saying they have their total faith upon him and wish to see him make another miracle like what he did with TRX.

More about BTT

BitTorrent’s users will now be able to utilize BTT (BitTorrent token) as a medium of exchange to tip content providers, purchase downloadable media, and also to participate in crowd-funding on BitTorrent.

People will also be able to use BTT to reward the original owner of the files shared on the platform. In simple words, the token will serve as the payment instrument on the Torrent Network.

The idea behind the creation of this token is to streamline the already running process of peer-to-peer file sharing on the BitTorrent platform, which has a large user base of hundred million, said by Justin Knoll, leader of the BTT protocol, Project Atlas last week.

Image courtesy of PixaBay.