It’s Not Time To Jump Off The Crypto Coaster Yet

Self-Described “Satoshi Nakamoto” Will Pay $100 Million in Suit

A U.S. jury ordered Craig Wright, a computer scientist who claims to be the inventor of Bitcoin, to pay $100 million in damages after the jury found that he stole intellectual property used in Bitcoin from his deceased friend, Dave Kleiman.

Following about three weeks of trial, Miami federal court jurors reached their verdict today. The jury rejected most claims against Craig Wright, and the verdict probably won’t settle the debate over whether Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto, the mythical creator of the peer-to-peer currency.

“I feel remarkably happy and vindicated,” Wright said in the courtroom hallway after the verdict. “I am not a fraud, and I never have been.” 

The brother of Dave Kleiman, a computer security expert who died in 2013, alleged that his brother helped Wright create and mine Bitcoin in its early years. According to the plaintiffs, the estate had a right to half of a cache of 1.1 million Bitcoins worth around $70 billion, which are believed to be owned by Satoshi.

Wright claims that he was friends with Dave Kleiman and that Kleiman helped him edit the Bitcoin white paper, a foundational document that arguably started the crypto economy. However, Wright says that the two were not business partners. 

The jury said Wright is liable for conversion — an illegal taking of property — and has been ordered to compensate W&K Info Defense Research LLC, the entity through which Kleiman and Wright were supposed to have worked together.

After the verdict, Wright said, “I have never been so relieved in my life.” He said he wouldn’t appeal.

The jury was not asked to decide if Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin. This verdict concerns cheating and intellectual property for the cryptocurrency, which is also significant because Wright claimed for years in court and interviews that he created Bitcoin. While some investors believed him, others saw him as a fake since his attitude didn’t convince them. Either way, he’ll now have to pay $100 million.

Hacked Crypto Exchange Bitmart Estimates Losses At $196M

BitMart reported late Saturday that it suffered a hack that resulted in the loss of nearly $196 million in crypto. The crypto exchange confirmed the attack, calling it “a large-scale security breach.” Security reviews are in progress, and all withdrawals are temporarily suspended. Blockchain security and data analytics firm Peckshield has estimated that the loss is closer to $200 million. The hack was a straightforward case of “transfer-out, swap, and wash,” said Peckshield.

Heldon Xia, CEO of BitMart, tweeted today that hackers stole a private key that opened two hot wallets. Hackers stole over 20 tokens, including several altcoins such as Binance Coin, Safemoon, BSC-USD, and BNBBPay. Additionally, the hack compromised large quantities of meme coins such as BabyDoge, Floki, and Moonshot. 

The hacker used a decentralized exchange aggregator ‘1inch’ to swap stolen tokens for ETH. The hackers used a secondary address to deposit the ETH into the privacy mixer Tornado Cash, which is a privacy tool for hiding transactions in ETH. All in all, this makes the hacked funds harder to track.

A series of recent hacks preceded this latest breach. Last week, Celsius Network admitted it lost $120 million in a hack of the decentralized finance platform BadgerDAO. Poly Network was hacked, and more than $600 million worth of tokens were stolen. Strangely, the attacker later returned almost all of the money.

These attacks illustrate how easily hackers are able to target centralized exchanges and why some experts advocate for decentralized crypto exchanges (DEXs). DEXs like Uniswap, PancakeSwap, are not only secure and free from a central authority, but investors also retain access to their wallets and thus retain control of their own crypto assets.

Neptune’s Ocean Does Wash Blood Off of Some Coins’ Hands

Over the weekend, the crypto market experienced a steep decline. However, some altcoins actually ended in the green today, thanks to some positive news. Some of them are below:

• PancakeSwap: PancakeSwap ($CAKE), one of the leading automated market maker platforms on Binance Smart Chain, surged by double digits to $12.05 today. 

This comes following its coin burning event in which 6,942,087 tokens were burned for $77 million. Coin burning permanently deletes some coins from the network. With a reduced supply, tokens that remain in circulation theoretically become more valuable because of scarcity. As a result, the token price goes up.

PancakeSwap is a decentralized exchange (DEX), allowing investors to swap BEP-20 tokens (tokens built on top of the Binance Smart Chain). Earlier this year, the platform launched an NFT marketplace and unveiled its first NFT collection called PancakeSquad. In the past year, ($CAKE.X) has gained 1,873%, according to crypto.com.

• BitTorrent: BitTorrent, the largest decentralized peer-to-peer communications protocol with over 170 million monthly users, made headlines today when its native token $BTT.X soared over 20% in value.

On Dec. 12, $BTT.X – a utility token based on TRC-10 – will launch its main net. Old BTT tokens on TRON will be redenominated into smaller units, keeping the same market cap.

Since the announcement, the token’s market cap has consolidated to around $2.7 billion, with a token price of $0.0030

• OKB: OKB, the native token of the OK Blockchain Foundation and Maltese crypto exchange, OKEx, gained double digits. The token was trading around $25, 4% up from the past week. The reason for the current surge could be the higher trading volume on the platform. 

Crypto exchanges frequently release their own tokens that act as stocks for their companies. In general, the more volume and users an exchange has, the higher the total valuation of its coin.

Trading volumes for OKB rose 32%, reaching $813 million at the time of writing. Despite this, the token is still far from its all-time high of $44.17, which it reached in May.

AMC Offers NFTs to Stockholders 

Following the positive public response to a movie-themed NFT offered a week ago exclusively to AMC ticket buyers, AMC will now provide second non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to all AMC Investor Connect members. These NFTs will be delivered by the Worldwide Asset eXchange (WAX). 

 “Given AMC’s Spider-Man NFT success, our first ever NFT, I am thrilled to announce our second ever NFT!,” CEO Adam Aron tweeted. 

AMC got a good response after offering 86,000 digital tokens to the first buyers of tickets to the Spider-Man movie premiere last month. The offering generated the second-best one-day sales for the movie chain,

NFT sales are expected to reach $17.7 billion this year. The largest theatrical chain in the world is now trying to take advantage of the ongoing hype surrounding NFT. 

It said in a statement: “As AMC Investor Connect is a program designed solely for self-identified AMC shareholders, the image contained in this NFT is that of a moving and glimmering gold embossed medallion which proudly proclaims, ‘I Own AMC.’

AMC hasn’t been a stranger to gambling on crypto before. As a meme stock, it gained hype at the beginning of this year, leading to meme-based cryptocurrencies such as Dogecoin. It now accepts payments in some cryptocurrencies as well. The recent move shows that giant companies have faith in the crypto world and are ready to dive head-first into it.