BlackRock Increases Bitcoin Holdings to 242K Despite Record ETF Outflows.

The world's largest asset management company BlackRock has increased the number of bitcoins on its balance sheet.

According to the website, BlackRock has increased the number of bitcoins in its iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) to 242,829. Assets under management in the fund's spot Bitcoin ETF have reached $15.5 billion at current exchange rates.
 

A hacker issued 1 billion CGT tokens in the Curio ecosystem.

The Curio DeFi project suffered an attack, the damage from which was estimated by Cyvers Alerts experts at $16 million.

The decentralized protocol is focused on providing Web3 investors in RWA with infrastructure services to attract liquidity.

On Saturday, March 23, the Curio team warned the community about an exploit of the MakerDAO smart contract used in the ecosystem. According to the statement, the incident occurred on the Ethereum side.

According to Cyvers Alerts specialists, the attacker took advantage of a vulnerability in the access permission logic and issued 1 billion CGT control tokens.
 

FTX will sell two-thirds of its stake in AI developer Anthropic for $884 million.

Bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX has reached an agreement to sell the majority of its stake in AI startup Anthropic for $884 million. The largest buyer was a group associated with UAE sovereign wealth fund Mubadala. The group is buying nearly $500 million worth of Anthropic shares, CNBC reports.

The second-largest buyer of Anthropic shares is Jane Street, the trading firm where FTX founder Sam Benkman-Fried worked. Caroline Ellison, the former CEO of hedge fund subsidiary FTX Alameda Research, also formerly worked for Jane Street. The company is buying shares worth about $100 million.

Jane Street head of quantitative research Craig Falls also offered to personally buy shares worth about $20 million.

Venture fund HOF Capital, Foundation Fund, and funds managed by Fidelity Management are also on the list of companies buying Anthropic shares.

It should be noted that the sale of shares has yet to be approved by Judge John Dorsey, who is presiding over the FTX bankruptcy case in Delaware.

 

Web3 project Munchables returned $97 million lost in hacking.

The Munchables Web3 gaming platform based on the second-tier Ethereum solution Blast lost $97 million as a result of an exploit. The hacker returned the funds without any conditions.

On March 26, the team reported the incident. Munchables said it was monitoring the funds and trying to stop the transactions.

Well-known on-chain researcher ZachXBT indicated the hacker’s wallet contained 17,400 ETH ($62.5 million). The expert suggested that the attacker was a North Korean developer hired by the project. In this case, the programmer appears as four different people.

 

Crypto Industry Loses $336 Million to Hacks and Scams in Q1 2024.

According to PANews, data released by blockchain security company Immunefi reveals that the crypto industry suffered losses of $336 million due to hacker attacks and scams in the first quarter of 2024. This figure represents a decrease compared to the $437.5 million lost during the same period last year. Orbit Bridge and Munchables were the two projects with the largest losses, accounting for 43% of the total amount. However, the funds from Munchables were later recovered.

 

The report also highlighted that the number of attacks in the first quarter of this year decreased by 17.6% compared to the same period last year, dropping from 74 to 61 incidents.

 

The Google search engine now has a feature for tracking crypto wallets.

The Google search service began displaying the balances of cryptocurrency addresses in the Bitcoin, Arbitrum, Avalanche, Optimism, Polygon and Fantom networks.

In March, Google integrated the ability to view wallets for Ethereum Name Service domains in search results. Address status information is downloaded from Etherscan.

In October 2022, the corporation provided support for Ethereum wallets. Initially, users could search for a specific public address and view the balance directly in the query bar.

Let us remind you that starting in 2024, Google updated its advertising policy and allowed the promotion of US-oriented cryptocurrency ETFs and other investment exchange-traded products.

In September 2023, the company allowed advertising of NFT games and affiliated goods as long as they are not related to gambling.

 

Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) has been sentenced to 25 years in prison in the Southern District of New York.

Previously, prosecutor Damian Williams had pushed for a sentence of 40 to 50 years for SBF. He noted that Bankman-Fried refuses to admit guilt in orchestrating "probably the largest fraud of the last decade." During a hearing on March 28, Judge Lewis Kaplan rejected the defense's request to consider the potential payment of compensation to victims as a mitigating circumstance.

The verdict comes on the heels of Bankman-Fried's statement that he "regrets what happened at every stage." The court also ordered Bankman-Fried to pay a fine of $11 billion.

Variant Fund chief lawyer Jake Chervinski emphasized that Bankman-Fried’s sentence is much lighter than, for example, Ross Ulbricht, who received two life sentences for organizing the Silk Road darknet marketplace.